Quote:
Originally posted by Gattigap
Friends,
I have a problem.
Our next door neighbor is a nice enough fellow. Early 50s, kids grown and gone, and IIRC divorced about 10 years ago. Interesting enough guy, intelligent, good dinner companion. A bit odd in some ways (for example, he rents out a bedroom to students from time to time, and from the traffic to and from the house it reminds me a bit of a hostel), but whatevah....
Gattigap
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You mentioned the lack of reciprocity so I'm not sure if a little of that might ease the situation. That's if you are okay with the house situation over there and feel comfortable with them there. For awhile, I was the one (voluntarily) who had the neighbor's 2 kids over pretty much every Saturday night and then some. On the one hand, it was nice because the kids are nice (a sweet 4 year old; an 8 year old who is nice but a little too talkative) and it was nice not to be the big clown entertaining my 3 year old from 7 am to 9 pm on a Saturday. After a while though....I got a call saying "X child wants to play with Vietbabe" and I promptly said "great, we'll be right over", deposited VB at their house and then went to the movies. After that, they got the hint and now, we're in a pretty cool unspoken kid-swapping arrangement where I do Sat. night and on Sunday night I usually get a few free hours after 5 pm to catch up on some work or do stupid stuff in the yard like retransplant every week the same Hosta which is overtaking the house.
If you really don't want the kids over anymore, then when they show up, declare that they can all play for a few minutes, but then you are going out. When the neighbor sees you haven't gone anywhere, they'll get the hint that limited play time is all they can expect.
Alternately, you can send them an itemized bill for babysitting services. Speaking of bills, my Saturday nights with the kids at the house include me feeding them dinner and dessert, which can get pricey. I wonder why they don't say (as they go off to dine at a nice Thai restaurant), "Hey, we'll order a pizza to be delivered to your house". I'd love that. Oh well.
