Dear Dáithí: Our elderly neighbour is making our life a misery

We don’t want a row or to make formal complaints — we just want to live peacefully. His wife has apologised and said he’s “particular”, but that doesn’t help when he’s interfering with our property and upsetting the children.

My husband and I are a young couple with two boys, aged seven and nine. We bought our first home three years ago, a semi-detached on what we hoped would be a friendly, easy-going estate. Sadly, one neighbour is making that difficult.

The couple next door are in their 60s. The wife is lovely — always up for a chat — but her husband seems permanently cross. 

It started with little things: Remarks about the boys being noisy or a football landing in his driveway. We apologised, made sure the lads were respectful, and tried to keep the peace.

Then it got worse. He began cutting our hedge without asking, saying it was “untidy”. He parks his car directly outside our house, even though he has his own driveway. When we politely mentioned it, he said the road was “for everyone”.

The final straw was when he scolded our sons for playing football, leaving them upset and nervous about going outside.

We don’t want a row or to make formal complaints — we just want to live peacefully. His wife has apologised and said he’s “particular”, but that doesn’t help when he’s interfering with our property and upsetting the children.

We try to ignore him, but it’s starting to affect our enjoyment of our home. How do we set boundaries with someone who doesn’t seem to respect them? Is there a way to be firm without causing a feud?

We love our house and our community, and we’d rather solve this with kindness than confrontation, but we’re running out of patience and ideas.

I’M going to get straight to it here: You have had enough, and it’s time something was done about it. You and your husband work very hard, have two lovely children, and all you really want is to have a nice, peaceful life.

I love the fact you love your home. I know that exact feeling. I feel the same way, and if anything were to upset me like that, I don’t know if I would be as patient as you have been up until now.

Let’s be honest here: This one neighbour is acting the way he is because he is being allowed to, and one of the reasons you have been nice to him up until now is because his wife is a nice person, and I think we need to start with her first.

The next time you meet her I would explain to her how the actions of her husband are affecting you and your family. I would ask her if she thinks it’s OK to cut down somebody else’s hedge, for example, and if it’s OK to park right in front of someone else’s house, when they have a fine driveway themselves.

Now, I don’t think she is blind to all of this, but it’s no harm to remind her what exactly is going on.

I would also say that you respect that they are an older couple, but that you have values, and you expect others to meet those values and standards. You are not being mean here; what you are doing is telling her what you stand for and really what you won’t stand for, or put up with. Because she seems nice, what we are hoping for is that she will go to the husband and say, ‘Look, dim your lights’, and he might soften.

This is only the first step, to be honest. I’m not sure this fella will listen, but you will lay down a marker for what this is, anyway.

I don’t like confrontation, but sometimes you just need to tackle something head on. If it is the case that this guy is still the same and is being a pain, which is what he is, you do need to say, ‘Come here, we need to talk.’

Have what you want to say ready and be very clear in your head. Remember, you have done nothing wrong here. I would ask him about cutting the hedge. That’s not his hedge, it’s yours, and the fact that he thinks he can do what he wants has given him the power in his own head, and you need to straighten that one out. You need to tell him that it is NEVER to happen again, and if it does, you will bring the law in to it, at the mildest hint of trespassing. That is not allowed, and socially and morally it is way off the charts.

Now he can park where he wants, really, we can’t do anything about that, but you can still say it to him, and when he is on the back foot is a great time to land that, before you tear in to him about speaking to your children and upsetting them like he did.

I don’t have a big problem with other people giving out to the children, once it’s done in a certain way, if the children are being rude and not being nice. For example, if my lad was not being nice and wasn’t behaving properly and someone gave out to him, well, then, that’s on him, but if the children are just being children, that’s a different scéal.

It sounds like your children are being children, and I would ask this man if he remembers being young and having that happy-go-luckiness that we all look for these days, and if he doesn’t remember, remind him and then tell him to cop on.

Now, I might seem angry here, and in one way I am, because this is just one person taking their own crap out on others, but you do need to go in to this with your non-confrontational voice and rationality.

The reason you need to do this now is, as you say yourself at the end of your letter, you love your house, and you love your community.

Those are two of the most important things we have in life, and nobody should be allowed to act the way this guy is to take away from all of that. It’s just not on.

And the real reason you need to do something now is that nothing will ever change until you speak up, and when you do it will all change. He might be pissed off with you and, if so, that’s on him, but the days of him thinking he is God are long gone!