Living in a bustling neighborhood with lots of kids can be fun. If you need to get them out of your hair for a little while, a playdate is a simple text away. But kids might also sometimes show up uninvited and end up heartbroken if it’s not a great time for company. Kids don’t always understand boundaries and help themselves to your property, whether you like it or not. A Redditor is experiencing a strange situation with a neighbor and needs some help deciding if they are the a–hole or are being totally gaslit.
The original poster explained in the AITA forum that a little boy who lives a few houses down loves playing pirate, which OP thought was so cute.
“I mean fully committed. Eyepatch, cardboard sword, yelling ‘ye be cursed’ at squirrels. Honestly? Pretty wholesome. At first,” OP wrote.
But then things started to get weird. OP noticed some holes in the yard and thought maybe an animal had started digging. One day, OP caught the neighbor kid digging in their yard and asked him to stop.
The next day, OP found a much bigger hole with buried treasure inside. It was time to confront the kid’s mom to put an end to the digging.
“She immediately gets defensive. No apology. Just a heavy sigh and a ‘Well he’s just using his imagination. I think it’s sweet,” OP wrote. “I told her I didn’t mind the creativity, just not in my yard. She rolled her eyes and said, “Can’t you just let him have this? It’s not like your grass is that nice anyway.”
Her comment really upset OP, who handed over the lunchbox and told the mom to walk the plank. Later that day, the mom sent a long text saying OP humiliated her son and broke his spirit. She said her son called OP “the villain in his story.”
OP didn’t respond to the text but wonders who’s in the wrong here. Redditors chimed in and overwhelmingly agreed OP wasn’t the one being unreasonable.
“NTA for a few reasons. Biggest one, it’s your yard. My kiddo has dug small holes to give her barbies mud baths, I have actually tripped in a hole while mowing the grass,” one Redditor explained. “Is mom willing to pay for any injuries that happen because of holes? Also, sounds like mom filled her son with a lot of bad ideas instead of supporting not digging on someone else’s property. In reality, mom could have said you can’t bury treasure near shark infested waters or something.”
Another person noted that the condition of OP’s lawn doesn’t matter. “Whether your grass is nice or not, it’s your grass. She’s raising her kid awfully if she isn’t teaching him basic boundaries like respecting other people’s property,” the person wrote.
Someone else pointed out a very frightening scenario.
“I don’t say this lightly. But this kind of coddling from parents is what is growing the amount of entitled young men in america who end up being sexual abusers,” the person explained. “‘ You deserve everything,’ and ‘anyone who doesn’t give you what you want is a bad person,’ are seriously what leads to extreme misogyny and violence.”
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