Un-neighborly neighbors

Some days, like today, I want to pack up and move to the country and build a house in the woods, with a peaceful stream in my back yard, and no neighbors or houses within a mile of my house.  My day started off badly, with a police officer coming to our house because of a neighbor's report of my children riding bikes on the street "unsupervised".  The officer was kind enough, and when I questioned the legality of kids riding bikes on residential streets, he let me know it's fine and legal, but I need to be aware of others perceptions and if neighbors are concerned about the safety of my children, CPS may be called and I would need to testify in court in defense of my parenting, etc. etc.  But he said that he could see that I "had a good head on my shoulders" and that he didn't feel the need to tell me how to parent my children, and that I would be surprised at how many homes he goes to where he needs to instruct parents on how to take care of their children.  Thanks officer for your concern and kindness...

But my greater concerns and frustrations are these:   neighbors calling the police instead of communicating DIRECTLY face-to-face, with me, the responsible parent!!!!!, and, the need to CONTROL children instead of letting children play freely, as children aught.

We've had several encounters with un-neighborly neighbors recently, involving their "concern" for our children...their raucous behavior and our lack of supervision.  While I feel that I should give our neighbors the benefit of the doubt regarding the validity of their concern, I'm tempted to take a more pessimistic (or realistic?) view of them.  It seems that more and more, people lack courage or the ability to communicate directly with one another, and instead rely on a third source of some sort - the law, technology, etc.  Are we that afraid of each other, and/or are we that cowardly?  There are few people in our neighborhood whom we see outside at all - even families with small children; most people stay inside their homes year round.  The neighbor directly across from us has informed us, when we knocked on her front door after she grabbed the ball our kids were playing with and took it inside her house because it was on her property, that she wants nothing to do with us as neighbors and that our kids are SOLELY OUR RESPONSIBILITY.  A few days later, her privacy fence was open while she and her husband were sitting on their front porch, and I happened to be sitting in our front yard and look over.  Well, she saw me and promptly got up and shut the gate!  I wonder what causes people to demand such isolation from one another - even their neighbors?  And to shut out and dislike the joyful wonder, energy, curiosity, and excitement that come from children playing outside?

The other concern - the need to control children and manage them so closely that it stifles their natural curiosity - this also frightens me.  Children need to live freely, they need to explore, they need to be given responsibilities - even that of learning how to ride safely on a strip of residential street in front of their house!, and they need to take risks to learn the laws of nature and their own limitations - and capabilities! - as humans.  Yes, children need to be supervised, and they need boundaries, but supervision and control are different.

So these encounters with our neighbors has caused me to question how we live among our neighbors and parent our children.  I don't plan to change the freedom that we give our children to ride bikes on our street.  But I also wish that neighbors and neighborhoods would embrace children and learn to help each other out.

Here's the ending of the story I began with...The police officer did not tell me which neighbor made the report, but I was determined to knock on every single door in our neighborhood until I found out who made the report!  The second door I knocked on happened to be the one, and the lady told me she wasn't concerned about my lack of supervision, she has seen me taking care of my children and supervising them.  She was just concerned that my children didn't stop at a stop-sign on a particular street and was afraid they might pull out in front of a car.  She said she was a school teacher, and therefore a mandated reporter, so she didn't want something to happen to one of the kids and then be found to have done nothing about it.  I told her I appreciated her concern for my children, and that I will make sure the kids ride more safely, but that in the future, to please talk to me directly instead of calling the police.

So I will make certain the boys stop at that stop sign. It was a good reminder to ensure they are riding safely.
I'm certainly not a perfect parent, and I realize I don't always supervise my children properly.  I know I need humility, and I need to accept reprimands gracefully.  But I wish our neighbors would be more gracious to our children and us as parents, too; to help lighten the pressure society places on parents to micro-manage and control our children so tightly that in the end, we end up crippling them in many ways.

My Loves.