Reddit Entitled Parents

Your yard is now our park

My partner and I purchased the house next door to my best friend. I had lived with him for close to a decade when his kids were babies, so they viewed my house as an extension of theirs, and were in and out all day, every day. I have a more flexible schedule than he and his wife, so I have them in the mornings, after school, and on days off of school. I had a pool in my yard, and because my friend's kids were still little, I installed a retractable cover and made sure it was locked so they couldn't open it. My friend's yard had one of those wood fort/climbing wall/swing set deals and a large sandbox. Throughout the year, we spent most evenings outside, grilling, drinking, and watching the kids play/swim/whatever.

One summer day, I came home from work a little earlier than normal, and started to prep for dinner. I heard a knock at my back door, which was odd, since my buddy's kids never knocked. I went to see who it was and discovered a mom and two kids who looked to be maybe 5-7 years old. As I opened the door, she informed me that her kids needed to use the bathroom and that I needed to come out and get the cover off my pool. I was confused and asked her to repeat herself, and she said that her kids needed to pee and that they were hot and bored with playing in the sandbox, so I needed to open up my pool. I asked her why she was in my friend's yard and what made her think her kids were welcome to swim in my pool, or use my bathroom for that matter. She got really bitchy and told me that she had moved into the house behind us and that she had watched my buddy's kids come over all the time and I opened the pool for them. She insisted that since I was willing to open my pool for the kids next door, I should also open it for the children who lived behind me. I tried explaining the relationship between my best friend's family and mine. She claimed it didn't matter that I had known them since birth and pretty much had helped raise them, I just needed to get to know her kids too and it would be OK.

I told her no and closed the door on her. She spent a while knocking and fussing at me through the window, and then had her kids pee in a planter on the side of the patio. When I still didn't react, she took her kids back into my friend's yard to play on the swings. I texted him to let him know what was going on, right at the moment he was letting his 300+ pounds worth of Newfies out into the yard without noticing the unwelcome visitors. The mom starts shrieking and climbs up into the fort, leaving both kids on the swings. She starts demanding that we put the dogs inside and how dare my friend let his dogs out into his own yard when her kids are clearly playing there. He tells her to GTFO and calls the police.

When the cops arrived, she put on the whole waterworks about how her kids are just looking for friends, and my buddy's kids are somehow bullying her kids, even though they'd never met. That he invited her over just to let his dogs attack her children, blah blah blah. They eventually move her back onto her own property, then come back later to tell us they warned her about coming back.

She lived in that house for almost a year before she and her husband divorced. During that year, I had to replace the lock over the pool cover controls 3 times, have a fencing company remove a gate at the back of my property that was meant to let the lawn mower through, and eventually pay a security company to come check on the yard any time we were going to be away for more than a few hours. We found her and her kids in our yards repeatedly, but she'd leave when we got home. What finally resolved the issue was my partner catching her in the pool. She told him she knew the man that owned the house and that he had told her it was OK to swim. He told her he was married to the man that owned the pool and that it's not OK to swim. She apparently had a bad reaction to realizing she was immersing her sons in gay water. We didn't see her again after that.

- u/kindredflame