I’m bothered by this but admittedly I’m more of an anxious parent in general than most, so please let me know if my anger is justified here.

I have 2 kids (age 6 and 8) and our new neighbor who just moved in a few months ago also has 2 kids (age 3 and 5). Our kids love to play together and they get along great. The parents are really nice people too and we’re becoming friends with them.

Problem I have is that when my kids are playing outside together, they immediately send their kids over. Which normally is ok, but I feel like they do it a lot and rarely offer for our kids to come to their place. What really bothers me though is, 1) they don’t inform me that they’re sending them over and I feel like I need to know since their kids are really young and need supervision, and 2) most of the time, I’m inside doing chores and I can’t devote myself to give as much attention to the safety of the youngest one. My kids both know that when they’re out playing they are not allowed to go out onto the street and they’re not allowed to go to any adjacent neighbor’s house unless they tell me first.

So this past weekend, same thing happened and I was annoyed because I was in the middle of doing something, so I just tried to keep my eye out the window every so often to make sure everything was ok. Then I notice the 3 year old at the end of our driveway about to walk onto the road, while my 8 year old is running after her and beckoning her to come back. Right away I come out and call for her to come back onto our property but she shouted “NO” (gotta love 3 year olds) and took off down the road toward her house. I can’t see her because there are bushes blocking my view, but what really made my heart jump, was that they had a contractor doing hardscaping around their property that morning with their heavy equipment. So I half-threw on my sneakers running after her, and cursing in my mind ‘where the bleep are the parents’….

Well luckily I come to find that the trucks are gone for the day, but the 3 year old ran up to her driveway and in front of her house, sneaking by the “do not cross” tape that had been put up to protect the newly laid hardscaping. I asked her gently to come off the hardscaping but she pressed ahead. Parents are still nowhere in sight. She finally made a full loop all the way around and back to our house through some bushes. I run back and find her near our garage where all the other kids are, and I explain to her she cannot go out onto the road otherwise she may get hit by a car.

I was pretty upset about it. So upset I couldn’t bring myself to call the parents right then and there because I literally felt like I was going to start screaming at them for being so irresponsible with their kids. So I texted the father and asked if it was ok if I dropped them off, to which he responded sure. My kids walked them to their back door.

How or what would you do if this happened? Would you even be upset like I am? I feel like I want to be nice about it because they are my new neighbors and they appear to be nice people. But fundamentally, they are far more lax with their kids than I am comfortable with, and I don’t appreciate them assuming they can drop their kids off whenever they feel like it without telling me. I still want our kids to play but I also don’t want them to think I’m being a jerk by laying out rules that they clearly haven’t established. In general, I feel like most parents are way too nonchalant about kid safety which is why I feel like I’m more high strung about things like this.

Ugh. What would you do?