How can I spur my kids to play in the backyard when the neighbour gets so cranky?

35 minutes ago 2

Danny Katz

Q: My kids enjoy playing backyard ball-games. When the ball goes over the fence, the woman next door always yells at them. With the new restrictions on social media for kids, shouldn’t we actually be encouraging them to get offline and outside? T.T., Vermont, VIC

Modern Guru has spotted a perhaps unforeseen downside to the teen social media ban: kids climbing fences to retrieve errant balls.Illustration by Simon Letch

A: Yes, we should encourage kids to get off their brain-zapping devices and engage in healthy, outdoor activities that will benefit their physical, social and mental development … but, then again, I once lived next door to a kid who kicked his football over my fence about 75 times a day and I seriously contemplated bursting his ball with a screwdriver and throwing its flaccid carcass back over the fence, yelling “Your balls are next!”

Because it can turn you mildly psychopathic when kids regularly climb over your fence to get their ball or scream over your fence for you to throw their ball back or poke an improvised, MacGyver-like, ball-scooping invention over your fence, made with a fishing rod, duct tape and their mum’s DD bra. That’s why I have the smallest skerrick of sympathy for your yelling, child-hating, fun-shunning, mildly psychopathic neighbour; she could’ve even been me if I lived in Vermont and had one less Y-chromosome.

Danny Katz is a columnist for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. He writes the Modern Guru column in the Good Weekend magazine. He is also the author of the books Spit the Dummy, Dork Geek Jew and the Little Lunch series for kids.