Nuisance neighbour.

This is a difficult issue for me to relate without me coming off sounding a.) judgmental, b.) nasty, or c.) both. So I’ll just try to keep to the facts and let you decide.

A few days ago a single mum and her two kids, both under 10 years old, moved into the rental next door to us. Pretty much the next day/morning, the kids show up on our doorstep saying that their mum had gone and they didn’t know where. Apparently they had a phone number, but when it was rung no on answered. We let the kids in and my wife looked after them while I questioned them about their mum (thinking the worst, that she might have abandoned them or something). My wife also left a note on their door so that the mum would know where they were. About 15 or so minutes later she arrives and explains that she had mentioned to the eldest while she was in bed, that she was going down to the shops for a few minutes, but some roadworks had kept her out longer than she’d planned (I wasn’t in the room, but could hear this as she explained it to my wife). Now my wife being an overly nice person was friendlier that I would have been to a mum who left her young children on their own, and pretty much told her to let us know if she was going to do that again, so that at least someone could keep an eye on them. I disagreed with this because her kids aren’t our responsibility and I don’t think you should leave kids on their own in the first place. The next couple of days after this, the kids have shown up on our doorstep (while I’m at work) and on one occasion invited themselves around for dinner, telling their own mum that my wife had invited them when she hadn’t! Yesterday morning they showed up again peering in our front window and loitering on the doorstep. This time I opened the door and politely told them to piss off (I didn’t swear at them at all), by telling them that it was rude to hang around other people’s property and that they should go back to their own house. That very night when my folks had come around for diner, the mother turns up telling us that she had to pick up her boyfriend from the train station and that she was leaving her kids alone, so if we ‘wanted’ to pop in and check on them she’s let them know it was ok! When my wife goes around there and gets stuck, having to be rescued by me, the kids are showing her some pics on a mobile phone and amongst them are moving porno images! This mother had left a phone with accessible porn with her children!

Now all this is over the course of a few days and I can clearly see that they will fully take advantage of my wife’s kind nature and I want to put a stop to it. If much more irresponsible parenting becomes apparent I may have to contact child services, but would like to avoid doing that. Any suggestions?