I used to feed stale bread to the outside birds.My neighbors dad,who lived at the house part time after retiring to Pa,,,told me it was no good for the birds. So for the last 5 years I have bought wild bird seed,..A year or so ago my neighbor told me I needed to stop feeding them as they pooped on his 50 thousand dollar truck.I told him to F off...Months later I got a warning from town saying I can only feed them with a bird feeder,...I got one,,,,Then he told me not to feed them more than once a day.At 63,with a bad hip,I fed them if I happened to see it empty whenever that was.I got a ticket from town saying the food that falls to the ground as they eat,is illegal.,,,How can people be so mean?

My two cents: Violence happens in all large schools and all kids, whatever their mental health or developmental issues, have the potential for violent or negligent acts that can result in death or damage to themselves or other students. This is not a "urban" vs "suburban" issue and its not even a "good kids" vs "bad kids" issue. Nice kids injure *themselves* all the time, nice kids despair about their b+ grade and kill themselves, nice kids get drunk and drive to endanger. On an even sadder note nice, suburban kids routinely bully and injur other kids, especially outsider, non-white, non-normal, or just plain female kids and its never reported to teachers or parents. How many nice suburban highschool girls have been assaulted or raped by nice, suburban, jocks?And how many of those rapes ever get reported? Violence and secrecy about violence is nothing new, even in nice suburban schools. This case made me think about something else, though. To my mind violent acts by a determined psychotic individual, and violence in general in large groups of kids, can't be entirely done away with. But any particular instance of violence by a teenager who is not determined could probably have been deterred or delayed until the sparking incident blew over. What deterrence requires is some serious structural attention to the setting of violence in advance. In this case my feeling is that if there is no history of violence in the school and no history of violence between other kids and this new kid the issue is one of induction. I don't think that schools have the time, money, or ability to truly induct and educate all their students into expected civil behavior. I noticed instantly that the first thing that was reported is that the school doesn't have metal detectors. I don't think metal detectors deter anything anyway but I think a more important gate keeping function is for schools to realize that new students are very vulnerable and their vulnerability makes them potentially dangerous. A school is a "total institution" like a prison. What that means is that the institution surrounds and controls the individual, setting the terms for interaction (For good or ill) and that for the individual the institution presents an overwhelming monolithic force. Prisons, for good reasons, have systems for inducting new prisoners into the prison: letting them ease slowly into the new rules, special rooms, floors, work assignments etc... I"m not saying any of that works in prisons, but at least they have a recognizable model in which newcomers aren't just left to flounder. In my experience of large schools they totally lack a serious community building, integrative model for new students and families. They don't work hard enough to mainstream new kids: to make sure they feel secure, to civilize them (if necessary) to help them understand the norms of their new environment and they don't work hard enough to make the old students responsible for the welfare of the new students. If the older students/regular students had been part of an official welcoming committee the whole snitching on the new student thing wouldn't be an issue--they would have been working with the new student as well as with the faculty as a kind of team. abfab

I keep trying to read this whole thread before responding but it keeps growing LOL. I didn't learn from my mom. My father would always shoo me into the kitchen to help her, which I detested because (2) I wasn't interested in learning. (1) Her style in the kitchen would make me CRAZY - 'mom, dad sent me in here to help. What do you want me to do?' she would then put her finger in her mouth, say 'hmmmm, let me think', then she would take a few minutes to THINK and come up with 'peel those carrots'. I would then have to bug her (or my dad would jump on me) to find another task. She wasn't organized or able to be a manager to delegate to me. OTOH she did LOVE international cuisine and exposed us to varieties of food far and wide, especially Chinese. I taught myself to cook my second year in the college apartments. I bought The Campus Survival Cookbook Parts 1 and 2 which helped me learn basics via appropriate college kid type menus, at my level. I also bought, on a lark, The Silver Palate and loved many of those recipes. I still have the Campus books and I think they are the best kind to give a college kid since they helped with shopping, stocking a small kitchen, and potlucks. My DH, who is a better 'technical' cook than I, also taught himself. He says his mother was a dreadful cook and his grandmother would say 'bring your girlfriend over and I'll teach her'. Didn't help that he didn't have a GF at the time....He taught himself via 9th grade 'Bachelor Cooking' in HS and the Joy of Cooking, which is his bible. He is now reading Bittman's How to Cook Everything, LOL. So we both pretty much taught ourselves. I wish I would have had more of a 'basics' foundation, about cuts of meats and baking science, but I can find that out on my own. I do love working with my DH in the kitchen!

My parents told me the same thing. But if I had said I was over at one friend's house and really gone to another, and LIED about it. I would be in BIG trouble. The problem was not the disobeying or the bad behavior. The problem was not owning up to the truth. The thing is, most things in life can be fixed. I backed the car into another car. Ok, that takes money and maybe a driving lesson. I stole from a store. Ok, community service or restitution. The only thing that really, really cannot be fixed is physically injuring another person. Here's an example. In my city recently a girl was drinking at a bar. Driving home she ran into a guy who was changing his tire on the side of the road. She left him there, literally a block from her house. When she got home the neighbor heard her calling her dad and saying "Dad, it's not my fault it's not my fault". She then walked back to the scene and observed the cops trying to help the guy, who was by that time dead. Ok. This was a great example for my daughter because everyone was talking about what kind of person would go off and leave someone on the side of the road. Well, she didn't want to get caught!!! She knew she had done wrong. She was scared, right? After all, she was ONLY 19 years old. I told DD that drinking and driving is very wrong. Never drink and drive. We will always come to pick you up. Or get a cab to the house and I will pay for it. ETC. 1. So the girl made the first bad choice; to get in the car and drive, drunk. 2. Then she hit the guy. If she had stayed with him she would have been in trouble. Yep. She would have gone to court and gotten in big trouble. It would cost a lot of money. People would be mad at her. But he would still be alive. 3. So she made her next bad choice. She kept driving home and left him there. 4. Then, once she was home, she could have called the police to help him. She didn't. 5. She made her last bad choice, and IMO, the worst one: She called her dad and said "IT'S NOT MY FAULT". To me, this is inexcusable. This is what makes me think her parents failed. This is what made me feel like breaking something. I told DD that she made choices: 1) to drink and drive 2) to not stop and help someone she hurt 3) to not call police to get help for the person she hurt But the worst choice she made was to not accept responsibility for her choices. 1) A DUI is inconvenient, expensive, and embarrassing not to mention that you or someone else could be hurt. 2) hitting someone with a car and injuring them, combined with a DUI, is serious and will be a memory you will have to carry your entire life. You will get in trouble. 3) Leaving the scene of an accident is really really bad. Really bad. Not helping someone, even to flag down another car to get help, is inhumane and cruel. Because she made these choices, instead of having to go to court and lose her license for a DUI, or having to pay restitution for hospital bills while the man recovered; this young woman who was going to school to be..... wait for it.... A FRICKIN' NURSE for goodness sake!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Will probably not go to college now. Who will trust her to be a nurse? All the college money will go toward her lawyer fees. She will go to jail. Her name is smeared all over the papers. People will probably never trust or respect her. And the worst part is that she killed a man. It was his birthday, and she killed him. I wouldn't leave a dog on the side of the road. Bad choices. But the worst one was that she didn't accept responsibility. If she had been the kind of girl who didn't lie, who accepted responsibility for her actions and did the right thing EVEN if she's embarrassed or ashamed or scared she will get in trouble; but she probably would not be going to jail right now. The young man would probably still be alive. Better for him, yes, but better for her too. The lying definitely needs to be addressed.