Newt, my wife invited over to do his homework last January and we fed him...he was basically on his own, mom had left him by himself with no adult supervision. Long story, but it was not until about May that we learned about the gang, selling drugs etc. Pretty naive but we convinced him to give up that life, got him on track with sports and academics, he made honorroll and set a school record in shot put. He's in 9th grade and just made the varsity wrestling team at 5'11" and 225lbs.
To everyone else, he did very well. His birthday was the 24th and he really wanted his mom to be there, so we over compensated. He got a laptop and a bunch of other stuff, plus we threw him a surprise party Friday night. Problem is we felt guilty about the rest of the kids so they made out well also, now we are broke!
Just enough left to make the drive to knoxville to see our oldest. You'll recognize us because we take our own noise with us.