I'd love to know what kind of planet I live on where it's ok for teenagers to settle their differences by sending around some thug to beat up a 16yr old.

My nephews (16 & 14) have been having an ongoing spat with a couple of teenage girls in the estate where I live.  Name calling along the lines of fat and ugly (yes, even teenagers pick our vulnerable points) and the girls have retaliated as is only right.  But then there was a major fall out (most of the name calling had been done in that, I like you but I'm gonna pretend otherwise kinda way!) and the girls went home and told their parents what happened. My sis-in-law had a couple of visits from one of the mothers giving off about what the nephew was saying and that he was to stay away from the girls to which my sis-in-law said she was more than happy to keep him away from her if she kept the girl away from her son. All ok so far!

Saturday night my son was out with his cousins and another wee boy.  They ran into the girls who were mouthing off again and instead of walking away from it as I have told my son to do, they stopped, no doubt to mouth back again.  Then apparently the other wee fella lit a firework and threw it at the girls. Had I known this at the time I would have gone through my son like a hurricane which I'm sure he knew so never told me. I have to admit at this point that I have little time for the other wee fella they were with and if I knew my son was associating with him I would have had plenty to say about that too!

Anyway, the boys walked off and went to a local youth club place where later, a relative of the girls showed up and pointed to my nephew and the other boy and said he didn't know which it was but it was one of them that threw the firework.  Now, had someone thrown a firework at my child I would have dealt with it by going to the parents and if that failed to work I would have rung the police to go have a quiet word.  But obviously, this was too sensible for the parents of these girls.  So last night my nephew was followed round the estate by a car.  His friends noticed this and ran off as did my nephew and they went into a local church group to get help.  Some bloke in his 30s (according to my son) followed them in and started shouting for my nephew to get outside.  The nephew said no and the bloke kept telling him to get outside.  So the nephew and the group leader and my son went out where the bloke tried to punch my nephew.  Obviously at this point my son was ringing home and his aunt's house to get us round to deal with it.  Husband went and I got the story when they came home again.

I am absolutely livid that there are people where I live who think that it's acceptable to deal with a problem by using violence.  Whatever happened to teaching young adults to settle their differences in a grown up and mature way without depending on a local thug to go punch the person who upset them.  I, in no way, condone throwing lit fireworks.  I have been assured by my son that it was a third party and if I find out any different he'll be lucky to see outside home or school till he turns 18.

But what I'm most angry about is that I feel unsafe allowing my son to go out with his 2 cousins in the estate where he lives in case some other thug comes along and tries to start another fight!