Okay thank you but like when the dandelion is still yellow then it's edible right?

Yes, everything on the plant including the roots is edible before the flowers bloom, while the flowers are blooming, and after the flowers have bloomed. But young leaves are supposed to be tastier than older ones, so it's best if you can pick the leaves before the plant has gotten very old.

It doesn't matter if someone has walked in the area where you pick your plants, but you do want to avoid areas that are really contaminated. So don't take plants from a part of the yard where the dog usually goes to the bathroom, or under a tree where a lot of wild birds hang out and poop all day long, or right next to a roadside where the exhaust fumes from the cars are constantly hitting the plants. You can rinse the plants well to clean them, or you can let them sit for a few minutes in a bowl that's had some vinegar added to it. Vinegar is a natural way to kill many kinds of germs, although there are some that are resistant to it.

Okay I'll try that!

I should have said to soak the plants in a bowl of water that's had some vinegar added to it. The way I originally wrote it made it sound like you should soak it in pure vinegar, which isn't what I meant. Rinse the plants afterward too to get rid of any excess vinegar.

Okay thanks! I'll try this weekend.
PS I might not be posting a lot on here because of MY TUTOR urgh she always wants to know what's in our life and she said that both me and brother have to ask before going onto the internet! And my parents ( especially my grandma) hates us going on animal they said we can only go to learning! Urgh I gotta tell my friend that has a the same special understanding we both have.

If you ask me, I think you're learning things here that have practical value and go far beyond pet care. You're making observations in the real world (about bird behavior in this case) and then finding out about the biological reason behind it. This is an excellent way to develop your rational thinking skills - the more you do it, the more skilled you become at seeing something and thinking to ask "why" and then connecting the dots to find the answer, using logical thought processes and/or research and intelligently sorting through information to decide which data appears to be true and which appears to be false.

When my son was young I expected him to do well in school, but I also let him explore any subject that interested him. I encouraged him to ask questions whether it was an "educational" subject or not, and did my best to explain the reasons behind the answers. My efforts to develop his intelligence had very good results - he grew up to be a professor/biotechnology researcher in the highly ranked engineering program at USC. In his first year on the job he applied for a patent related to brain scan technology. He definitely knows how to use his own brain.

I completely agree that learning is important, but there's a lot more to it than memorizing dry facts in a textbook. Letting kids explore their natural curiosity about trivial subjects increases their desire to learn, and this leads to bigger things later on. When it comes to taking the initiative and developing leadership qualities, being allowed to follow your own path to some extent will teach you a lot more than always being forced to do something that you're not really interested in. You do need to study that dry textbook stuff too, but it IS educational to spend a few minutes a day on forums like this one. It isn't traditional schoolbook learning but that doesn't mean that it's worthless. You can tell everybody that the mother of a research scientist said so.

You've displayed a lot of intelligent qualities on this forum, asking questions about things you've observed, showing an interest when I go into the biology behind the answer, and demonstrating that you're consulting more than one source instead of accepting the first answer that you find. These are valuable traits, and if you were my kid I wouldn't be trying to squelch you. On condition that you do well in school too of course.

If you'd like an example of what hanging out on bird forums can lead to, here's a nice one. Right here on this forum you dipped your toe into the subject of avian genetics and did enough of your own research to figure out what mutation your birds are. Five years ago I knew next to nothing about avian genetics but I'm neck deep in the subject now and still learning, as well as trying to figure out phenomena that no one currently understands. Check out the thread at http://icr-unite.phpbb3now.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=54 Scroll past all the bird pictures to get to the science talk, and I love the part where Bert joins the conversation and we go crazy speculating on possible causes of Schimmel coloring.

Genetics is a really hot scientific field right now. There's not a lot of demand for avian geneticists at the moment but there's high demand for other genetic work, and studying pet-bird genetics is a nice introduction for a kid. It's a long time since I was a kid, but asking "why do my birds' babies look like that" as an adult has led me into places that I never expected to go. There are educational articles on avian genetics right here on this website. I wrote them because I thought the existing articles on the internet didn't explain the subject clearly enough, and I wanted to help other people learn about it:
http://www.littlefeatheredbuddies.com/i ... etics.html (basic principles)
http://www.littlefeatheredbuddies.com/i ... inked.html (advanced topic)
http://www.littlefeatheredbuddies.com/i ... overs.html (advanced topic)
http://www.littlefeatheredbuddies.com/i ... ncalc.html (information on genetic calculators, which use probability theory to predict breeding outcomes. Now you're getting into math as well as science)

I haven't written it up yet, but I'm eventually going to condense the thread on Schimmel cockatiels into an article on genetic mosaics and add it to the website. It's a rare phenomenon and the subject doesn't have much relevance for the average bird owner, but it's fascinating.

There are links to articles on other websites in the Genetics subsection at http://www.littlefeatheredbuddies.com/info/links.html If you want to read something that will really make your eyeballs cross, check out the first one on the list.

Your tutor and family members are welcome to come on this forum to discuss ideas on the best way to educate children if they want to. You've probably noticed that I have passionate opinions on the subject. My own education was focused on learning facts from first grade through high school, and I didn't really learn to think until I got to college and suddenly had to start reasoning things through instead of just coughing up information on demand. I wanted my son to learn to think a lot earlier than I did, so I started teaching him about basic principles and connecting cause to effect as soon as he started to understand language. I did it in a low-key way, because if you pressure kids too much you're likely to turn them off and make them crazy instead of inspiring a love of learning. And OMG what a difference it made. I have a bachelor's degree; he has a PhD. I dabble in scientific subjects; he's an actual scientist. He could be a rocket scientist if he wanted since his current skills are applicable to things like the Hubble space telescope, but he prefers to work with neuroimaging. I can email you a link to his publication list if you're interested. It's seriously impressive.

Sure but my parents and tutor......No way they'll just say it's a waste of time like what my brother does he goes online for pet care too and animals and they said It's a waste of TIME.
I was very depressed yesterday that during school today.Well at least I have some people to talk to. like you and my few other friends from school and one at my tutor's house

PS The one at my tutor's house also hates the tutor same way I do.

I hope that you can at least get them to think about it. They're trying to prepare you for a successful future, but there are a lot of different ways to measure success and I don't think this method is optimal. Getting a prestigious, high-paying job that your family can brag about is good, but there's more to success and happiness than that.

For kids and teenagers, pretty much everything that happens while they're awake is educational in some way even if it looks worthless on the surface. Playing video games helps develop problem-solving abilities because every game has some challenge that you have to conquer. Watching junky shows on TV gives you cultural references that help you socialize with other people.

A kid/teenager's brain is still developing physically, and they need a decent amount of free time to pursue their own interests and develop many aspects of their thinking process, their personality, and their general life skills. The brain also needs some relaxation time so it can quietly process the educational stuff at the subconscious level while the conscious part of your mind is goofing off. If you're constantly trying to cram in more information, it actually makes it harder to retain anything.

Is there any particular reason for this new rule? If they think you're not performing well enough in school, maybe you could make a bargain with them where you'll work on focusing more in school in return for some free time after school. Depending on what your classes are like, you might even be able to study some of the extra-curricular stuff that they want you to work on while you're in class. With a lot of my high school classes, the teacher would assign us to read certain pages in the textbook and then the next day the teacher would stand up in front of the class and basically repeat everything it said in the book. I had already learned the material and didn't need to hear it a second time so I'd use the time productively by doing my homework for other classes or reading a book that had nothing to do with the class I was sitting in. If you have a good teacher who talks about material that isn't in the book you have to listen of course. But when you're stuck in a dull class with a teacher who isn't actually teaching you anything, you may as well get some other work done.