Poll: 10 year old murders baby brother

[ReaperzXIII]

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Are you serious? I could reason right and wrong and use logical thought long before 10 years old. I can remember when I was 5 and I figured out that animals had feeling like I did. I learned what death was by age 7 having been exposed to the dog I'd known all my life fall down and do everything except die in front of my eyes. We took her to the vet to be put down that day cause she was like 14 years old or something.

If you are a blank page by ten years old, your parents seriously fucked up. If you cannot remember you childhood, or it took you a decade more to realize that what you did as a kid was fucked up, I weep for you. I cannot imagine what it must be like to go through life as a kid with no understanding of what the fuck you are doing. It is beyond my ability to fathom what your childhood must have been like to have caused that.

That being said, I do not advocate jail. This 10 year old girl needs counseling not because she is a blank robot slate, but because she likely has other issues. It is unlikely she meant to kill her brother, HOWEVER, a good psychologist can find out if the girl is just ignorant of her actions, incapable of understanding due perhaps to a lower intelligence or maybe some other reason, or an emotionally detached sociopath.

Either way, when I hear people say that children don't know any better, it disgusts me. It is true that sometimes they do not understand things the way adults do, but what you are suggesting (that kids don't understand anything at that age) is not only ignorant but dangerous and just plain wrong.

You were taught that behavior, you never "figured it out". In fact, all behavior is taught until puberty. The most basic ones are instilled since early childhood, mainly outright killing. Still, the child in question didn't understand that shaking was wrong. In fact, she was probably playing with the baby, something which a lot of children do. She never considered shaking to be wrong so she did it. We were never told if it was violent or not.

Learning what death is does not mean you are capable of logical thought by the way. Again, every single behavior you were taught.

But that's how the childhood of every single human being on earth was. You do not understand anything. You rely on others to provide you with an explanation. Everything you knew during childhood was told to you. Right and wrong were concepts instilled in you by your parents or someone else. You did not figure it out by yourself. You're incapable of doing so until teenagehood and even then most of your logical thinking is based on pre-instilled behavior.

It's not ignorant at all, it's the truth. Logical thinking is impossible until puberty. Everything you "learn" as a child is instilled in you. This is why you don't see children discussing wars or tragedies. They simply don't understand them.

Lolwut? I understood what protons, neutrons and electrons were when I was 3 years younger than that and I'm no super genius...as much as I would like to think so. My point is children are capable of logical thought, younger than 6 and this would've been more understandable but 9? I'm sorry my 4 year old older sister never once shook me like this when I was young and she was 5 years older.

Me and my friends in primary school around that age knew right from wrong, if someone hit someone else they knew punishment was waiting. Stop coddling the children otherwise they really will be nothing but retards until they're 20.

Also math is logical thought, if kids can understand simple algebra at the age of 9-10 then I'm pretty sure they can understand shaking the baby is bad.

 

[Ris]

The whole "shaken baby" thing is a travesty to begin with.

It is the ultimate extension of an ideal, formed largely by permissive parenting and people who do not have children at all, that nobody should ever get frustrated, angry or upset with a child. I know for a fact I was "shaken" on at least one occasion by my parents, but I'm not dead.. most children who get tossed up in the air, or turned upside down, by their parents only respond with laughter or not.. certainly not death.

There's quite a big difference between tossing a child in the air to make them laugh, and violently shaking them out of anger.

If she was mentally disturbed then she would have shown behavioral changes much earlier than 10. In fact, she would have shown them as early as 1 year old. If the child was actually mentally disturbed then the parents would have known that and should have taken special care of her in the form of I don't know taking her to a doctor or maybe not leaving an unsupervised mentally ill child with a baby. Or maybe they could have warned the babysitter their child is odd and should be supervised at all times. If this was a mental health issue, the parents would've known.

You're making the assumption that all parents are happy to admit, both to themselves and to others, that there is something wrong with their child.

The girl sounds mentally unstable. It's possible that she didn't intend to kill the baby, sure, but that doesn't mean that she wasn't looking to harm him. The article says that she shook the baby and "threw" him back in his cot, which suggests to me that the girl was angry or frustrated for some reason and took out her anger on the baby. Violence towards others is a common trait amongst psychopathic children, and there's just no way in hell that a child of nine wouldn't realise that what she was doing would cause harm - and a lot of it.

 

[klaynexas3]

How can you ever let such a being alone in a house?

Mentally wise, children are badly trained animals.

okay, so why all the fuss over the death of a badly trained animal?

and it is clear that you must've grown up in a bubble. in the real world, children are not as retarded as you say, or if they are, they are classified as mentally retarded. this child, there is something wrong mentally with her. i don't know what it is, neither do i care, but there is something deeply wrong with her.

in closing, either you don't remember being ten, or you were mentally unsound at the age of ten, because when i was ten, i knew not to hurt people. most people did. if you can't understand this, then you should just leave. immediately. you are ignorant to this topic, thus you don't belong here. get out now, because you honestly make me sick.

 

[Deadlyveggie]

So little evidence to work with...

The babysitter was unreliable leaving a baby alone (at all) for any lengthily timespan - but only unreliable. I wouldn't hire here, but I certainly wouldn't prosecute her.

The girl's motives are something we cannot judge with so little evidence. Yes she should have known that violently shaking her sibling is wrong, but she may have been immature for her age. No one could convince a court that a 9 year old had intent to kill.

She did, however, kill him. ANY 9 year old who has been raised competently should know limitations.

So where does the blame fall? A (probably) poorly raised girl is alone around her sibling, coincidentally when the babysitter has a moment of laziness.

Negligence case against the babysitter; charging manslaughter is laughable. The girl needs to go straight to therapy. Then get social services involved to assess the parents' parenting skills.

Ugly case to be involved in, I don't envy the attorneys.

 

[badgersprite]

Precisely. Does no one remember being a kid themselves? Everyone always acts like children are born mentally retarded and are completely incapable of any kind of thought and reasoning. The answer to that is no. Children aren't like that. For fuck's sake, she's ten, not two.

So what? 10 is not the new 20 for fucks sake. You do not discern right from wrong at that age, you simply follow what you're told. You cannot reason, you cannot use logical thought. In fact, you're pretty much a blank page on which very little has been written. Only by the time you actually understand why A is wrong and B is right can you really be held accountable. The girl is 10 years old. She has an entire life ahead of her and you people want her punished for this? I mean for fucks sake, she didn't exactly take a knife and stabbed the baby. You people disgust me.

Maybe you were so incompetent in not being able to follow logic and reason at age 10, but I for one remember that age and that I wasn't a complete idiot, as do many other people here I'm sure.

I know, right?

According to this guy I never decided at age 8, against what I was being taught in my religious primary school and by my religious grandparents, that I didn't believe that the stories I was being told in the Bible were true, having thought for myself that they didn't make any more sense to me or seem any more realistic than the fictional stories I read in books, or saw on TV or in movies. Apparently it's impossible that without anyone ever telling me anything about atheism, I decided for myself that I didn't believe in God any more than I believed in the Tooth Fairy. And apparently my classmates were too stupid to debate with me about this and come up with reasons for why they believed in God without any coaching from anyone else in what they should say to me to counter my arguments.

Either I and everyone in my class was a super genius or MY WHOLE LIFE IS A LIE! D:

Yes, because you obviously know the personal tendencies of every single living child on the planet. You're using subjective examples that are exclusive to you. When I was 8, I talked to my father about politics and " tragedies " all the time. Me and my 10 year old nephew do the same. Does this mean that every child does this? No. But saying that none of them do is idiotic. Also, why are you ignoring me? Can I at least get a post from you that acknowledges my existence?

Acknowledging your post would mean acknowledging sense or reason, though. I mean, saying no child under ten ever talks about tragedies. Yeah, sure. No child has ever had any interest in learning about their grandparents' role in WWI or WWII, or asking why people like Hitler do horrible things. Never in the history of ever.

Hey, who knows, maybe this guy under the age of 20 and hence too young to possibly know what sense and reason are, and everything he's saying is just an accident he's not responsible for?

 

[Nibblitman]

This is completely a case where sentences serve no one. That poor girl is gonna be messed up now, not only will she be wrecked forever by this, but she will never be able to get anything resembling a decent job. This is completely a case where giving her this will not help her fix her life in any way, because she hasn't even begun to live it.

Yes she did something completly wrong and horible but at the same time when you are 9 years old really don't think about results of actions in any meaningful at least not most of the time. I know I don't remember almost anything from when I was 9 and that really means that my brain was working completely differently at that time in my life. Also I had no idea you could just kill a baby by shaking them, and it really doesn't take that much it turns out, but I had no idea about this until I was around 15 or so when that bit case about it when down.

This is her fault, (though the babysitter should have some responsibility here too) but doing this to her helps no one it only hurts more people. I have worked for a Judge before and learned from him, that when all that will come is more people being hurt there needs to be another solution, I have no idea what that Judge was thinking.

 

[OutforEC]

The article stated that the babysitter was being charged for failure to seek medical care, and that the infant died days later. This brings into question a couple of things. First, by the sound of it this was an 'extended' care situation, otherwise why didn't the parents seek medical care in the intervening time? Secondly, if the parents weren't involved during this entire time, how is it that someone could expect the caregiver to be vigilant the entire time? Seems as if sleep, bio breaks, and the like would get in the way.

The other thing that strikes me as odd is that according to the article this incident happened last summer, and the caregiver's attorney says that she will 'tell her story eventually" but shouldn't she have already told her story by now?

 

[yndsu]

[

Are you serious? I could reason right and wrong and use logical thought long before 10 years old. I can remember when I was 5 and I figured out that animals had feeling like I did. I learned what death was by age 7 having been exposed to the dog I'd known all my life fall down and do everything except die in front of my eyes. We took her to the vet to be put down that day cause she was like 14 years old or something.

If you are a blank page by ten years old, your parents seriously fucked up. If you cannot remember you childhood, or it took you a decade more to realize that what you did as a kid was fucked up, I weep for you. I cannot imagine what it must be like to go through life as a kid with no understanding of what the fuck you are doing. It is beyond my ability to fathom what your childhood must have been like to have caused that.

That being said, I do not advocate jail. This 10 year old girl needs counseling not because she is a blank robot slate, but because she likely has other issues. It is unlikely she meant to kill her brother, HOWEVER, a good psychologist can find out if the girl is just ignorant of her actions, incapable of understanding due perhaps to a lower intelligence or maybe some other reason, or an emotionally detached sociopath.

Either way, when I hear people say that children don't know any better, it disgusts me. It is true that sometimes they do not understand things the way adults do, but what you are suggesting (that kids don't understand anything at that age) is not only ignorant but dangerous and just plain wrong.

You were taught that behavior, you never "figured it out". In fact, all behavior is taught until puberty. The most basic ones are instilled since early childhood, mainly outright killing. Still, the child in question didn't understand that shaking was wrong. In fact, she was probably playing with the baby, something which a lot of children do. She never considered shaking to be wrong so she did it. We were never told if it was violent or not.

Learning what death is does not mean you are capable of logical thought by the way. Again, every single behavior you were taught.

But that's how the childhood of every single human being on earth was. You do not understand anything. You rely on others to provide you with an explanation. Everything you knew during childhood was told to you. Right and wrong were concepts instilled in you by your parents or someone else. You did not figure it out by yourself. You're incapable of doing so until teenagehood and even then most of your logical thinking is based on pre-instilled behavior.

It's not ignorant at all, it's the truth. Logical thinking is impossible until puberty. Everything you "learn" as a child is instilled in you. This is why you don't see children discussing wars or tragedies. They simply don't understand them.

Can you provide links to studies, or are we to assume that you know everything based on sheer personal experience?

Just to add, i have a brother who is 1 year older than me, sister who is 1 year youger and then a baby sister who is 9 years younger than i am. And when she was born i remember my parents telling me about NOT shaking her and how i should hold her and what to do to make sure that she was fine and i woulnt hurt her.

http://health.yahoo.net/galecontent/logical-thinking

That link talks about logical thinking and how it starts developing at the age of 7 upwards.
Plus there are other papers that children show logic at even younger ages. And they do brush over it in this paper as well.

 

[SwimmingRock]

I hold the 10-year old accountable.
By around 7-8, a child definitely knows right from wrong and can understand that actions have consequences. She should be held responsible.

Here's the thing, though: at an early age, children learn right/wrong from their parents. I don't get why everybody's discussing this as either the 10-year-old or the babysitter being responsible for the death. I think the 10-year-olds parents have much more responsibility in the matter.

 

[klaynexas3]

If a child is capable of logical thought, why is it that they do not discuss subjects more complicated than things associated with childhood, say toys/tv show's?

sometimes when i was little i would talk to my parents about feeling bad about hearing about someone dying on the news. i may have not been able to have an intellectual conversation with them, but i could make the logical thought that it was terrible that these people died. you don't have to be the smartest person on the planet to have a logical thought. and it was clear that i had these logical thoughts that death was not good. is any of this getting through to you?

 

[The_Echo]

The girl is obviously entirely at fault here.

She was nine at the time. A young age, yes, but certainly old enough to realize you don't shake a baby and throw it into its crib. The girl apparently has no conditions and no history of behavioral problems, so there is absolutely no excuse for her at all. The babysitter isn't at fault. She probably assumed that a girl of nine years isn't going to toss a baby around like an old doll, which is an entirely reasonable assumption.

Throw this kid in juvie. Holy Christ.

 

[DudeistBelieve]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42835911/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/?gt1=43001
Also, just because shes 10 doesn't mean she doesn't understand that you're not suppose to violently shake and throw your baby bro. Seriously, that is messed up. Lastly, the final bit of comment about there being no reason to leave a 9 year old girl with her baby bro is complete bullshit. For one, she is not completely alone because the babysitter was there, and secondly, since when has it been wrong to trust your 10 year old daughter with your 11 month old son in the presence of a babysitter? I figure it is if the daughter is psycho...

What do you guys think? Do you think it's the babysitters fault or the girl for the murder?

Actually yes, yes it does. Where the hell would you even learn how fragile a baby is at that age? Hell I didn't even know you could kill a baby that way till I was like 13 and I saw it on a Lifetime movie.

Also a child of that age doesn't understand the full ramifications of their actions. Hell a child of 15 is hardly mature enough to know.

I feel more sympathy for the babysitter. I hope she gets a light punishment. The kid should be in juvi until shes 18.

 

[Ris]

In fact, I believe anything a person does well up until his 20's is accidental. A child's mind is to feeble to discern when it has done something wrong.

NO... just simply.. NO!!

At 10 years old a normal, unafflicted child has a full grasp of what is right and wrong, it's the enforcement they need to actually put that knowledge to work....after 14 there is no excuse..but 20's???? WTF are you on?

In a way he/she's right, we don't fully develop the area of our brain that deals with reason and consequence until we're well into our 20s; that's why teenagers do such stupid, thoughtless things like drink themselves paralytic or not bother to ring home when they've stayed out all night.

That said, obviously AndyFromMonday is taking it too far... even a little kid knows that a baby is fragile, and that if you act roughly then you'll hurt it.