Last week, a 7-year-old boy in Australia broke into a reptile enclosure at a zoo and fed several reptiles to the zoo’s crocodile and bludgeoned several other animals to death, killing 13 animals overall.
The zoo’s director said camera footage showed the boy jumping the zoo’s security fence very early in the morning and throwing animals into the crocodile enclosure.
Though the zoo uses sensors to detect intruders, they didn’t go off because the boy was too small and too light to set them off.
Where were this monster’s parents?
This kid broke into a zoo, which means he had to sneak out of his house and get into to the zoo while nearly everything was closed.
Given his actions, which included jumping the fence and knowing exactly how to get to the crocodile enclosure, it’s obvious he planned his little escapade in advance.
Could you have snuck out your house when you were 7? I know I couldn’t have.
More importantly, I would never have even thought to sneak out of my house at that age.
How did this kid even think up this stunt? Those who have seen the security camera footage have reported that the kid showed absolutely no remorse throughout the reptilian massacre. His face remained completely passive and expressionless.
That is perhaps the scariest part of the story. Here was a kid willfully killing small animals that posed no threat to him, and he didn’t show any apprehension or any feeling whatsoever.
The head zookeeper, upon reviewing the footage, said he looked like he was almost playing a game.
To me, this could mean one of two things.
The kid could have actually thought taking lives senselessly and deliberately is quite commonplace and nothing unusual.
If that is the case, his parents have failed him completely, and serious intervention is needed to bring him at least a little closer to normalcy.
Or, the kid could have actually thought his actions were a game, and he could not separate actual reality from virtual reality.
Given that the kid tried to climb into the crocodile pen himself – as the croc was devouring the reptiles he was throwing over the fence – he seemed a little delusional and oblivious.
I’m more inclined to believe the latter option. Even then, his parents have failed in raising the child.
I don’t mean to say the parent is at fault for every wrong the child commits.
Children do silly things all the time that they would never do as adults, like eating paste or running away after accidentally throwing a ball through a window. Those are manifestations of childish judgment.
Something as wantonly destructive and vile as the zoo rampage, however, reveals a disconnect with reality. It shows not impaired judgment, but a total lack of it.
For a 7-year-old, the strongest influence on judgment comes from parents, not from school, daycare or video games.
Learning a sense of judgment is probably the most important part of a child’s emotional and intellectual development. It is the mental equivalent of learning to talk or walk.
What kind of household would breed a 7-year-old kid kill things for fun?
It may be that the parents tried their best to give this child a good sense of judgment and a good upbringing as a whole, but the kid rejected their lessons for some reason.
Not picking up on that rejection is also a shortcoming of the parents.
I refuse to believe that a kid who could do this kind of damage in 30 minutes at a locked-up zoo exhibited absolutely no signs of abnormal activity before the incident.
As parents, his mom and dad should have picked up on this. Granted, older children can often hide feelings, actions and objects. America’s sad commonality of school shooters have shown this.
But a seven-year old? No way.
As college students, we’re at the cusp of adulthood.
Many of us can claim good parents, and we probably wouldn’t have made it this far otherwise.
Many of our fellow students are already parents, and the rest of us are probably just a few years away from starting a family.
Our generation was probably the first to be the focus of the maelstrom of debate about violence-themed video games and music. There is strong opinion on both sides of the issue, but I believe the games and music themselves induce nothing if you realize that it is just a game or a song and not reality.
That realization comes only from a good sense of judgment, which in turn comes from good parenting.
At 7, I doubt this Australian child ever seriously played any violent video games or listened to violent music.
His lack of judgment came from parental shortfalls, either directly or indirectly.
As we head into the futures of engagements, weddings and eventually children, it will be wise to remember that video games, music, daycare and school do not raise children.
Only parents raise children – for better or worse.
Munim Deen is a microbiology senior. His column usually appears every other Tuesday.
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Rhology 3 years, 7 months ago
In Australia, atheism is rampant. The odds are good that this kid was raised by parents who therefore declined to give him much of a moral upbringing, but instead wanted to let him "make his own choices". That he did.
Lesson here is that even abstention from making "moral judgments" is itself a moral judgment - you are expressing that the choice before you does not merit your actually trying to figure it out.
Finally, if naturalistic evolution is true, there's no reason to condemn this kid or his actions. Those dead reptiles were deselected for survival. No big deal. Happens all the time.
Chestertonian 3 years, 7 months ago
Get over it. They're lizards. How, other than being unsupervised, is this any different from feeding mice to a pet snake? If he was killing the lizards himself, or torturing them, that would be a cause for concern. He was just feeding the alligators and being stupid.