Collosal Lols!

We get gangs of little 9-year-olds rampaging schools in Sydney during the day, walking around with an iron bar and baseball bats, seeking out one particular kid... Actually, I think there might have been a 13-year-old in there somewhere... :rolleyes:

Don't exactly know the full story there, so correct me if I'm wrong, though I'm pretty sure that's how it went down...

Though still, every single one of those kids weren't punished (and I do know that for a fact), and for some reason, I've got a feeling the 14-year-old wouldn't have got much either, if there was a 14-year-old at all.

It's a stupid law. It takes a kid to commit murder before they're punished, here in Australia. Though if they're 9-years-old, and they steal a car and seriously hurt a pedestrian and crash into someone's house (seem to remember thatstory too for some reason...), they get away with it.

...But it's not their fault. Nah, it's their "medication" making them do it, according to the news. ;)

...:twitch:?

I'm not going to go into all the ways in which that is a stupid comment to have thrown out there, but Tritoch nailed the main one: being blank and emotionally unaffected implies it wasn't a game (generally you play games to have fun, no?).

I amazes me that not more is made about the parents in that article. Seriously, where the fuck were the parents? Who let's their 7 year-old go wandering off alone, and who is OK with them having been missing for half an hour? Parents need to start taking responsibility for their kids and stop trying to blame the world for anything they do wrong.

While a seven-year-old may not have a concept of what "death" really is yet and may not understand that actions in this direction are irreversible, a 30-minute killing spree is extremely concerning. A blank expression while inflicting pain on animals? That does sound like an early indicator of later antisocial personality disorder - at 7, it's probably conduct disorder.

There has to be an intervention happening RIGHT NOW. While I do not agree with imprisoning 7-year-olds and I think the Australian law is right in that respect, I'm shocked to read that all that is going to happen is the zoo suing the parents. They need to find out what the hell is wrong with this boy!! Especially since the zoo director, in a different article, said that the family has a history of violence. Who knows what his home environment is like.

Ignoring the clear pathology behind this act is only going to make the problem worse. If it's reptiles at age seven, what will be next?

Children generally grasp the concept of death around age 5, with age 7 being extremely late development. Most likely the kid knew exactly what he was doing and was just indifferent towards the consequences.

Actually, they do not fully grasp the concept until around age 9. At the psychiatric hospital for children and adolescents where I worked last summer, they had a 9-year-old girl whose brother had died. She had ticked on an evaluaton form that she often wished she were dead, but in conversation, it came out that she did not really have a full concept of death yet.

You can see the same in children's play: 6-year-olds frequently "kill" an animal, but then have it stand up again and continue their game. Their perspective is different from ours.

Nevertheless, I do agree that there was a pathological element in there, especially if he killed the animals himself and was emotionally unaffected by it. Children that age do understand inflicting pain on others, and he was probably dealing with animals who tried to escape, moving, possibly vocalizing their pain. It is definitely not "normal" behaviour for a 7-year-old.