oatmeal10011 comments

Kids at that age don't understand danger, they are still familiarizing themselves with their own environment. They will explore and in this case perhaps this is what the little one did. Please don't say kids make dumb decisions, adults make dumb decisions and make stupid statements!!

It was a dumb decision for the little girl to step out to the balcony and deliberately scale the 100cm high railing. My bet is that she did not intend to die. And you certainly can't say it was a smart decision. But it was certainly a deliberate decision that required effort to carry out. This was not someone who accidentally fell out of a window. This was a very poor choice made by a child. Making dumb choices and learning from them is part of growing up. In rare cases the dumb choice leads to death. This rare, natural, and tragic.

Let me make something clear. I am not saying the little girl was dumb. But you can't say scaling a meter high barrier and jumping to try to fly is anything but a dumb and tragic choice. Separate the action from the person. @misunderstood, the only person this is making judgements of character is you.

Without any evidence to the contrary, I'm going to give the parents the benefit of the doubt. Kids make dumb decisions all the time and there is only so much you can do to protect them without going too far. It is part of the process of growing up. Sometimes those dumb decisions lead to scrapes or broken arms. Unfortunately, sometimes it leads to a loss of life. And having a balcony in a highrise is a lot safer than having sidewalks next to roads. A car accident is less novel, however.

Having once been a kid, I can say for sure that I made a lot of dumb choices and a few of those put me in the emergency room. Somehow I lived through all that. One particular time that comes to mind was when I was six years old, oddly enough. I had just finished watching something involving jumping out of planes. Maybe it was The Fall Guy or the A-Team. Anyway, my parents were busy in another part of the house while I went up to the third floor with a bed sheet and climbed out the window onto a ledge. Up until that that moment, I had thought using the sheet as a parachute to jump down two stories to the cement below was the best idea ever. Just as I was about to jump, I hesitated and decided to think it through some more from the safety of indoors. I had great parents who loved me. They never knew about that close call until I mentioned it in my adult years.

Don't beat up these parents without reason. You can't assume much of anything from that artical except for the huge amount of grief the family of going through right now.

SimondB, your comment was more interesting than the artical.

I found the videos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t78GO7efdYM&feature=share&list=PLz2FHGxPcAlhlobcx-uY95TgNJKJ3zJmR

A link to the video would be a nice touch.