Quote from Space Pirate Nithiel;1223562:
Name a couple? Cause as far as I know most people planning murder don't just go around announcing it and walk around doing Mr. Burns fingers while plotting the kill.
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If it was so easy to know when people were planning murder no one would ever get murdered.
It's one thing for a full-grown adult to plot out a good murder, but to expect some 12 year olds to do the same?
For one thing, the knife. My mother never allowed us to even come close to one, let alone take one out of the house. She owned a single cooking knife she kept locked up with my father's millitary ones cause she was paranoid.
But perhaps my mother was just insanely overprotective (she was). Wouldn't most parents at least somewhat keep up with what their kids are interested in? My mom and dad would sit down with us after they got home from work, play on the computer with us, watch tv with us, that kind of thing. If these kids were so obsessed with the slenderman myths that they went this far, wouldn't it have shown in their day to day activities?
And then theres the unsupervised game of hide and seek in the woods. Did the parents just not care where their middle-schoolers were going? They don't need constant supervision, but checking up on them once an hour at least?
I am not saying that every murder can be prevented by intensively watching people. I am saying that if the parents were more involved in their kids lives they could pick up on things that were not normal. 12 year olds are not stupid, but just like other people they have routines, habits, hobbies that are predictable to someone who knows them well. A parent's job involves monitoring their child and making sure they are healthy physically and mentally, and keeping them and others from harm.
I may be wrong, and these kids completely hid their obsessions with slendermen though I guess. Or they lied about the slendermen altogether and made it up to try to get out of plotting murder? It just seems to me like if the parents were the least bit involved they could have noticed something wasn't right.
It may not have pointed to murder, but if the parents were paying attention and noticed something was wrong in the months beforehand they could have talked with them. When I was younger my dad saw me playing doom and had a talk with me about how the violence in it was not real, and that I should never do something like that. I may have rolled my eyes and continued playing, but every once in a while they would confirm it with me, when seeing me playing violent games, or such. Just a reminder that it wasn't real. I may not have needed it, but it was there at the slightest posibility.
It sounds stupid, but that kind of thing is important, at least to me. At a young age reality and fantasy can blur together, and its a parents job to keep them separate, and make sure the kids know their actions in reality have consequences. It may not be necessary for every kid, but there are kids that mature slower, just like how some mature faster.