“Six-Year-Old Becomes Youngest Girl To Climb Devils Tower” says the Wyoming news headline.
Gee, isn’t that wonderful? I can find no criticism of the parents in that story, or any of the media accounts so far. Am I really the only person with a website who sees this kind of thing, and it is a “kind of thing,” as obvious child endangerment and criminally reckless parenting?
I’ve discussed this despicable stunt parenting problem before; I even did a summary of the cases EA has analyzed in 2019. Looking it over, I realize that there isn’t much else to be said, except that lucky Alice Galy (lucky not to be dead, not lucky in her stork’s choice of delivery points) fits right in with Abby Sunderland and the rest. Here’s the relevant section from “The Child Endangerment Follies”:
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Yesterday on the Today Show there was a feature on a 10-year-old who just became the youngest person to ever successfully climb El Capitan. I immediately thought of Jack and this blog, wondering what he would think of the parents’ decision to let this happen, since someone who is 10 is clearly too young to understand the potentially deadly ramifications of failure. Several friends agreed with my leanings toward “what on Earth were the parents thinking??”, but some made some good points the other way as well. (The parents were well-trained climbers, were with her the entire climb, clearly professionals, etc. – the girl was surrounded with experience, if that makes a difference in your opinion.)
As several commenters knew or guessed, my position on this kind of thing is fixed, and I have expressed it many times. Like…
- …in my several posts about the dreadful “Biking Vogels,” who dragged their twin boys out of school to engage in “a two and a half-year quest to get their twins the Guinness Record for the youngest boys to spend their childhood on bikes, or something like that…requiring them to abandon a normal childhood to be part of their parents’ chosen lifestyle. It is being funded by the presumption that this is a novel and healthy experiment in home-schooling. Fans of the Vogels, including a fawning American media, pronounce the effort a wonderful educational opportunity for Daryl and Davy…and the adventure of a lifetime.”
Ethics Alarms’ position was that the boys were being exploited by their parents at the cost of the children’s comfort, safety, health, and socialization: “John and Nancy Vogel are the latest example of high-profile parents compromising the safety, welfare, comfort and emotional development of their children for selfish motives.”
- Eric and Charlotte Kaufman, who brought their 1-year-old daughter Lyra and her 3-year-old sister, Cora along with them as they embarked in March on the great adventure of sailing across the Pacific as the first leg of a planned circumnavigation of the globe. As I wrote originally, “In a 36-foot sailboat. Alone. With a toddler. And an infant. Morons.” What happened?
“Little Lyra developed a fever and a rash was circumnavigating her body, and her parents had run out of ideas for treating it. The Kaufmans issued a satellite call for help to the U.S. Coast Guard after their sailboat, Rebel Heart. lost its steering and radio about 900 miles southwest of Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. Would the fever have been sufficient to alarm the Kaufmans if the sailboat was still functioning? Who knows, with these geniuses. Their thought processes are a mystery. So four California Air National Guard members had to parachute into the ocean to rescue the family and its sick child.”
- Haris Suleman and his father, Babar Suleman, from Plainfield, Indiana, “who were attempting to fly around the world with the newly licensed teen piloting their single-engine aircraft. The journey, to be completed in 30 days, would have set a record. Gotta set those records! …As the plane piloted by a 17-year-old novice pilot took off from an airport in Pago Pago in American Samoa, it suddenly lost power and crashed into the water. The boy is dead; the father’s body has yet to be found….” I wrote, “Whether children fully understand it or not, they trust their parents to guide them away from harm, not into it. That is, unless they have parents who see their children as a vicarious or direct way to realize their own ambitions. We are told that Daddy Suleman “had long dreamed of flying around the world” and that “he and his son decided to make the adventure a fundraiser for the Citizens Foundation, which has built 1,000 schools in Pakistan.” Right. His son decided that. All by himself. Sure. The father decided to realize his dream by endangering his son, and that’s a the sad and unpleasant truth.”
- Paul Romero, who was determined to have his 13-year-old son climb Mt. Everest. I wrote in part, “A 13 year old has neither the judgment or the strength of an adult, and he does not have the maturity to be responsible for his own decisions. This all started because Jordan wanted to climb all the major peaks in the world by his 16th birthday. Cute: and this is when a responsible parent says, “No.” If he tries Everest when he’s 21 and dies, as people who try to climb the world’s highest mountain do with some regularity, at least he made an informed decision and at least he lived 21 years. …The parent protests that it [is] the child’s choice, and the child [is] “experienced.” Well, no child is experienced enough to agree to subject himself or herself to peril, physical, or emotional.”
- Abby Sunderland, a 16-year-old whose parent allowed and encouraged to become the youngest person to circumnavigate the globe solo by sea. She nearly died; that she did not was pure moral luck. I wrote, “That a tragedy may have been averted, however, doesn’t mitigate that unethical abdication of responsible parenting and trust by Abby’s parents that set the stage for a calamity. Had the ill-conceived adventure ended fatally, it is certain that we would have heard her heart-broken parents eulogize their daughter as intrepid, courageous and mature beyond her appearance, who lived a full life in her sixteen years, and perished “living her dream.” All true, but those aren’t the facts that matter. What matters is that she is a dependent, trusting, sixteen-year old child who desperately needed her older and supposedly wiser parents to say “No. Being the youngest woman to sail around the world is good, living long enough to go to college, have a family, have a career and experience the joys of life over many decades is better. Sorry. It’s too dangerous. When you understand a little bit more about life, you may be capable of deciding when to risk it.”
I confess, I hate all of these stories of child exploitation and abuse, which are almost always cheered by a shameless and irresponsible media that give the unethical parents exactly what they want: publicity, morning TV interviews, and their pathetic measure of fame and false importance.
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Yup. Little Alice’s parents fit right in.
Ethics Alarms 
Whenever I see these stunts involving children, it reminds me of Jessica Dubroff.
Ugh. I forgot about her.
Makes the Balloon Boy’s parents look like role models for keeping their child out of danger.
-Jut
Here are some facts to consider before that child endangerment charge. I’m not impressed that the parents used one of the more difficult routes, but still, you can see from the pictures that she was tied in. Devil’s Tower is a pretty safe climb. 5,000 people climb Devil’s Tower a year and there have been six fatalities since 1937 (when they started counting).
I have climbed a few cliffs and one (in gym) climbing wall with a climbing harness and ropes a few times, and while I’m no expert, I can state that with a good and attentive partner, your chance of hurting yourself in any serious capacity is essentially nil. One of our training exercises when I was learning to climb, was for us to “screw up” and let go of the rock wall and rope, to be lowered safely to the ground or hoisted up to the top for someone to help you up. Granted, as a preteen, I found that belaying my partner who weighed significantly more than I meant that while it was easy to lower her safely, hauling her up was not an option. The older teens could do that with us younger kids easily enough and my instructor had no issues at all.
Devil’s Tower is a one day climb that prohibits camping on the top, limiting risks further. I do not see a particular concern with a six year old, properly strapped in. At her age, she is more likely to have to go to the hospital for a face/head injury (non-concussive) while playing baseball than being harmed on this climb with experienced climbers.
Unlike some of the other activities mentioned in this post, this is a well managed activity, with a great deal of risk mitigation.I will again point out that the risk of injury or death for this child on this was less than driving from Massachusetts to Wyoming, much less just being in a car driving around Boston(Houston, conversely is foolhardy for even the best intentioned). While riding in a car is often a required activity, it is still far more dangerous than climbing a managed course, even if that is purely recreational. If we want to talk about child endangerment, perhaps we should consider any parent who has a pool in their backyard, far more deadly than climbing Devil’s Tower. That recreation kills more people a year than Devil’s tower has in the last century.
I don’t think the media should extol this activity, as it can then convince thrill seekers or those without the appropriate skills to bring on the babies. However, I do not think that the parents are any worse than any other parent who wants to take their kids on a vacation that they enjoy. We don’t all have to go to Disney (and your next post explains why excellently).
Preposterous. She didn’t “climb” anything. She may as well have been a sack of potatoes lugged up and down by a team of adults. There’s no meaningful volition in anything a six-year-old does or doesn’t do. Had she died, all these idiots would say, admiringly, “She died doing what she loved to do!” Bullshit.
“Great minds”—I was writing about sacks of potatoes at the same time you were!
Now I don’t think it matters whether or not she climbed. She could have done some of the climbing, or been hauled up. A baby could have been hauled and got the same publicity, having been carried on a mom’s back. I think the media “youngest girl to ever climb Devil’s Tower” is stupid! Parents evaluated their child and decided that she (and her older brother) were able to perform an activity that the family enjoys. I took a six year old, a four year old, and an eighteen month old on a five (planned seven) mile hike at 10,000 feet because they were capable (the eighteen month old was carried most of the way) and this is what my family enjoys. The risks, while present, are minimal.
Devil’s Tower is actually considered, depending on the course used, to be a beginner climb. (These parents did not choose the beginner climb because they believed that she could handle something harder, perhaps under her own power even.) That being said, taking a young kid who is getting the experience of climbing to a beginner course is commendable, not stupid.
Now, if this was meant to be a publicity stunt and not, as the article reads, a fun excursion during a family vacation, this is unethical. Publicity stunts are, in my opinion, unethical. However, it is more than possible that the family, after deciding that this was a good choice, went and did this, and someone on the hill noticed and called over their friend from the paper, who then put it in for better publicity for Devil’s Tower. Tourism is a major economic force in Wyoming and these articles help drive it.
Perhaps the unethical issue is the tourism fodder that is this article, but I don’t think the family is unethical for exposing their children to a cool activity.
It’s an argument worth making and reading, Sarah, thanks. My problem with it is that all of those parents in the incidents I’ve written about before could make it, and, in fact, I bet they did.
“Cliffhanger” is a relentlessly stupid movie, but it’s opening scene, here, is horrifying. I bet the victim (also named Sarah!) was told that her equipment couldn’t fail, and maybe it never had. But she did consent, and she did have the capacity to consent.
Then there is the question of “climb.” Did the little girl actually climb, or was she just hauled up the big rock like a sack of potatoes? Maybe the latter in a steel cage? I don’t know: the premise of the article is that this was an achievement. If it was, then risk, skill, ability and care were involved. If not, then she didn’t climb at all.
No kids her age or close to it have died on Devil’s Tower, but then, nobody before has put such little kids in a position to die. There have been very few recorded fatalities (though some) by climbers, but plenty of injuries over the years. You might be right: I am biased by a near absolute positions on letting kids do almost anything out of the ordinary involving risks to emotional or physical health until they can understand what they are risking, and also by my own hatred of heights. I think I’d like to see an investigation of those parents on the grounds that they have displayed terrible judgment, and can’t be trusted.
Next they may try to take her along up K2.
I think there may be a misunderstanding on how Wyoming papers handle kid stories which I think changes a few things.
In small towns like most of Wyoming (not the urban hell that is Casper, Cheyenne, or Laramie), a story with a kid gets written long before a story about Bud Light and Dylan Mulvaney. I made the front page of our local paper at least a half dozen times as a kid, and made the paper dozens of times. Every year, the middle school and high school band/choir concerts would make the front page the day after they were held. If you consider that we did three concerts a semester for each of band and choir in high school, and two concerts a semester for each of middle school band and choir, that is ten days where the kids make the front page each school year. The high school homecoming royalty would make the front page on Thursday after the Wednesday reveal, the parade would always make front page on Friday, the game on Saturday, with the dance making page two. Prom was front page material. When four kids from our school got the best scholarship to the University of Wyoming one year, we made the front page. Every semester honor roll for every level of school made about third page. Placing in a math competition, debate competition, etc would always get a name in the paper, usually a picture too, and often on the front page. High school sports covered the front page every week.
I say this to emphasize my belief that this shouldn’t be considered as bad as you think. Newspapers gush over “youngest” this and “oldest” that. It makes people read the paper. National news is a page six or eight item and international news, like a war between Ukraine and Russia, is usually found below the fold on the comics page, under the sudoku and Dear Abby.
People want the stories with the kids. Front page news is preferred to have a picture of a kid. A kid doing something good, like winning the coupon for a free pizza at the drawing at the library book fair, is a great front page story. Getting to the top of Devil’s Tower is just as good, and should be considered with the same gravity.
This is just standard newspaper fodder, nothing to get so excited about.
As for your issue with climbing, what activities do you consider out of the normal, with too much risk? Many people consider high school football to be normal and I know that you agree with me that it has too much risk. Is biking normal? What about hiking? Camping? Bouldering (certainly a normal thing in my rural childhood) is a difference in scale, not kind to climbing. Horseback riding? Boating? Fishing? Hunting? What is a normal activity that families do with kids that I don’t list here? These are all the norm where I grew up.
I think that this is another cultural difference between urban and rural USA. Having kids do fun things with an element of risk is considered to be good parenting in most of the rural areas I know. If you cannot learn to handle risk with your parents watching over you, especially at a young age, you will never handle risk well is the argument. There are studies that support this, not that they should matter. Going hiking, climbing, horseback riding, etc are all considered to be good healthy activities that you tend to do better at the younger you do them. We take our kids hiking and camping, because there is an element of risk. Generally items that do not force us to combat risk do not involve personal growth, and the duty of parents is to guide their children’s personal growth. Theatre, your passion, tends to be too far away (four hours one way) and expensive for us. We have different values, because we really do live in different worlds.
I take far more issue with people having private pools than climbing a mountain. I believe that there is more concern from school sports than a parent guided climb. Devil’s Tower, at least the trail they used, would not be my first choice, but according to the article, it wasn’t their first choice either. They had been doing this for three years. Whether or not she made it up under her own power, she did make it to the top. She got to look out over the plains from the top of Devil’s Tower, and that’s pretty cool. If this tempts the family into doing stupid stuff like climbing K2, well, that’s a problem, but until then, it is merely a fun activity, as far as I’m concerned.
Comment of the Day. Nonetheless…6? SIX? Try this as a thought experiment: if, seconds after that photo on the right, the clasp had shattered due to a manufacturing flaw (or a parent had failed to secure the girl properly) and she had fallen to a bloody death, would the media be defending the parents? Would an age limit on climbers not be immediately installed—maybe even a law? There is no reason to subject a young, trusting, completely inexperienced and dependent child to even a small risk of death or serious injury with such speculative benefits.
What activities do I consider out of the normal, with too much risk? For a six-year-old? Tackle football? yup. Biking? Check the “Biking Vogels” posts. Hiking (in the wilderness)? Yup. Camping anywhere but the back yard? Yup. Bouldering (at six?) Yup. Horseback riding? Ask Rhett and Scarlet about that. Hunting? Are you kidding?
Jack,
You are letting the outcome of an action determine whether or not the action is good. The chances of that happening are extremely slim. I have never seen the movie, but I do know that when you climb, you check your equipment long before you reach this kind of stressor for exactly that reason. Would the media still be happy? No. Would they be extolling the kid or the parents? No. Would they be crying for more stupid laws? They always do. Should they? No. Should we care what the media thinks? Absolutely not. I do doubt an age limit would be imposed on climbers. Devil’s Tower is closer to Newcastle than Jackson, and most of the non-Cheyenne/Jackson/Laramie populace believes, if something stupid happens, well, we will be sorry, but we don’t generally believe in legislating our problems away.
We check our climbing equipment for a reason. Properly maintained and monitored equipment fails very rarely. It is far more likely for us to be injured or killed when being driven to the doctor’s office. We still drive to the doctor’s office. The risk at climbing is negligible when compared to putting your kid in a car, but you want parents to feel bad about what is a normal activity.
As I have pondered this response most of the day, I think that we look at dangers differently in a rural community. First, the park next to the Kindergarten/First Grade building is a home to rattlesnakes. They pull a half a dozen or so monsters out of there a month. There is a warning when you go to the park that rattlesnakes have been seen here recently, but it is the nicest or second nicest park in town. The other parks are not much better for snakes, so we just know to teach our kids from a very young age how to be safe around rattlers. You can’t just say, there will be no rattlesnakes in the parks. It won’t happen without changing the entire community. Mountain lions don’t come through town every year, but they do come frequently. A neighbor a few houses down from my dad had a cougar prowling on her garage for several days before animal control found out how to get it down with no fatalities. The fact that it didn’t attack anyone was pretty much a miracle. My town has herds of deer that wander through. If a deer sneaks up on you and gets mad or scared, you can get killed. They jump over whatever fences they want and kill dogs every year. We all know that kids are at special risk if the deer are around, and they often are. I personally had 18 deer on my lawn at one time. If a kid gets snake bit, the hospital can’t deal with that crap. They can only rehydrate, set bones, and give stitches. Anything else gets life-flighted to Denver. They can’t even deliver babies. We have to drive 100 miles while in labor to have a baby. One day, when I was out of town, my husband had appendicitis. He drove himself 120 miles to have it removed. This is how life works out here, and this is in one of the larger towns in Wyoming. Most smaller towns are more remote, and they don’t have hospitals as nice as ours. They are far more accustomed to having an NP or two who sees people three to four days a week for minor ailments and sends you on down the road to get an X-ray when your kid falls down the stairs.
This tends to breed a hardy populace. We tend to, as a populace, have the opinion that shit happens. When something that has a low chance of happening goes wrong and someone dies, it is tragic, but it is a fact of life. We don’t try and legislate pain away, nor do we say that small risks are too big. If we didn’t go hunt, fish, camp, etc with our kids, what would we do with them? I don’t think that it is unethical to raise children to love and live in the wild. The wild is safer than town, usually. The predators here are easily scared off. Cars drive far more carefully and are less likely to hit someone. You are forced by mother nature to pay attention to what goes on around you, and the greater attention you pay, the less risks you have. When we are in a creek or lake, not only do we have flotation aids that are missing in a swimming pool, but we also do not have kids crawling all over, hiding a silent drowning with their antics. Falls hurt, but they are just as likely at home. Relative risk is king. Very few things we do routinely are more dangerous than driving or riding in a car, but we do that multiple times a day. Most of these activities are far safer for our children than riding in a car.
I recently had a relative die while camping. He was sitting in a manicured lot, under a tree that gets scrutinized multiple times a year by arborists. The tree was dead and snapped, pinning him in his wheelchair and tearing him up badly. If he had been in a city park, the chances of that happening would have been no higher than it was out in the wilderness. They called the local ambulance from a town 30 miles away and after checking him out, loaded him on a helicopter to Billings. If he had been in town, five miles down the road from the wilderness area, they would have called the local ambulance from the town 25 miles away, and after checking him out, loaded him on a helicopter to Billings. There is no difference.
I was not joking about these activities and a six year old. You talk about the excesses of the Vogels, who went way too far, but biking is a great family activity for children as young as 3 months with a proper seat and a helmet. Hiking is something that you can start having kids enjoy as young as about a year if you plan to carry them. I have hiked my children as young as four who have done 5 miles at 10,000 feet. There is no substantial risk. Camping is not done in the backyard, it is done in the wilderness, usually at as young as three months. I don’t know what the risk is here either. Given that my kids, at three or four, climb trees, bouldering seems far safer. Most boulders are way closer to the ground than tree branches. I looked away to pull some weeds from away from the pepper plants for a moment and my four year old recently was at about six or seven feet up my tree. I’m less concerned by a three or four foot boulder. Kids can die while horseback riding, but that is uncommon and horseback riding is a great skill for kids to learn. Many kids also milk cows and help herd sheep at six.
I’m not kidding about hunting. Setting aside when a kid should have their own gun, kids do not shoot animals at six. Many families don’t even use guns to kill their animals. My parents prefer to use bows. But what do you do with your kids when you go get your meat for the year? Do you just leave them home alone? A six year old is perfectly capable sitting in the field, or for a very high energy kid, perhaps mom stays at the tent during dawn and dad stays at dusk, so each get the chance to shoot their animal. Besides, when kids come, they get to learn about life and death, not to mention anatomy and how to field dress an animal. When you have watched an animal die so that you can eat, I think you have far more appreciation of the necessities of life than a kid who just goes to the grocery store to watch mom grab a pack of chicken breasts. You also learn a lot about an animal when you have to stalk it so that you can kill it. These experiences are healthy, as long as you use a smidgen of common sense and don’t be stupid about it.
If these fairly safe activities are too dangerous for a six year old, what, in all seriousness, is an acceptable “kid activity” in your mind?
More greats stuff Sarah. Now I’m going to have to have a two part COTD!
Horrors! Does this mean I can no longer criticize parents who put their 5-year-olds in helmets and pads so they can learn to play football? And then develop CTE in 15 years?