Sisters Caught in Kidnapping Plot

I guess I just don’t get it.  What goes through the mind of a 10 year old and a twelve year old to take an infant and hold it hostage for money?  Where do they get this from? (NOTE: Girls pictured are not the kidnappers.)

Certainly it seems like it’s not the parents, for when the mother saw the girls with the child they immediately remedied the situation.

You see, the answer to this question is something that the parents should be seeking, and will hold the key to keeping them out of greater danger in the future.  For all we know it could be a friend’s idea, something they saw on television, something they read on the Internet, or it could be something they heard in passing…  There are many places that it could have entered into their thoughts, but I’m fairly certain that they just had a brainstorm one day and decided to become kidnappers:

Detectives arrested a 12-year-old girl and her 10-year-old sister for allegedly abducting their neighbor’s 1-year-old son and demanding $200,000 for his return.

— snip —

“I’ve been doing this 18 1/2 years, and this is the first time I know of when a 10- and a 12-year-old kidnapped a 1-year-old,” said police Capt. Dean Grassino. “It definitely ranks up there with the unusual crimes.”

Two things in this story are worth noting:

1. The 10 year old was barred from the 1-year-old’s house a few weeks ago
2. The mother of the girls was willing to let them take the punishment to help them learn a lesson.

Maybe it was revenge for keeping the girls out of the house.  Maybe there was the idea that these 1-year-old’s parents were well to do and could afford it.  There’s not enough here.

But let this be a warning for us parents to be aware of what is going on in our children’s lives, what they are absorbing, and how other parents react to our kids.  It may have been better for these girls to learn the lesson before being taken off in handcuffs.