Is this a prime example of poor parenting or poor scientific experimenting?

Both?

Poor thinking ahead I’d say.

Awesome parenting, i wish my parents had built me a flying contraption.

@jackm I was thinking they could’ve tied it down somehow…Maybe this is like the Wizard of Oz’s balloon? The cables snapped or something?

My mother just told me about this. Lack of common sense, I’d say, in that they didn’t have the thing adequately anchored, and in that they were not monitoring the child well enough.

terrorist alarm. shoot it down.

It’s on CNN now. This must be terribly frightening for the parents and the child (if he’s still in the balloon & conscious).

I’m just surprised they didn’t give him a cell phone.

Neither, it’s a great example of a father involving his son in a great hobby, leading to a great adventure. I would rather blame Disney Pixar for the movie Up than the parent. What I find weird is that someone has the knowledge to build a balloon but not to tie it down so that a six year old can’t figure it out.

The kid is pretty lucky the balloon isn’t designed to reach the atmosphere, and especially that it was finished. I bet the father is going to enter a world of trouble. He’s going to be fined so bad he will never have money to buy even a small party balloon. Especially if they close the airport or have to redirect flights, or if it turns out he didn’t have the proper permits.

BOTH!

Projects of that size HAVE TO have a safety plan.
Like wearing gloves when messing with nitrogen.

Especially with a child around is irresponsible.

I guess we will eventually know what happen and who is to blame…
After they shoot it down.

please excuse me when I say BHAHAHA!!! That’s great and ABSOLUTELY HORRIBLE at the same time. I mean I can see how it could totally be an innocent mistake but at the same time, who sends there kid into space with no way to get down?? I hope this turns out ok but I have to admit, seeing that in the sky would be slightly entertaining (if there weren’t a child helplessly stuck inside)

I’m just….speechless. Talk about a great idea with poor execution. I hope the kid is OK. :(

Oh my god. That is the single greatest thing I could have seen this morning. Let me just say, as a person who launches balloons on a regular basis, that that was a horrible, horrible science experiment. They obviously had no idea what they were doing and had no idea what the possible outcomes could be. On the other hand, they are terrible parents. To not only put your child in so much danger (If that thing bursts, the kid is a goner.), but to basically handicap the entire Denver air traffic corridor (basically the busiest in the country), is completely asinine. I hope they have some heavy charges placed on them.

It all turned out okay for Pippi.

Also he is probably breathing helium.

And they were on Wife Swap! A big “WTF?” to these parents.

I think it’s both too!! They should have had this thing secured in an area where the kid could not have gotten near it without them. I nominate these parents for the moronic parents of the year award. I hope that poor kid isn’t injured, or suffers ill effects from breathing in all that helium.

At some point, someone failed to follow the basic advice of “don’t try this at home”.

just landed… lucky it wasn’t near power lines

@markyy Did you seriously just claim that a CARTOON is more responsible for the saftey and well being of a child than his PARENTS?

@hearkat Safely? Is the boy alright?

@augustlan: no sign of him yet—they’re concerned he might have fallen out somewhere

Oh no! God, I hope he’s ok.

They’ve deflated it and are dismantling it… so sign of him

I’m hoping that the kid is under his bed reading comics or something.

Is he alive? I hope the helium didn’t hurt him.

@scamp He wasn’t IN the ballon. He was in an air-filled compartment under the balloon. He wasn’t breathing helium. If he’s injured (or worse) it wasn’t what he was breathing that did it.

@hearkat what source are you reading/watching that’s saying it’s landed?

nevermind, on CNN front page now

@MrItty – I’m watching the live CNN feed on TV; I have the day off

@augustlan I HAD wondered if these were THOSE people from wife swap…OMG!

I hope the kid didn’t fall in a tree somewhere.

@scamp No one knows where the boy is!

@SpatzieLover uh, at least a tree would help break the fall….

@SpatzieLover – CNN is not saying that they were on WifeSwap – just that the dad was a retired weatherman; what’s the source on the WifeSwap info?

@MrItty The balloon does not have the kid in it. The kid could’ve fallen out at 1000ft into a tree.

@hearkat Cnn reported them as the wife swap coupl…does anyone remember them? Their boys were a nightmare!

@SpatzieLover – they did just post a photo from the WifeSwap show
I’ve never watched it.

Oh my God! That’s horrible!!

Uh. Everything I read about this makes me so angry. This is not how ballooning works. Ugh. What horrible parents.

I’m all for instilling a little danger in the lives of our wussy children, but this is life-threatening. And what an example of stupidity these parents are. Not just on parenting, but practicality, science, common sense and physics. Dumb, dumb people.

@Les His dad is one of those “out there” kinda guys that believes we could fly off with aliens. Both parents let their kids jump off their staircase on the tv show. Hopefully the boy knew how to keep himself safe.

Let’s not jump to conclusions. We’ll have to wait for updates.

I really hope the boy got scared and jumped out somewhere before it got too high in the air. This is horrible!!

@SpatzieLover – Yeah, hopefully. But he is 6. It just seems so ridiculous. I can’t understand what people are thinking.

@The_Compassionate_Heretic – Jumping to what conclusions?

Pic of family

Wife swap details

The dad isn’t a meteorologist, is he? I know it says he’s a storm chaser, but please tell me he isn’t a meteorologist…

@Les – they just say “retired weatherman”

@Les I think he was…Now I’d call him a lunatic. I watched that Wife Swap. He’s really out there.

@hearkat and @SpatzieLover – Oh. Well, on behalf of all meteorologists, let me say that this man is a lunatic, and we’re not all insane. I wish I had seen that Wife Swap now.

I can’t stand to watch Wife Swap… it’s usually such awful people. I really, really hope that kid is ok.

@Les: I though that not all TV weather reporters were meteorologists – or is that required now (or perhaps just expected)?

And he’s relatively young – so why is he “retired”? Perhaps it wasn’t voluntary?

They homeschool the kids. Basically they chased storms, performed experiments and let their kids run wild. Dad seemed to me like he needed meds for either ADD, or some sort of Manic condition (IMHO).

@hearkat – No, not all TV weather people are meteorologists. In fact, most are not. I think the pattern is changing, people like to get the weather from actual meteorologists. But it is not a requirement. I have no idea why he’s retired. Maybe to pursue crazy experiments.

This is the dad’s website.

@MrItty What do you think… Seriously, ever heard of sarcasm? It’s not my best post I’ll admit, in fact I’ve been having a bit of an off day. By the look of your avatar you must be a Disney fanboy, so let me explain: You know how every time something weird like this happens (car chases, shootings) the news jumps on it with live coverage and start blaming everything like games and movie violence. It was more a bad reference to that, I should have laid it on more think or not post it at all. Where is the edit button when you need it.

@Les: I wasn’t asking you directly why he was retired – it was a general question, wondering if his ‘retirement’ might have been forced due to erratic behaviors?

@Scamp: all I get is a blank page when I click your link

@hearkat – I know. I was just being goofy.

All I want to know is where the boy is and if he is safe. Forget the rest of the details. Talk about that when the boy is safe. I am hoping he was never in that balloon in the first place or that he got out early on. Poor kid.

I agree. I hope this is a prank played by the little boy and he is safe and hiding somewhere.

@RedPowerLady They have an expert on CNN that is looking at the wind/weather pattern and the size of the balloon. He thinks there’s no way the balloon couldn’t have lifted very far up with 65lbs inside. <crosses fingers>

@RedPowerLady – now the speculation is that he was never on board, because he would have been too heavy for it to take off or fly as high and far as it did.

@SpatzieLover: jinx!

Update

You know, the more I look at this, the more unlikely it seems that the boy was in it at all. It takes a lot of helium to lift objects. That balloon wasn’t very big. Based on the pics of the balloon on the ground, it doesn’t seem very big at all. This balloon had a free lift of about 50 or 60 pounds. Now I know the kid is probably no more than 60 pounds, but they said the basket underneath was plywood. That would probably add another 30 or 40 pounds. It just seems unlikely that it would go that high, and be so small.

@Zen Didn’t work for me.

BTW-The little boy’s name is Falcon.

Wow, I should read previous posts. Oh well. CNN has their experts, Fluther has their own.

@Les: And that’s what we Lurve about Fluther!

@Les A neighbor just reported that the entire family was in the yard working on this balloon. The mom of the boy said the balloon should not have gone past 20ft…the tethers didn’t hold.

@Zen That link does work for me, unfortunately it appears there is some bad news: The child’s fate was unclear, and there was no sign of him in the balloon when it landed. Authorities feverishly searched for any sign of the child on the ground, including in the neighborhood where he lives.

Let’s just hope he was never in the balloon to begin with.

airspace violation and possible preparation of a terror attack. the balloon could have been used to carry explosives at low altitude silently at night to a government target.
fire up the patriot act and incarcerate them without the right to habeas corpus because they are possibly terrorists.

@SpatzieLover – Yeah, well I’m not surprised the tethers didn’t hold. That “bitty” balloon I linked in my previous post had to be held down by two strong guys. And there was no wind on that day. These things are heavy. Here’s another balloon. This one had a free lift of about 100 pounds. It is being held down by a truck. Now, these balloons are designed to go to 100,000 feet, so to just “hover” they would have less free lift, but still. Look at the size of that thing. I’m going to bet the kid was never in there. Or, he’s really really tiny.

@Les The tethers on this one looked like a joke. They looked like ordinary white roping found at the local hardware store.

@ragingloli I doubt an empty field would be considered to be threatened by a terrorist action. Besides they had it under surveillance the whole time, and who the heck uses a balloon for bombing (this isn’t Red Alert II).

@Les Well if they were holding it up (I can’t find where it says that), I doubt they think the kid climbed up the tethering and enter the balloon. Plus didn’t they say they were eating? I can’t imagine they would go take a break while their kid is (for whatever reason) still in the balloon. Something smells fishy.

“We were sitting, eating, looking out where they normally shoot off hot air balloons. My husband said he saw something. It went over our rooftop. Then we saw the big round balloonish thing, it was spinning,” said Lisa Eklund.

@markyy
i hear the japanese planned to use high altitude balloons as a bombing platform to bombard the US in WW2

@SpatzieLover
@hearkat

Gosh I sure hope so. Maybe it’s just a publicity stunt. That’d be fine with me so long as the kid is okay. I really am hoping he wasn’t in there.

@markyy You’d have to have seen these parents in action…They let the kids do as they please.

@markyy – I think that was a neighbor being quoted in the news article

@ragingloli Well that was over 60 years ago.. I hear there was once also talk of using rocks as projectiles. Do you want to go and pick up all rocks big enough to hurt someone?

@SpatzieLover But still, who puts a kid in a balloon and walks away to take a break. That’s even worse than leaving a baby on the roof of your car and driving home, at least that’s unintentional. But let’s wait for the facts, like @The_Compassionate_Heretic said.

Yep @hearkat it was…the mom is Japanese and her name is Mayumi

Here’s the dad, Richard, talking about life on Mars

@hearkat, @SpatzieLover That explains a lot. This is why I should wait for the facts :)

@markyy —We were sitting, eating, looking out where they normally shoot off hot air balloons. My husband said he saw something. It went over our rooftop. Then we saw the big round balloonish thing, it was spinning, said Lisa Eklund. That is a quote from a neighbor, not the parents.

Apparently according to one of the stories I read, the boy’s brother saw him crawling into the passenger hatch shortly before it took of. The parents didn’t put him in it.

now they’re saying the kid climbed into a box that was attached to the balloon, but now they can’t find the box. I hope he’s OK

Here’s a video of the three Heene boys being silly together.

@hearkat That would explain why his older brother/family is standing behind their original statement that Falcon went up with the balloon.

@scamp I know see my previous post, get of my case :P I don’t have access to your news channels and I just assumed it was the parents who gave that interview, my bad :)

falcon? is that the childs name?
how could parents do that to a child. the name i mean.

@ragingloli They started with Brad, then went to Ryo, then Falcon…obsessed w/flying?

I’ve a bad feeling.

@Zen: are premonitions common for you, and are they usually accurate?

@hearkat You’re right about the box

oh my @Zen I feel the same way

Oh no!!! I never suspected there would be a box. Poor kid. I really really hope he is okay.

@Les Have you ever heard/seen a box attached to one of these balloons? I haven’t

But still… since their expert (and ours) believe that it is unlikely of whether the balloon could lift a 50–60 pound child, he couldn’t have gotten too far or too high – I hope!

@hearkat yes, and yes.

@SpatzieLover – No, but from the looks of it, it is a homemade balloon. So there could have been something attached to it.

@hearkat Yea but…they haven’t found him yet. Wouldn’t you see the box in the neighborhood then I am normally pretty optimistic, too

@Zen: I hope you’re wrong this time.

@SpatzieLover: They’re saying they’re going to conduct an aerial search.

They’re showing an image of what could be the box falling from the balloon – the balloon appears to be at a significant altitude—it’s not looking good. :-(

@markyy yes I did see that. we were posting at the same time, and I didn’t get a chance to read it because I am at work and posting between calls. It’s all good :)

@hearkat Oh no!! I hope it was an empty box!! :(

@hearkat Oh no. I’ll go watch CNN again. (and say another prayer)

Me too. I’ve been praying ever since I saw this question.

Here’s hoping that the kid released the balloon, realized that he was going to get in trouble, and then ran and hid.

@syz Here’s the thing. These kids don’t get in “trouble” with their parents. That’s what is troubling me most about this whole thing…I feel just ill.

I can see how this could turn out to be a tragedy; I don’t see what it has to do with parenting. No parent can be 100% observant 100% of the time, and kids do stupid shit. I know I did, when I was six.

According to CNN a deputy saw something fall from the baloon.

They went on to say that think the boy did not fall out.

@The_Compassionate_Heretic I saw that too. The only hopeful thing would be that they think (the experts) the balloon couldn’t lift too high with the weight attached

This whole thing just baffles me. How could it have lifted with him in in? And where the hell is he if he wasn’t in the balloon?! Very crazy.
I don’t know. I still don’t understand why the parents would have such a thing.

HE’s ALIVE!!!!!!

Now CNN says he is alive and at home!

No further details yet

Hooray! The sheriff says he’s alive & at home!

As in he was never in the balloon? Because I imagine the first thing they do is bring him to a hospital, not bring him home.

Oh, good. Glad to hear it.

@markyy: They just said he was in the attic in the garage.

I can’t believe he hid. So he was afraid. (they aren’t the kind of parents that get mad at their kids…maybe it was the police that scared him? He WAS in a box, tho;)

<==Feeling smug.

@syz Lurve for your smugness…You told us so :o)

Smug as well.

oh my gosh, that’s great news! he was hiding the entire time? oh geez

I did babysit for a little girl who scared the heck outta me, just like this. I had her siblings start searching the neighborhood. We were playing outside and she was with us on the swings, then suddenly vanished. LUCKILY, her eldest sister thought to check under the baby crib. Yep, she was hiding. She was mad because of what one of her brothers did on the playset

Yeah… That’s a paddlin’.

That is fantastic news!!! Oh goodness I was hoping he never was in that balloon. Hopefully the parents will keep better watch when they have scary experiments lying around.

@Les Conclusions like the “boy fell out of the balloon” for example.

well I guess that now….

he’s grounded

4 hours of searching and they didn’t look in the damn attic? Really?

I don’t care if the kid gets in trouble or not. What I care about is what punishment the parents get.

That kid is getting a ball and chain for his birthday and a cowbell to wear around his neck for Christmas (and the one after that, and the one after that, because you can never have enough cowbell). Or maybe one of those remote controlled sound emitters that you can use for finding your carkeys.

@Les I’m with you on that one.

Thank God!! whew… My co-worker just blurted out.. hey, he was hiding in the attic!! One of the articles said that the Dad has a bad temper, and when I read that, I worried what he would do to the boy when he was found if he was hiding. but with all this publicity, i think he will not have to worry about his Dad being too rough on him.

Now, the moron Dad should learn to keep his experiments under lock and key, and away from the kids. Hopefully he will learn to do safer things with his family now.

Non believers…Say what you want.. but prayer is a powerful thing!

So do the parents have to pay for the rescue effort? They didn’t think to search the house first? Sigh.

This entire thing is SO RIDICULOUS. First off, if you think your kid is gone, why WHY would you not check the ENTIRE HOUSE? Since there was no concrete evidence that he had gone up in that dumb ass contraption they had sitting outside the house, fucking LOOK AROUND before you get a state wide search going. Man. What a waste of time and money. In short – really poor parenting. Like @tinyfaery said, I hope the family will be paying back all that money that was spent on helicopters and rescue personnel all while their kid was at home in a box.

My inner cynic is wondering if the kids did this for media attention, since they said it was one of the brothers that told them “consistently” that there was a box attached to it and he saw the younger kid crawl into the box…

@hearkat: He absolutely could have seen that and the kid could have crawled out again. Or the attention reinforced a hazy (wrong) memory into a firm memory that he believed. Or the attention could have made him afraid to admit it wasn’t true.

I’m not surprised the kid was hiding in the attic—it’s a pretty common place for a kid to go and hide and not get found, even if the attic is searched. Ask your parents. I bet they all know someone either now or from their childhood who hid in an attic and terrified their parents.

As for me, if my kid was missing and my hot air balloon was gone, I would absolutely dial 9–1-1 before doing a super thorough house check. I just wouldn’t want it to turn into a “we could have reached the balloon if only you’d called right away” situation.

Honestly, my bottom line with this story is that even knowing what we know, there is too much we don’t know to really judge anything involved—a kid who is afraid to come out of hiding because he’ll get in trouble, often won’t. Parents who call the police because their child could be in horrific danger, well, they’re probably better than parents who don’t bother. Mistakes happen. No one is perfect. Everyone takes their eyes off the kids for a moment here or there. Everyone. Having the entire world watch your parenting mistake and judge you for it? Not the best way to end the evening, but having your kid safe and sound probably makes it worth it.

@EmpressPixie: I doubt that we’ll ever know the whole truth. Of course I’d expect the parents to call the authorities on the chance that the kid could have been in it, and also for the potential danger it posed to others if it hit a power line or an aircraft.

Once the balloon landed and they knew he wasn’t in it, I’d have checked every corner of the house; I even said early on that I hoped the kid was under his bed… this has happened before, so I was hopeful for the kid’s sake that this was all it was.

My concern is that these kids, having been in front of the cameras before, might have wanted the attention, and that this might have been a deliberate hoax.

Of course we may never know; but having watched it unfold, some things didn’t seem to add up. Of course the media jumps on every little tip they get, so what they report isn’t always what is happening from the authorities’ standpoint, either.

Holy shit. That article now says they authorities don’t plan on pressing charges on the Heenes. Guh. I give up…

@Les The family will be on Larry King Live tonight. I’m gonna watch to see if/how they apologize for this mess.

Will you let me know what they say? I don’t have access to that down here.

lol, a TV deal instantly…..sheesh

@Les I dunno, people start fires and then expect the fire department to save them…I think that’s part of their job, to rescue people. It just sucks when it’s idiots.
I have to say this blog was pretty amusing to read.

@Les Sure. I’ll post it here PM you.
@Shuttle128 I think these people are not strangers to TV…CNN reports that they called a local TV station after calling rescue.

@casheroo – That’s true. Very true. But there has to be some punishment from the FAA’s perspective on this. Anything over 4 pounds launched on a balloon has to be coordinated with the FAA; when we launch our balloons from Laramie, we are constanly updating DEN with our altitude and position. To be so close to air traffic like that, and to have the flights disrupted like that, there has to be some punishment.

@SpatzieLover Who does that?

@SpatzieLover – Thanks!

Why on earth would there be charges against them? By all accounts this was a proper use of our emergency services. It’s not like they launched the balloon. It got away from them. There is an element of intent missing.

@Les Ah, so let’s say you didn’t inform them..what would the punishment have been to you guys, a fine??

@casheroo – Probably, and for us we’d lose our agreement to do these launches. I guess it is harder to enforce when it is just some random person launching a balloon. I mean, the FAA wouldn’t have jurisdiction, so who would enforce the rule? Interesting…

I wonder if they are even considering charges of child endangerment? Who does a dangerous science experiment, and leaves it where a curious young child can play around with it unattended? I’d like to know why it wasn’t locked away in a garage or somewhere the kids couldn’t get to it when the adults aren’t around.

The helium alone should be kept away from kids when and adult isn’t supervising.

@scamp See, that’s my biggest issue. This thing blatantly wasn’t secured enough if the kids got it loose. Was this thing just floating in the backyard or something? Jesus, what annoying neighbors sorry @les! not all balloon launchers are weird like these people lol Can you imagine living next door, and seeing the thing get loose? I’d probably be glad it was gone (not knowing a kid might have been in it)

@casheroo – I agree with you, completely. Even about the annoying neighbors part. ;-)

@casheroo Exactly! Somebody needs to give Clyde Crashcup some parenting lessons!

@Shuttle128 That’s what I was thinking Wha?!

People are charged money for rescue efforts all the time.

@tinyfaery I was thinking the same thing…I think the can be charged for the helicopter fuel at least. I’m pretty sure they do this frequently

@Les I haven’t watched it, but here’s youtube of the larry king interview http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wI6UONWCq7A&feature=player_embedded can you watch that there?

@casheroo – Not supposed to. We have very limited bandwidth down here, and the internet seems really slow today. I’ll be in New Zealand in two weeks though. :-) Thanks, though.

@hearkat I would guess that the parents did it for media attention and not the children. The parents could have coaxed the child or simply lied about what the child said. Or even it could be true and the parents took that as a prime opportunity. I’m not sure why a child would seek media attention.

I agree that the parents should have some fault in this. I have no idea why they didn’t search their house. If I was in their shoes I would be searching consistently and frantically. Heck I’d even check the inside of the fridge. Having said that he law enforcement is also to blame for not checking the house first. It would seem that is the most primary step in finding a missing child.

I also have no idea why the parents wouldn’t keep a better idea on their hot air balloon when the kids have easy access to it.

Those of you promoting child endangerment charges I have this to say:

The buoyancy of the balloon was not anywhere near enough to lift a child of more than 50 lbs. There’s no reason to believe that the child was ever in any danger except for wild speculations. The volume of the balloon was only about 27,000 liters. Even assuming sea level density of the outside air a helium balloon of that size could only lift 65 to 70 lbs. Now add in the weight of the balloon and plywood structure and the fact that the density of air in Denver is lower than sea level and you’ll find that the balloon could not have lifted much more than 50 lbs. (Not to mention the structure of the balloon probably would not have taken the weight anyway.)

I can certainly see the kid climbing into the balloon and releasing the tethers so he could fly away and finding that the balloon didn’t move at all then crawling out only to have the balloon fly away. Then the kid runs to hide because daddy’s super important experiment was ruined.

Wow, scratch that! I just watched the interview! Falcon specifically says that his parents told him to hide out because of the show! It was a damn publicity stunt!!!

Update: My premonition was wrong – and I’m glad.

@Shuttle128 The statement Falcon made could be misconstrued since he is only 6. “You guys said we did this for a show”....From a 6yr old boy that probably did not understand why cameras were in his yard or living room the day he hid. He had been on Wife Swap twice. I doubt he understands why. I don’t think he understood why he was being asked the same questions by his parents again. I’m sure he’s answered these questions several times for the police and the media outside of his house.

Ok @Les, some of the interview was interesting for your perspective:

Richard (the dad) said he & his wife planned to launch the “saucer” for their anniversary and today he was testing out inflation and high voltage charging. His wife tethered the balloon, but he hadn’t inspected her knots (he mentioned this twice).

He said he’d yelled at Falcon earlier in the morning for playing in the saucer.

When dad went to pull the lever for the high volt power after inflating, he thought Falcon was at his side. As he walked back, the balloon began lifting and eldest son Bradford began trying to tell his dad he knew Falcon was in the saucer. Dad didn’t believe him. But Falcon was not around. Bradford insisted that Falcon said he’d sneak in it again and that he’d videoed him saying it.

Dad finally believed son & made his two sons go on the roof to tape/track the path the balloon was on while he called the FAA. The FAA told him to call 911, and the rest is history.

Falcon said he first played in attic, then fell asleep. He did hear them yelling. He was up there for 4hrs before he wandered down to find his parents in the living room.

Both the sheriffs office and search & rescue do believe the family’s story. The Major CNN interviewed said he did not believe this was a publicity stunt and that they have interviewed the family.

The dad also said you could probably fit all three of his boys in the access panel he created on the balloon. The access panel was constructed with cardboard & plywood. (there was no other cardboard box attached as the media reported).

He was afraid his son may have been in when the balloon went up & then would’ve fallen out through the cardboard door. Now, he didn’t say whether or not he felt it could’ve lifted as high with a kid inside. He said they built it as a family experiment to see if they could develop a method for people to “hover” 50–100ft off the ground to get to work.

Side: Now that the kid is safe and sound, what do you think those ASSHOLES will do for fun next? Maybe shark diving with the little ones?

@Zen Nah! This lunatic is all about Martians…I’d guess a rocket launch with his kids in it.

@EmpressPixie something like that happened with my uncle was very little. They were playing hide and seek, and he hid behind the couch and fell asleep. There was a massive search for him all over the neighborhood, and nobody knew where he was until he crawled out about 10 hours later.

Here’s a link to the part in the interview, when asked why he didn’t come out when his name was being called, Falcon says to his dad, ‘You had said that… umm… we did this for the show.’

I was watching it live while Fluthering and didn’t catch what the kid said, but I heard Wolf Blitzer react to it. Why didn’t he pursue it further?

@hearkat That’s awful. I’m glad he wasn’t physically harmed, but I wonder about the mental harm these parents may be causing him. Ugh.

@SpatzieLover this sentence – “He said he’d yelled at Falcon earlier in the morning for playing in the saucer.” made me laugh a little. How many people can say that they’ve been yelled at for messing around in their dads flying saucer?

@augustlan Atleast the kid is still telling the truth, so maybe he didn’t get messed up too much. Weird story though, what would be the motivation behind it? We call it mediahorney over here, but who knows. They could have had money issues (wasn’t it mentioned he lost his job?) and we’re hoping to fake a story and go tell it. Even though they failed I think they’ll still make a lot of money out of this event.

Parenting: based on the article, does not look like bad parenting to me at least. Little guy is told not to go to the frigging balloon, get scared when thinks people thought he did. Situation normal, apart from most people having things like washing machines and matches in their stories instead of awesome balloons.

Science: article does not require the science behind the balloon and experiments at all, so impossible to comment on whether it is poor or not.

Something fishy with the anchoring of that balloon, maybe, is all.

Murphy’s law: “Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.”

I saw the family on the Today show at 7am. It must have been around 3 or 4 in the morning there, because they were all half asleep during the interview. The Father said the boy misunderstood the question and that’s why he said it was for a show, then he started to become aggitated. He said he was ticked off because he had been asked so many times if it was a hoax. Right in the middle of that statement, I find it interesting that Falcon vomitted. Maybe it’s from all the excitement, and maybe it’s from fear of his Father’s anger, who knows?

They later showed the segment again, at 9am, and of course they edited the part where the boy became ill.( who really wants to see that?) They later showed a video provided by the family where it shows the Father launching the ballon, and becoming angry that the wife let go of the tether. The next video they showed was the entire family outside on a street during Hurricane Gustav. One of the boys is saying, “Here we are in the middle of Hurricane Gustav.” Now, if taking your children out on the street in the middle of a category 4 Hurricane isn’t child endangerment, I don’t know what is.

I agree with @tinyfaery that the Father should be charged for the rescue efforts, and I also think that child protection services should investigate the family. Maybe the guy thinks he is educating his children, but he needs to learn how to do so safely, and stop putting his children in harm’s way.

@scamp All the kids looked pretty ill on LKL last night, so maybe they all have the flu. But, I wouldn’t doubt that the dad makes them all tense. You’d have to see the guy in action. He’s wired (& weird)!

They don’t homeschool, per se. What they do is take the kids out of school when they go out on a storm chasing mission. Yesterday & today, all the kids in their school district had off days.

IMHO, removing your kids from class to chase weather is inappropriate (and I homeschool). Kids at their ages should not be chasing tornadoes or looking to be in the middle of the eye of a hurricane.

@SpatzieLover I did see a few short clips of the guy and I agree, he seems very odd. he also seems like he has a very short fuse! In the interview I saw early this morning, it looked like he was trying to control his anger, but it was pretty obvious he was really upset. He was grinding his teeth just before he said he was getting ticked off, and his son squirmed and moved away from him. The wife looked a bit afraid too in some of the clips I saw.

I homeschooled my daughter too, and I agree that you don’t pull your kids out of school for a storm chasing session.

@SpatzieLover – Thanks for the synopsis. It sounds so unbelievable, I don’t even know what to think anymore. Publicity stunt or not, these parents sound insane. I’m convinced the balloon didn’t have enough lift to take that kid anywhere, even if he did crawl inside. But the idea that the father was playing around with high voltage, and didn’t have a good handle on his kids at the time, that bothers me. I’m glad the kid is OK, but I really want this to be a wake up call to the father to, not necessarily stop his experimentation, but to do these things in a safer, more “scientific” method. He has an opportunity to teach his kids an important lesson here, and I hope he does. Though, he probably won’t.

@Les The high voltage bothered me, too. He said it emits one million volts

This situation could’ve been much worse than the outcome we’ve been witness to. Personally, I’m kinda hoping someone calls child protective services over this.

I’ve been watching all the updates, and I think the whole thing was a hoax. It looks to me like the dad put the kids up to it. The poor kid gets physically ill whenever anyone questions his “you said do it for the show” comment. Stress, maybe? Fear of blowing it and making the dad angry?

I am so glad the kid turned out to be OK, but I’m also highly skeptical of the whole drama. Do they get paid to appear on those news shows and talk shows?

@MissAusten I dunno about payment. I’d think it’d be scale at best, for LKL…as fro the news shows I think they do not pay.

If it was a hoax, I’m sure it’ll be wormed out of this guy over the next week. If not, the kids still need to be better protected around this man.

FYI: The latest in this crazy media stunt/hoax/drama…misdemeanor charges will be filed against the dad

@SpatzieLover – YAY!

@Les Now it sounds like there may be felony charges, possible federal charges and even better news, looks like there will be a CPS case (child protective services normally would just “look into” the situation…it now sounds like they’ll do a full investigation). I for one hope these kids are taken out of the care of the father.