I suspect the older siblings may have had more of a hand in it than the parents.
I made the following point on an earlier thread: the father knew that the son could only have been in the basket attached to the bottom of the balloon. The television video showed perfectly clearly that there was no basket attached to the bottom of the balloon! Therefore, the father is responsible for allowing emergency responders to chase on the ground after the balloon for a couple of hours, fearing the entire time that the life of a child was at risk. The father is also responsible for allowing the story of what was only a drifting empty balloon to monopolize network and cable news shows for a couple of hours on Thursday afternoon.
The father should be in some serious trouble.
I expect he’s going to get a whopping bill for all this.
when the balloon landed, I thought at the time the emergency personnel seemed rather lackadaisical for a life and death situation. My guess is that they had already been informed there was no one in the balloon. Meaning that the news media knew also, and was just hyping the drama.