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Kids and Pets
- Thread starter Australia
- Start date
As for a good first pet - something simple is probably best. Dog, cat, some small animals (though the whole cage cleaning thing makes them kind of complicated). Personally I am a dog person, so I'm just going to be biased and say a dog. With a proper breed of dog, they can co-entertain each other by playing and running outside, and dogs are pretty low maintenance beyond the initial boot camp of training and housebreaking.
If you want the kid/s to handle the whole responsibility on their own, I wouldn't recommend getting a pet until kids are much older, about ready to assume a minor employment (not like mid-teens here, but like a 8-12 ear old on a paper route, for example). That's about an age in which kids can be delegated tasks reliably and followed multi-tiered and multi-threaded directional concepts. They can follow instructions to fair proficiency, that a younger child might not be able to grasp, and such an age is typically an influential age in which to instill a solid responsibility ethic in kids, beyond the basics you teach the little ones. Youth at this age also will be going through social changes that will require the development of empathy and sympathy, and there is no better way to do that, then to introduce a responsibility and attachment to another living being.
Like Nebulous says, and I whole-heartedly agree - kids aren't experts in pet care, or care of anything living at all really. It is something that will be a learning experience and needs to actually be a process they go through and are exposed to in order to develop proficiency at it. Therefore there will have to be a support net from parents to take care of the pet; you wouldn't expect them (or want them) to be able to take care of a baby, or even themselves very well, so a pet is not far removed from that situation.
If you want the kid/s to handle the whole responsibility on their own, I wouldn't recommend getting a pet until kids are much older, about ready to assume a minor employment (not like mid-teens here, but like a 8-12 ear old on a paper route, for example). That's about an age in which kids can be delegated tasks reliably and followed multi-tiered and multi-threaded directional concepts. They can follow instructions to fair proficiency, that a younger child might not be able to grasp, and such an age is typically an influential age in which to instill a solid responsibility ethic in kids, beyond the basics you teach the little ones. Youth at this age also will be going through social changes that will require the development of empathy and sympathy, and there is no better way to do that, then to introduce a responsibility and attachment to another living being.
Like Nebulous says, and I whole-heartedly agree - kids aren't experts in pet care, or care of anything living at all really. It is something that will be a learning experience and needs to actually be a process they go through and are exposed to in order to develop proficiency at it. Therefore there will have to be a support net from parents to take care of the pet; you wouldn't expect them (or want them) to be able to take care of a baby, or even themselves very well, so a pet is not far removed from that situation.
My daughter is only 7 and she has had a couple caged animals. A couple rats, a couple rabbits. She feeds them but I end up doing all the cage cleaning.
Right now we only have an aquarium and that requires very minimal work (which I do), she feeds them though. I measure out the food and put in the lid of the fish food canister, she just dumps it in there.
Right now we only have an aquarium and that requires very minimal work (which I do), she feeds them though. I measure out the food and put in the lid of the fish food canister, she just dumps it in there.
