4 Ingenious Ways to Teach Children Proper Pet Care

Surround your children with animals, for they are the teachers with purity of heart.

According to Gail F. Melson, PhD, professor Surround your children with animals, for they are the teachers with purity of heart, “It has been estimated that 4 out of 10 children in USA commence their family life with domestic animal and as many as 90% of all kids live with a pet at some point during their childhood.” This is a great statistic and proves that children love being around pets.
But what happens when they promise to do anything to get a new pet and then back off when they come to know about the chores that they will have to follow in order to make it work with the pet? It has been observed that with the help of proper planning, parental involvement and open communication this challenge can be resolved and the lives of children along with pets can be made easier. Let us look at some of the pointers that will keep the children interested in pets long after pets are part of the big family:

Discuss the importance of daily chores in order to take care of all pet-care responsibilities
It is very important to make a list of all the pet care responsibilities and then make the children understand the importance of handling a pet with utmost care. You should also discuss the importance of chores and what would happen if the daily chores are not maintained properly. Always rotate the daily chores among children and remember to serve as a role model for them so that they can learn to be responsible about taking care of the pets.

Give rewards to children for completing a pet care task successfully
Always try to see that children find it interesting to take care of the pets. This can be done by giving them responsibilities that they can easily manage and then see to it that the task gets completed without you trying to tell them. Give positive rewards to the children like making them play with the pet or cuddling with the pet. This will give them an added incentive to do their tasks correctly. With time you can reduce the playtime with pets, but still make it a point to praise them for being a good pet care taker.

Do not intermingle your child’s other activities affect the pet responsibilities levied on them   
Do not ever try to punish your child for activities other than the ones of taking care of the pet. For example; if your child scores poorly in one of the tests do not take away their play time with the pet or assign negative pet chore activities to them as a punishment. This can lead to very harmful effect on the child and ultimately gets passed onto the pet.

But even if you have to punish the child for getting low marks in tests you can give them “less fun” pet chores this will make them understand that they will have to perform well in the test in order to enjoy “more fun time” with the pet. This also makes children understand that pet care is not merely about fun and socializing, but is also about tedious hard work.

Make the children learn as much as possible about the pet
You can introduce new games, toys or even training to make children continue interacting with the pet. This is very important as children get to learn about the pet by taking care of them and getting interested in their lives.

Pets are a great means to teach children about responsibilities. But there can be instances where children would make mistakes like miss feeding the pet, or missing the daily walks with the pet. They should also be reminded to take care of the fact that pets require food, water, exercise and good hygiene just like us. Do not be too critical if the children do make mistakes. Try to find out why are the chores not getting completed by the children? Try to arouse interest in children about pet care responsibility. Try to balance out the pleasure and responsibility so that there is a continued interest among children for pet chores.