Better Than Sit or Stay: How Pets Help Us with Teachable Moments

Raise your hand if you joined in the “Pandemic Puppy” trend! [Picture me raising my hand.] Yes, my family decided to add a third dog to our family unit over the last year. Among our three pooches are three different sizes, three different colors, three different personalities, and five different breeds. They keep us busy, entertained, and wishing we had a doggy door. We love them, but they certainly do require a lot of time, attention, and care, as you fellow fur-parents well know.

Thankfully, pets give all of us some wonderful things in return, like complete adoration and uncontrollable enthusiasm when we arrive home. They can also provide great opportunities for us to have teachable moments with our kids, if we know how to look for them. Here are a few examples.

Responsibility

This one seems obvious, since the pleadings for puppies are usually accompanied by kids’ promises to feed, walk, and clean up after the critters. “We’ll do it every day,” they said. “You’ll never have to remind us,” they said. We as parents optimistically hope that this will be true…and then end up doing it ourselves. But we shouldn’t be so quick to pick up the slack. Instead, let’s use this as a prime opportunity to teach our children how to care for another living creature. It is good for them to see first-hand that being responsible for feeding, cleaning, nurturing, and even playing with a living creature on a daily basis is not something to be taken lightly. We don’t get to take days off when we don’t feel like taking care of it. This accountability helps build responsibility.

Training

Getting our kids involved in the training process with our pets helps them see that many behaviors are learned rather than innate, and that the effort it takes to train our pets is usually quite worth it. As we work together in the pet-training process, we can point out to our kids why enthusiastic praise and firm correction are both necessary. We can ask our kids probing questions to help them make connections between the pets’ behaviors and our responses and even get their advice on how they think we should handle particular situations. Throughout the process, we can probably get our kids to agree with us that it takes a lot of work to train and be a parent to a pet, helping them get a glimpse of our perspectives as parents to humans.

Relationships

The relationships we have with our pets are special, and they are a great way for our children to learn some principles that cross over into human relationships, too. For instance, we can teach them how to treat these animals with kindness, gentleness, and helpfulness, which teaches them to love and nurture. We can also make observations about why our pets respond positively or negatively to our children’s tones and actions. When we see our kids loving and caring for our pets well, we can praise them for these positive efforts. And though we don’t like to think about it, we know that these beloved relationships will come to an end all too quickly, at which point we will need to help our children learn to acknowledge and cope with difficult feelings and the grieving process.

There is so much to be learned through having pets. But wait a minute, parents! We aren’t off the hook when it comes to teachable moments from our fur-babies. I can’t tell you how many lessons I’ve learned myself through parenting my dogs–lessons that are absolutely pertinent to parenting my human children, as well. Each pet is different; not all training methods work for all pets; some pets require more time/attention/energy than others; RE-training is often much harder than training right the first time; playtime is important… You get the idea. Be on the lookout for these little lessons, parents! 

Pets can certainly enrich and make family life sweeter. Let’s enjoy their cuteness, their snuggles, and their funny mannerisms. Let’s appreciate their affection and devotion to us. But let’s also take advantage of the teachable moments that they naturally, effortlessly provide for us.