What you can teach your child by having a pet

By Maria Endah Hulupi

JAKARTA (JP): People can build intimate friendships with their pets and treat the domesticated animals like members of their own family because they become emotionally attached.

Many people want to have pets to keep themselves company and to play with. They take good care of the animals and value the memory of their pets once the animal has died.

The pet does not only serve as a good companion but it can become something that the whole family, especially children, can learn about in life.

According to psychiatrist Kresno Mulyadi, by having a pet at home children will learn the meaning of friendship, how to take care of an animal's well-being and how to deal with the feeling of loss, he added.

Kresno explained that having a pet could nurture the child's sense of responsibility mainly because he or she will assume a role as pet owner who has to feed it properly and make sure that the animal is in good health.

"This responsibility will, in turn, motivate the child to adopt a degree of self-responsibility in that it creates the awareness necessary for taking care of their pets without having to be told to by their parents," Kresno said, adding that children will also exercise this self-responsibility when undertaking other activities.

Aside from that, home pets will help the child build empathy towards animals and other people and thus nurture his/her emotional intelligence.

They will learn to make their pets happy, to protect them and not to harm the animal.

Kresno said children are likely to create special bonds with their pets and might be emotionally attached to their animals because they play and spend time together. This emotional attachment will cause some grief to the child when their beloved pets die.

This grievance, he added, is part of the lesson of life and death for children. Parents need to understand their children's sadness and help them cope with the situation.

"Give them some time to grieve and guide them in overcoming their sadness. It's more healthy than making them hide what they really feel about their beloved pet's death," he said.

Parents also need to understand if their child's grieving adversely affects their school performance or worse still creates psychosomatic symptoms when children complain of having health problems, which stems from psychological disturbances.

"Talk to the child and discuss the pet's death as a lesson to learn in life. Never compare the child's ability to overcome the feeling of loss with another child's because each child has a unique personality and has different ways of dealing with a crisis," he added.

"Parents should avoid questions like, why are you still sad? Don't you know that the dog died two days ago? These kinds of questions only further depress a grieving child."

If you decide to have another pet to replace the dead one, it is advised that you discuss it with the child because the new companion is not likely to immediately erase memories of the dead pet.

"Don't get a substitute for the dead pet if your child doesn't want it. The rejection may show that the child has not fully recovered and is not ready to have a new bond with another pet.