Pets good for children's growth

随着社会的发展和计划生育政策的影响，越来越多的家庭只有一个孩子，所以大多数孩子都是“独子”，他们大多没有年龄相仿的合作伙伴。如今越来越多的家庭在家里养宠物，特别是有一个孩子家庭。当孩子提出了要一个宠物，宠物几乎是他的合作伙伴和他们建立了良好的关系。这种现象表明，养宠物可能对孩子有好处。

With the development of the society and the influence of the family planning policy, more and more families raise only a child, so most children are “the only son” and they mostly don’t have partners with the similar age playing with them. Nowadays more and more families raise pets at home, especially families with a child. When the child raises a pet, the pet is almost his partner and they build the good relationship. This phenomenon indicates that raising pets may be good for children.

According to Vidovic, “Pets have a positive impact on children’s social emotion.” (Vidovic, 211) By investigating the children raising pets and the children without raising pets, we find that they indeed have significant differences in three indices, including loneliness, sharing and taking care of the younger children. Firstly, the survey shows that the children raising pets alone at home feel less loneliness than the children without raising pets, indicating that the pets can lessen the child’s loneliness by staying and playing with him. Secondly, the children raising pets are more willing to share their happiness, sadness, toys and delicious food with the others. Thirdly, the children raising pets are more willing to take care of the younger children. This may just owe to the pets’ accompanying and caring. Further search shows that the more intimate between the children and the pets, the more willing the children are to share with the others, the less loneliness they feel. In other words, if the child is intimate with the pet, he is willing to communicate with the pet and share his sadness and secrets with it. And the intimate relationship between the child and the pet is positive correlated with the child’s willing to share with the others and take care of the younger children, whereas it is negative correlates with the loneliness he feels.

As a matter of fact, it is not rare to find in our everyday life. The children are taken care of the working parents often busy with the complex work and having little time to communicate with children. Once we raise a pet around the children, the pet becomes the member of the family who the children can communicate with and place their emotions on. With the growth of the children, they will feel lonelier without the parents accompanying. While the pet can be the one the child can lay on. It is the children’s special talent accompanying with the small animals. The children around me like the small animals, such as dogs, cats, rabbits, and so as to pet small animals once they come into the children’s sights. Contacting with a small animal can not only stimulate the children’s curiosity and activity, but also make up the regrets that the parents have no time to stay with, communicate with and play with the children on weekdays.

In some special environment, pets can be the “doctor” or “nurse”. They help the children in physical experiments to relieve the stressful feelings. If you keep a close watch on the children, it is easy to catch sight of the phenomenon. When the children are in physical experiments, most of them are nervous. Whereas, once a dog comes up, the children’s attention can be attracted by the dog and they feel less nervous to some extent. Introverted and unsociable children can gain confidence from their pets because the pets give the children the care they seeks for unreservedly. What’s more, some people have done a research on the autistic children, and they have found that the autistic children seek for friendship and comfort from the pets, while the way to treat the families is completely different from the former. They seem to be particularly sensitive to the needs of animal and enjoy the moment of touching the pets.

With the growth of the children, more and more emotions are needed. But if the parents can’t give enough care and love to the children, the children will feel lonely. As the extension of time, the loneliness will increase, and then the worst situation is that the children will keep to themselves and not communicate with the others around the circumstances. That is the premonition of the autism. The autistic children have visions but turn a blind eye on the human beings, have the words but are not willing to talk with them, have the ability of the hearing but turn a deaf ear to them and always do something that the ordinary person can’t understand easily. They are always immersed in their own world, don’t communicate with the others, and don’t know how to share, like the distant stars shinning in the dark sky.

“Many autistic children can’t communicate with human beings, but they can communicate with the dogs.” (Kewei Yu, F0002; Michal, D5) And what happened to Milo just proved it. Chad, a yellow Labrador, joined in Mrs. Vacaro’s family in order to protect Milo, Vacaro’s son, who was autistic, couldn’t communicate with others and often lost his temper in public. After a week since Chad came up, Vacaro realized the significant changes of Milo. A few months later, with the closer relationship between Milo and Chad, Milo got calm and increased attention to things, which made Vacaro overjoyed. Gradually, Milo would like to tell others something mostly about Chad.

All in all, the families with children should raise pets to accompany the children when they are busy working. For the reason that in the children’s eyes, the pets are the most sincere partners, who they can share secrets, get comfort when they are sad, and are willing to take care of. The pets can comfort the children with some sort of tricks and lovely expressions and give them the greatest happiness invisibly to ease the depressed heart to help them heal the trauma and restore confidence and optimism.

Work cited:
Vidovic VV, Stetic VV, and Bratko D.” Type of Pet and Socio-emotional Development of School Children.” Anthrozoos 12.4 (1999): 211-217.
Kewei Yu. “Pets on human health benefits.” Chinese Journal of Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Medicine 1(2010): F0002-F0002
Michal Czerwonka. “Exploring the Health Benefits of Pets.” New York Times 5 Oct. 2009: D5



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