brigid | Advise me: How do you teach animal safety? (Reply)

When I say “how do you teach animal safety,” I’m looking for specific stuff YOU PERSONALLY have done to teach children how to be safe around animals. I have some basic ideas, but I also want to teach my kid to be WARY of strange animals and CAUTIOUS around strange animals, without being terrified of them.

Here’s the sitch. We don’t have any pets. None. My in-laws, who live five minutes away from us, have no pets. We don’t really visit people who have pets. So Niko doesn’t really see animals except at the zoo or on t.v. or when he’s walking with us and the animals are on a leash and the situation’s pretty controlled.

When he encounters animals THAT way, we (the adults with him) touch base with the people with the animals, say hello, admire the animal (ok, the dog. It’s always dogs.), and then ask if Niko can say hello and pet them. People either say yes, or they say no. If they say yes, we encourage Niko to come closer to the animal. He hesitantly touches them, adorableness happens, the end.

So far so good, right?

We were visiting some friends of ours, and they have cats. Some of the cats are totally cool with ANYBODY touching them, petting them, hauling them around, etc. They’ll rub up on you for hours. Others are… not so much. One of them bit Niko. Not a bad bite, not at all, didn’t even break the skin, but it alarmed him at the time and he’s been talking about it nonstop ever since. (he’s also claiming a kitty kissed him, and that he played megablocks with a kitty. So, you know.)

On the ride home, Nesko and I talked with Niko about how sometimes animals are scared so they bite or scratch. So when he meets an animal he needs to be careful and not touch the animal unless he asks first. We want him to be careful, but we don’t want him to be AFRAID. Does that make sense?

How do you handle this? What do you recommend?

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