Add a Pet to the Family Tree

Children learn from their parents. They learn how to love, how to care for, and nurture. The parents are their role models; they see our actions every day and want to mimic what we do and who we are.
Young girls will act out parenting actions when playing with their dolls. I hope your son isn’t playing with dolls, but he may care for a teddy bear when he is very young. He will treat the bear like you have treated him.
In the eyes of a child, a family isn’t complete without the addition of a pet. The pet can be any animal that your child can care for. It could be a puppy, kitten, bunny, or a goldfish. It may even be a snake, a spider, a lizard, or even a mouse. The point is a pet will offer the child something of his own to care for, love, and nurture, a living being. Add a pet to the family tree and make the family complete.
In our family, our 2 pets are dogs, one for each of our 2 children. Larry is a Cocker-Poodle mix and Sabrina is a Shih Tzu-Poodle mix.
It makes me proud to see how our girls treat the dogs. They will sit on the floor playing fetch and scratching the puppies’ bellies; they even talk baby talk, a sign of true love.
They have also taught the dogs tricks. My favorite trick of all is that Larry will ring the doorbell if he needs to go outside for some relief. If you have your own puppy, you may want to teach him this trick although I should ask for royalties. This is simple; just place a hotel reception bell on the floor at the back door. Every time you take your dog outside, just ring the bell once. In just a matter of days, you will find that your dog will begin to ring the bell on his own behalf whenever he has the urge to visit his favorite fire hydrant.
One of the things we do, I should say my wife and kids do, they prepare beautiful photo albums of our family life. The pages are organized by holiday or event. They spend hours adding comments and clipart to set the scene. Every album contains a multitude of poses of both dogs. Larry and Sabrina are a part of our family now. They are in our family tree.
The life lesson here is to provide your children with a living being that they can learn to love, nurture, and train. Your children will learn to handle responsibility that they will use later in life.