The Benefits of Pets

Children love their pets -- and for good reason. Creatures large and small teach, delight, and offer a special kind of companionship.

Everyone knows that kids love animals. A quick safari through your child's bedroom will remind you just how densely imaginary critters populate the storybooks, movies, music, toys, decor, and clothes of childhood. In real life, the amount of money we spend on our pets has nearly doubled in the past 10 years.

Overall, an estimated 4 in 10 children begin life in a family with domestic animals, and as many as 90 percent of all kids live with a pet at some point during their childhood, says Gail F. Melson, PhD, professor emeritus of developmental studies at Purdue University, in Indiana, and the author of Why the Wild Things Are: Animals in the Lives of Children.

When I was growing up, I always had at least one dog padding beside me on every adventure, and my wife was raised on a farm. So we planned all along to make animals a part of our child's life, and we are delighted by how enthusiastically our daughter, Natalie, has embraced pets. Her natural zeal and passion for critters of all kinds has led to our current menagerie of one German shepherd, three cats, a freshwater aquarium, a confoundingly long-lived tank of mail order Sea-Monkeys, and, because we live on 4 1/2 acres of Pennsylvania woods, an endless series of cameo appearances by turtles, mice, moles, frogs, toads, tadpoles, ducks, geese, and slugs -- to name just a few of the creatures that have come to visit.

All these beasts have been beneficial to Natalie's development, but we've been surprised by how wide-ranging those benefits have been. Like most parents, my wife and I counted on the commonsense idea that having pets around would help teach our daughter responsibility, and maybe empathy. But we've also learned that the presence of animals in our house helps foster her emotional, cognitive, social, and physical development. And I've discovered there's plenty of solid evidence to back that up.

Here are five reasons to let the fur fly in your home.

How Pets Help with Learning

While book groups are the rage among her mother's friends, Natalie has her own reading tribe: We often find her curled up in her bed or lying in a den of blankets in a quiet nook of the house, reading to one or more of her cats. She pets them as she reads, stops to show them pictures and ask them questions. She even reassures them during scary parts of the story.

That's no surprise, says Mary Renck Jalongo, PhD, education professor at Indiana University of Pennsylvania and author of The World of Children and Their Companion Animals. Educators have long known that bringing therapy animals (mostly dogs) into schools helps developmentally challenged kids learn. Now they are finding that all children can benefit from the presence of a nonjudgmental pal with paws. In one study, children were asked to read in front of a peer, an adult, and a dog. Researchers monitored their stress levels, and found that kids were most relaxed around the animal, not the humans. "If you're struggling to read and someone says, 'Time to pick up your book and work,' that's not a very attractive offer," Dr. Jalongo says. "Curling up with a dog or cat, on the other hand, is a lot more appealing."

How Pets Provide Comfort

One of the biggest benefits of having pets is often unexpected, even for parents who grew up around animals: They can help families grow stronger and closer. "Whenever I ask children and parents if their pets are truly part of the family, most of them seem surprised -- and almost offended -- at the question," Dr. Melson says. The most common response: "Of course they are!"

A pet is often the focus of activities that families do together. Everyone takes the dog for a walk, or shares in grooming and feeding him, or gets down on the floor and plays with him. There are even benefits from simply watching a cat chase his tail or a fish swim in his tank. Spending time like this offers the wonderful potential of slowing down the hectic pace of modern life. If someone asks what you've been doing, you might respond "nothing." And in this era of overscheduled children and parents who are constantly on the go, "nothing" can be an important thing to do.

Article by www.parents.com