Kiddipedia
Ask any parent and they’ll agree: raising a young child is no simple task, multiple children even more so. Not only will you spend more of your hard-earned money to support them, but your free time will also be greatly reduced to accommodate their needs.
Adding another responsibility on top of that—like owning a dog—may seem like total obligation overkill. However, there are some significant perks to having a furry friend in your household while you’re raising a young family.
From instilling positive values to boosting your and your children’s mental health, getting a dog can be a great addition to the household, granted that you’re fully committed to the responsibility of owning and caring for one.
If you want to know the benefits of owning a dog as a parent of young children, look no further. This article will list six unique benefits having a dog can give to you and your family during this pivotal life chapter. Let’s jump right into it.
1. Teaches Kids About Responsibility
If your young children are old enough to perform simple chores, having a dog can help them expand the number of household chores they can do. This list of dog-related chores is expansive, involving activities such as bathing, walking, feeding, and taking them to go potty.
Teaching them to learn how to do chores is a vital life skill that’s best taught early. This is because, in time, they’ll likely have to pick up on these skills later in life as well.
It essentially speeds up the learning process and brings them ahead of the curve, which helps them care for their pet throughout its lifespan and is also useful if they plan to have another pet in the future.
Furthermore, instilling pet care teaches them to be responsible and committed, which is key if they want to help keep their dog safe, healthy, and happy.
On top of that, this skill is transferable to a broad range of other challenges in life.
From challenges in life to school, having a sense of responsibility and ownership in one’s tasks can help your child become more resilient in dealing with any future hardship they will inevitably come across.
Owning and caring for a pet is something you can educate your child to be good at, which can then help in pushing this sense of responsibility.
2. Gets The Family Active
One of the major responsibilities of owning a dog is giving them ample amounts of exercise.
It’s important to walk your dogs regularly as their bodies are built to move around and be active. This is the case no matter the breed, but there are some breeds that are naturally more athletic and active than others.
Allowing your dog to walk regularly can be the perfect time to also get the entire family active and moving. You can, for instance, assign a dog walker within the family unit each day to do the daily route—giving everyone equal amounts of physical activity.
Besides doing the walk, you and your loved ones can also perform supplementary activities with your pet, like playing with toys from pet stores like Zach’s Pet Shop, going on runs, and hiking new trails.
With a dog, you’ll naturally encourage the family to become more active. This can be beneficial to both one’s physical and mental health.
Plus, active time also grants the family an opportune time to do activities together and strengthen the bond they have with each other and their pet—which is always a good thing.
3. Provides Accompaniment and Connection
A pet provides a unique form of connection distinct from familial and peer love. Dogs, when treated right, are creatures that have boundless amounts of love to give, making them excellent companions for kids.
Kids—and humans in general—are hardwired to seek out affable companionship. A housepet like a dog provides that constant presence with unwavering loyalty, all while simultaneously showing unconditional love to their owner and family in a wide variety of ways.
The dog’s loyalty can make a child feel like they have a friend whenever they return home. The dog can also be there for them whenever they’re feeling down. This presence can help add a new enriching dimension to the child’s life, adding layers and emotions that they may otherwise not be able to tap into otherwise.
4. Builds Empathy and Emotional Development
Owning a dog teaches your child to become more empathic with animals. At a young age, they’ll be able to understand that these creatures have a life and mind of their own—even if it may not necessarily align with that of a human’s way of thinking.
By being exposed and caring for a dog, your kid can develop a deeper understanding of a dog’s wants and needs.
They’ll be able to read their emotions through assessing their non-verbal cues, body language, and verbal cues like barks and cries. This, naturally, helps them understand the complexities of emotions and how their actions can affect the dog.
This is not entirely exclusive to dogs either, as this empathy can also extend to other creatures in general, including humans.
Furthermore, dogs also provide kids with an opportunity to demonstrate affection and love to other creatures as well. Your kid or kids, for instance, can pet the dog when they’re feeling down or loosen their collar if it’s too tight.
Dogs also encourage kids to express their emotions more openly, such as showing excitement and joy when anticipating a reunion with them. This bond, in turn, helps support the child’s emotional and social growth—which they can carry with them for their entire life.
5. Protects The House
There are practical reasons why having a dog can be beneficial too. The most notable one is their ability to act as the house’s live surveillance system.
Certain dog breeds have extremely cunning watchdog properties. They may bark at the presence of a person at the front door before the dwellers can even notice them. This is because of their keen sense of hearing and smell—which is exponentially better than that of a human.
Furthermore, some dogs can also go above and beyond and scare threats away, particularly people attempting criminal acts like robberies or hurting your family. They can even be trained to subdue threats if they come too close or are causing distress to the family.
If you live in a shady neighbourhood or just want to improve your home’s security, having a dog is a great solution. They don’t only offer the benefits of companionship, but they can also alert you when an unexpected stranger drops by by barking.
In turn, this can help you take the appropriate action to address the guest.
6. Helps Provide Structure in Family Life
Successfully taking care of a kid and dog involves managing your time wisely. It may also involve creating a series of delegations and putting your full trust in your partner and children to perform these actions.
Making a plan of action and a corresponding timetable is a skill that requires a lot of optimising and reflecting. It’s not something that usually is perfected on the first go, as it needs many iterations before it can get to its ideal state.
But in any case, effective time management is something that you as a parent will definitely have to think about if you own a kid and a dog. From bringing your dog to the potty to driving your kid to school or daycare, you have to squeeze these activities into your daily life without compromising your job.
If you manage to coordinate your activities without straining yourself, then you can feel much less stress-free even with a large list of obligations. This can maximise your life and help you feel fulfilled simultaneously.
