Why You Shouldn’t Get a Pet for Your Child Under 5

Thinking about getting a puppy or kitten for your preschooler? It might look adorable on social media, but in real life it’s often a recipe for stress, safety risks, and heartbreak.

Well-meaning parents often believe getting a pet will teach their child responsibility or help them “grow up together and bond better,” but in rescue we’ve seen those myths lead to injured pets, injured kids, and heartbreaking surrenders. The truth is, kids under 5 face the highest dog bite risk, pets are easily hurt by rough handling, and family pet safety is at stake when the timing isn’t right. That’s why many rescues, including mine, don’t adopt out to families with very young children, and today, I’m sharing the five big reasons why waiting is the better choice and why the "best age to get a pet for kids" is a bigger decision than most parents think. 

BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU’LL LEARN:
• Why kids under 5 simply can’t manage the responsibility of pet care, no matter how “responsible” they seem
• How young children unintentionally put themselves and pets at risk, and what every parent should know about dog bite risk
• The developmental mismatch that makes “growing up together” with a puppy or kitten a dangerous myth
• How one negative early experience can shape a child or pet for life
• Safer, positive ways to nurture your child’s love of animals until the time is right—and how to decide the best age to get a pet for kids

If you’ve ever thought about getting a pet for your young child, or know someone who is, this is an episode you can’t afford to miss.

Transcript

5 Reasons You Shouldn't Get a Pet for Your Child Under 5 (Transcript)

Amy Castro (00:01.112)
Thinking about getting a puppy or a kitten for your preschooler? I know it looks adorable on social media, but in real life, it's often a recipe for a lot of stress, safety risks, and heartbreak. As someone who's run a rescue and placed thousands of animals in loving families, I can tell you, we just generally don't adopt pets out to families with children under the age of five. And today, I'm gonna tell you exactly why, so stay tuned.

Amy Castro (00:31.758)
You've reached the Pet Parent Hotline, your lifeline to practical solutions for your toughest pet parenting challenges. I'm your host Amy Castro, and I'm here to help you cut through the noise and turn expert advice into step-by-step strategies so you can stop chasing your tail and start enjoying life with pets again.

Amy Castro (00:57.582)
Over and over in my many years in rescue, I've had people come to us saying, we want a puppy for our toddler, it's gonna teach them responsibility, or we want them to grow up together. And you know what, I have to tell you, in theory, that sounds lovely. But in practice, it's a complete myth, and probably a recipe for disaster. Pets are not toys, and young children simply are not ready for that kind of responsibility. I've seen it play out over and over again.

and pets generally end up either injured, a child ends up injured or frightened after being scratched, and stressed out parents feel like they're failed when they call me up sheepishly or embarrassed because they want to return the animal after a few days. And that's why many rescues, including mine, don't generally adopt out to families with kids under the age of five. It's nothing to do with you personally, but I don't care how many times you tell me how responsible your four-year-old is.

it's probably just not safe or going to be successful for either the child or the pet. So today I want to walk you through the five big reasons why waiting until your child is a bit older is going to be a lot better choice for everyone involved. Reason number one is that kids under the age of probably seven really can't handle that kind of responsibility. And seven, I think, is really actually pushing it. Many parents believe that getting a

is gonna teach their child responsibility or get them on a schedule. But the reality is a three or four and probably even a five year old can't even reliably brush their own teeth or potty and wipe their butts or get dressed without getting help. So expecting them to feed, walk or scoop up after a dog is pretty unrealistic. And what ends up happening is this responsibility ends up falling on

the pet parent who takes on most of the household responsibilities, which is probably you, which is why you're listening to this episode. You're already exhausted. So instead of teaching responsibility, what you're doing is you're just making more work for yourself. From a rescue perspective, we've seen countless count, and I can't even count the number of surrenders where parents just came out and admitted, look, either the kids lost interest.

Amy Castro (03:11.777)
We couldn't keep up with them and the kids. We thought it would be a good idea. Then the dog got big. It started to become a problem. Little kids and pets, especially puppies and small kittens, are just not a good fit. Reason number two are the many, safety risks for small children. Kids under the age of five are the highest risk group for pet-related injuries. In fact, pediatric data shows that preschoolers are the most common age group

for people that are treated in the emergency room for dog bites. And most of them come from their own family dogs. And I will tell you from personal experience, we had this happen. We had a dog named Bonnie, and we got a puppy when Bonnie was probably about two years old, named Clyde. And I don't know all the details of what happened, but Bonnie, Clyde, and my daughter Kelsey, who was probably about four at the time, were unattended, unsupervised.

while I was in the shower. Next thing I know, Kelsey is standing in the shower screaming bloody murder with blood pouring down her face that Bonnie had bit her in the face and found out afterwards that basically she had gone over and kind of thrown herself down on Bonnie when she was sleeping. I am quite sure that Bonnie thought that Kelsey was the puppy and she just turned around and bit as a reflex. Unfortunately, it ended up with not only an emergency room visit,

but stitches and plastic surgery. And she's very lucky that she didn't lose her eye or her nose because it was very close to both. know, toddlers do unpredictable things and parents, I don't care. And I've had parents tell me all the time, their kids are gentle. They're always supervising. You cannot always be supervising your toddler and toddlers are scary to pets.

They move in an unpredictable way, they squeal, they grab. We had a dog that luckily didn't bite, a toddler stuck a crayon down its ears. They hug too tight, dogs don't even like to be hugged by adults, let alone a squealing toddler coming at them. And in those situations, even the gentlest pets can react defensively if they're startled, if they're cornered, or if they get hurt.

Amy Castro (05:29.289)
A single bite or scratch can leave not only physical scars, but emotional scars on you as a parent and on your child. know, one dog bite can turn into a lifetime fear of dogs. And I've also, from a rescue perspective again, I've seen good dogs surrendered after one bite incident, not because the family didn't want to make it work, but because

they just weren't willing to take that risk with their children. And to be perfectly honest, looking at most of those scenarios, the match was not fair from the very start. The dog was already at a disadvantage. The dog was adopted into a situation that it shouldn't have been put in in the first place. And another element from the rescue perspective is that once a dog has bitten, even if you could, which you can't,

100 % say it was completely the problem, the responsibility of the humans and that the dog is a really good dog. The bottom line is the dog is a dog who has bitten a person and bitten a child. And so trying to find a home for that dog, the liability that goes along with trying to rehome a dog like that is really, really difficult. And so you are gonna be in the position

of trying to find somebody to take your dog off of your hands and try to do the right thing for your dog and it's going to be 10 times tougher than you think it's going to be. And in many instances, the final option that that family has is to euthanize their own dog, which is incredibly sad and again, a situation that should never have happened in the first place.

Reason number three has to do with safety risks also, but safety risk for the pets. know, many pet parents believe that, you know, the dog is going to love the attention from the kids. Well, like I mentioned before, the story about the dog that had the crayon shoved down his ear canal. Toddlers do unpredictable things and they often will hurt pets, even though they're not intending to do so. They pull tails, they poke eyes, they drop toys on dogs, they...

Amy Castro (07:38.752)
pound on them, they climb on them. I mean, don't even get me started about the videos out there on the internet of people letting their toddlers and videotaping it, basically abusing the dog and thinking that that's cute or funny and the dog is tolerating it. They may not mean harm, but animals do get injured. And puppies and kittens especially are fragile. They can easily be hurt. And if you...

are lucky, the worst thing that's gonna happen is that the dog or the cat is never gonna want anything to do with your child after that. I tell this to people all the time that wanna adopt kittens for small children. They can't even properly hold a kitten without strangling it or dangling it or hurting it in some way. They chase them and frighten them. And then you are gonna basically end up with a cat that never comes out from under the bed.

and it creates long-term behavior problems for the animal. So from a rescue perspective, like I said, I've seen cats shut down completely in home with toddlers. I've seen kittens killed in homes with toddlers. I've seen kittens turned into cats that never come out from under the bed, that are aggressive with toddlers and scratch, fearful dogs that are reactive towards children because they've never had any safety or any space from children.

You know, if nothing else, think about the fact that staring a dog right in their eyes is a very aggressive behavior for you to be exhibiting. And what choice does a toddler have who is eye level with a dog but to stare them in the eyes all the time? It's just gonna happen.

Reason number four is that in most instances, especially if you're looking to have a puppy or a kitten that quote unquote grows up together with your child, you know, that's it's a complete developmental mismatch to match a child who is loud, unpredictable and impulsive with

Amy Castro (09:41.181)
a creature, a puppy or a kitten, that needs calm, consistent training and structure. There's just something there that's not gonna work. And people that say, my child is more calm, my child is not loud. You know, there may be some exceptions, but I can tell you again, from a rescue perspective, we're not gonna see it and we're not gonna take the risk. And in reality, in most situations, what ends up happening is instead of truly growing up together, you just get double the chaos. You're already

you know, juggling a toddler who screams and runs around your house. Now you've got a puppy that's chasing them and encouraging the screaming and running and nipping and encouraging crying. And it just is a recipe for accidents. It's definitely not a recipe for bonding. And it's just not something that young dogs usually bounce back well from. If anything, it creates more behavior problems in younger dogs after just a few months. And those are

That's usually when they end up getting returned because the environment, the ideal environment that a puppy should grow up in, one that has structure, that is calm, that is controlled, was just simply too overwhelming. So they're out of control and then they just turn into 80 pounds of out of control and people don't want that in their house and then they want to return it to the rescue. And a final thing to consider too is think about what you remember prior to the age of four years old.

You don't really remember much from that time. So thinking that your toddler and your puppy are going to have these memorable experiences that they're actually gonna remember later on in life and somehow are gonna affect their development are probably pretty slim. More than likely, if they remember anything, it's gonna be something that's negative, a bad incident that occurred or just constantly being bothered by the puppy, bitten and nipped by the puppy.

jumped on by the puppy or scratched by the kitten. And finally, reason number five, and I've kind of alluded to this already, but early negative experiences can definitely last a lifetime, both for animals and for pets. a lot of times parents will think, if I get them an animal now, they're gonna love animals forever. Well, not if they get bitten, scratched or frightened.

Amy Castro (12:01.113)
at a young age, if anything, that's gonna make a young child grow up into a fearful adult. Any person that I've ever met as an adult human being that is afraid of dogs or afraid of cats, 80 to 90 % of the time, it's because they had a bad incident as a small child. And on the flip side, pets that are forced into constant toddler chaos, or as I had a parent come into a shelter where I was volunteering one time and I turned her away.

who is looking for a dog that could handle being manhandled by her wild three-year-old, you know, it can turn into a lifelong fear or aggression towards kids. So instead of building these healthy, lovely bonds that you think that you're going to build because you see this image on Instagram that is a moment captured in time, you're basically risking starting the relationship off between your child and that pet on a foundation of fear and mistrust.

So we've actually been in the situation where because of bad experiences with children, a dog is now labeled as no kids, can't be around kids. And just like the dog that has bitten anybody, a dog that is labeled as being unsuitable to be around children eliminates a huge percentage of the population that might potentially adopt that animal because of one early bad experience.

So now, this mean that your child can't have animals in their lifetime until they're way older? know, absolutely not. They're, number one, for every rule there's an exception. And in the end, it will be between you and the organization where you're getting the pet to determine if the pet is a good fit. I would just ask you to consider your child's readiness for interacting with a pet and their...

I have seen many people come into rescues and shelters that they are just bound and determined to get their child a pet. And the kid is terrified and there's nothing I can do even with the nicest animal to convince that child to even come over and pet it. They're crying, they're screaming, they want another hide behind their parents leg. That child is not ready to take on that pet.

Amy Castro (14:18.555)
And so it may just mean that your child is not ready and that maybe your child needs to wait till they're six or seven or eight. It just depends. And there are safe and positive ways where animals and children can build early bonds. One way would be volunteering as a family at a shelter, finding a shelter in your area that allows that. It could be fostering short term with age appropriate boundaries. know, maybe you foster.

very small kittens and you they're not really at risk for swatting or things like that. And you let your child help you bottle feed the kitten or hold it for a moment on their lap or whatever it might be supervised. But it's a very different and a much easier controlled situation than having a kitten that's running around the house that's gonna get stepped on or dragged around by its neck. You could spend time with family and friends who have pets. And that's also a great way to

assess how ready your child is to interact. If you're constantly having to tell them, be nice, be gentle, and saying that over and over and over again, imagine what's gonna happen when you're not in the room, when you've gone in the kitchen to cook dinner, and you've left your child, which you shouldn't, unattended in the living room with the pet. Starting your child's relationship with animals in these limited and safe environments, give them a chance to learn empathy and respect for animals without putting

pets or your family at risk. And then when your child's a little older and ready, you can be in a better position to bring a pet home in a way that truly works for everybody. So if this episode gave you something to think about, I'm glad because I always feel like the bad guy and I get a lot of people who get angry at me and maybe you're angry at me listening to this episode and you've all along the way said, my kid's not like that. I would never let that happen.

The bottom line is it does happen and it happens way more than you would think. And you know what? Your child is not worth risking in these types of situations. So I'm hoping that it gives you some food to thought. And even if you're not in a situation where you are considering a pet for your child or your kids are older, share this episode with a friend or family member who's considering a new pet for their young kids as just

Amy Castro (16:39.794)
part of the research that you should be doing to make that decision because the decision should be for a lifetime, not just until it becomes inconvenient or until, God forbid, a terrible incident happens. So I'd love to hear your personal experiences. Did your family get a pet when your kids were little and how did that go? Leave us a comment or message me and maybe we'll feature your story on a future episode on this topic because I don't think we're done talking about this. I think it's something that can't be stressed enough.

And finally, just remember pets are family. They're not toys. They're not gifts. And kids under five are just not developmentally ready for the level of responsibility that comes with having a pet. And waiting just a few years can make the difference between a heartbreaking surrender or a life altering incident and a lifelong bond that your child will remember in a positive way forever.

Thanks for listening to the Pet Parent Hotline. If you enjoyed the show, don't keep it to yourself. Text a friend right now with a link and tell them I've got a show that you need to hear. And ask them to let you know what they think. And remember, your pet's best life starts with you living yours. So be sure to take good care of yourself this week and your pets.