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Teaching Kids Responsibility With Pets: The Saga of Three Little Mice
By Dawn Miller.
It's a new year and already some of our resolutions are showing some strain - and we're not even out of January. One of my husband's goals is to teach his 15-year old daughter responsibility - he thought perhaps a pet might do the job. Little did we know what we were getting into.
Over the past year we've noticed she's lost more things than we'd like, not planned ahead like she used to for her activities, and generally become quite disorganized. She lost her house keys, a camera and a cell phone. She routinely scrambles to find her swimsuit before a meet or clothing for school. We've helped her organize her things - and even some of her friends have tried - but nothing has worked.
Admittedly, this child has more than a few strikes not in her favor. Her mother's house has looked like a tornado hit it for years - with stuff coating every surface, including the floor, all the time. She splits her time between homes with different values about mess and personal responsibility for caring for possessions.
I am by no means a clean-freak. I can let a lot of things slide - but I draw the line at trash on the living room floor and dirty dishes under the sofa. Early in our marriage, my husband and I took the containment approach - drawing the line at the threshold to the kids' bedrooms and enforcing a "clean up after yourself" policy in the common areas.
We may have a situation we can all live with, but that hasn't helped my stepdaughter learn how to take care of her things or be organized. My husband felt like he needed to do something to help her learn to take responsibility for her possessions and for managing her life. Then he hit on an idea.
While at the pet store picking out two fish to give me for Christmas, she saw some cute little mice. She was enthralled and begged to have them. So he talked to me about it, and then bought her three little mice for Christmas as a surprise. There they were, the little rodent trio, squeaking away in my bathroom (in my tub where I take bubble baths no less), the night before Christmas.
She was delighted and squealed with joy when they made their grand entrance. One of her brothers helped her assemble their gerbil complex and settle them into their new digs. We got our money's worth out of the first day - with the kids busily naming the mice and eyeballing their every move.
There was Fetch, the blond one who kept the peace, Vegas who picked on everyone else, and Mustang, the tiniest mouse who ran for hours on the gerbil wheel. We hoped that her natural empathy with animals would help her learn some responsibility and time management.
But the romance quickly wore off. Her enthusiasm for cleaning their cage waned. Vegas, the mean mouse, died in a mysterious accident underneath the gerbil wheel. My husband called me at work to ask if he should buy a replacement mouse and not tell her about his departure from the living. We decided no, she's too old for that.
Even with only two mice left - mice smell - a lot. Especially if you don't clean their cage very often. She put off cleaning their cage all week - until finally it came down to a time crunch, with her racing to the movies with a friend, rushing home to toss food in their cage and then bolting toward the door for a swim meet.
Her dad had words with her about her lack of responsibility on the way out - it was not pretty - and he put the mice and their cage in the backyard just to get the odor out of the house. I felt sorry for the little creatures and gave them a cloth to keep warm and eventually brought them back inside. I cleaned out the mouse cage a tiny bit to dilute the smell but deliberately tried not to do much, figuring I wouldn't help matters by doing my stepdaughter's job for her.
She came back to tidy their cage and make amends with her dad - a good sign - considering it wasn't even her day to be at our house. We hope she's learning that agreeing to care for something means cleaning up even when it's smelly and not just when it's cute.
I think we've all realized that it takes a lot more than just having a pet to ingrain responsibility - it takes support from the adults in the family too. She's going to need reminders from us and we'll need to help her think through how her choices about her free time affect her ability to care for them.
Maybe we'll all learn something from three little mice.
Copyright © Dawn Miller. A thirty-something wife and stepmom of three, Dawn writes a bi-weekly column on life in stepfamilies at TheStepfamilyLife.com. Website links about stepfamilies, a free newsletter and book reviews are available. Reprinted with permission.
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