5 yr old mean to pets

[Raene]

My daughter has grown up with pets, but recently she has started being really mean to them. She pats our cat way too hard, she teases our rats, and she squeaks in obnoxious ways that hurt the animal's ears. We've asked her in several ways to stop, lately not in the nicest of ways, and she'll stop for 2 minutes or so and then goes right back to this behavior.

What else can we do? We're planning on adopting out two of our rats, one of which is hers, but we can't just remove all the pets for my daughter. That wouldn't help her learn and obviously they are a part of the family.

This doesn't sound like such a big deal now that I'm typing it, but to witness the behavior is really difficult and annoying, and my DH and I are both to the point of yelling at her and physically removing her from the pets area. We usually tell her when she's especially mean that she's going to have to stay away from the rat cage, the cat, etc, for the rest of the evening, which makes her cry, but then she "forgets" and goes up to them several minutes later.

[Bluegoat]

Hmm, my first thought is to treat it the same way as if she was hurting another child.

[Raene]

Originally Posted by Bluegoat

Hmm, my first thought is to treat it the same way as if she was hurting another child.

I don't have more than one child...so I don't really know what that would be like. She's never hurt another child friend, b/c she's usually the one having her feelings hurt, but if she did, I would suggest we leave and separate the two. I don't know what else could be done.

[Bell]

Is she more active than usual and has been kind of angry, irritated these days. Her agressiveness must have a reason. You have to find out. It seems to be a way of expressing her feelings.

[BarnMomma]

We're working on this too with DS who is 18 mo. We have 2 cats, 2 doves, 1 button quail, a turtle and a horse. (whew!) It's a lot of different types of physical contact. For example, DS comes to the barn with us all the time and his "job" while there is to help groom her and give her the carrot after I ride. He has learned that affection to a horse is a nice firm pat on the neck. Um, but not so much the cats or the birds. He "horse pats" the cats and of course they run away wondering what they heck they did wrong. We're working on creating definite gestures for each animal.

But yes, at times he seems to get joy out of making them run away in pain. Or he bops the doves on the heads very hard. (like that stupid bunny foo-foo song) My biggest concern, besides the cats or birds getting hurt, is that one day he will try this rough housing on the horse one day and will himself get hurt.

I"m thinking at this age it's just investigating casue and effect. Pets are boring...when you bop them they DO something. They jump, run, cry...something. It could be funny for DC. They might not understand that it is painful or scary for the pet.

I think over time they will learn and until then no unsupervied pet time.