A thing I have often considered is after raising a few dogs in my life how do those skills I have learned carry over for raising children if at all?
In my own personal opinion I am confident that quite a few skills I have learnt from raising my dogs are also very useful for raising children.
Below I am going to cover some things I have done when raising and teaching my dogs that also carry over in their unique way when I was raising and teaching my children.
Training & Teaching
As I am sure you are aware when you are raising your dog you are always teaching them and training them whether that is too sit or stay or that they shouldn’t bark, you always have something in the back of your mind on how to tackle it.
For me when my dog barks for attention I rarely give him the attention he wants because this reinforces that barking will get him what he wants so it’s something I definitely think is important to avoid doing in this case.
That same mindset is applied when raising children – when your young child cries for attention or something of the like you want to ignore it just like you would do with the dog barking.
Another example would be separating your dogs from a place they shouldn’t be like using an indoor dog gate so they can’t enter an area in your home. That same approach can be used for your children, teaching them like playing at the top of the staircase is dangerous and that they shouldn’t do it for example.
That same mindset and the same teaching and learning pattern that I have learnt from teaching and training my dog can be applied in an almost identical way with my child. Perhaps if I hadn’t had any dogs before it wouldn’t have been something I thought about. Though raising my pups taught me that and gave me that mentality which I think was a positive influence for everyone involved.
Health and Wealth
Anytime your dog has been unwell you immediately would take them to get checked up with the vet, sometimes this immediate reaction was unwarranted and could have been simply solved from online research or something similar.
Learning some of these patterns from taking care of your dog and taking them to the vet taught me about how to deal with a situation like that and the whole process of taking care of your dog. That same pattern could be applied when raising your child.
Sometimes overthinking things can be bad or how you deal with them can also be wrong, but some of the things I learnt along the way can be carried over when I was raising my children, which I believe made me a better parent in the long run.
Calmness
When raising a dog or even a child you learn that the dog or the child like to follow after you. When I was raising my dog I learnt that when I was calm my dog was also calm more often than not. Of course this also works both ways that if you are hyper and excited they will also follow after you.
The point of this being that I learnt when raising my dog is that he takes tendencies from me and copies me. This is even more prevalent in children so it’s an important aspect I picked up from bringing up my dogs – do as you want them to do!
Patience
Probably the most important trait that I learnt from bringing up a puppy is patience. Anyone who has ever brought up a puppy will already know that you need a lot of patience.
When you are raising a puppy it will take lots of repetition to get certain things into their mind and for them to learn effectively, this could be for playing fetch or even the likes of going outside to go poop – point being it takes time, patience and persistence to teach them.
That same principle of course applies to raising your child. For me personally if I hadn’t had that patience from bringing up my dogs it definitely would have been more difficult for me because I wouldn’t have had as much patience than if I hadn’t had them struggles with my puppies.
Point being it was a useful lesson learned and of course helped me both personally and for dealing with some of them similar challenges when I had my own kids.
Conclusion
For me sometimes people ask me if it’s worth having kids and how much of a challenge it is. Then I go on to ask them if they have ever raised a dog because of the multiple parallels between the two.
If they have already comfortably raised a pet then undoubtedly they have learnt a lot when raising their dog that they can carry over when raising their children.
It’s something I recommend for anyone who is unsure about bringing up a child – is to first try raising a dog and if you enjoy that and the skills and experiences that come with it you will also love raising children!
