It goes without saying – choosing to raise a child in this modern times is indeed a challenge. As a parent, you’d always desire what’s best for your kids, which entails doing a lot of planning, budgeting, and, believe it or not, even training. True enough, to be a parent is not an easy role to take, especially becoming a mother to your children or soon-to-be.
Maybe, you’ve also thought like this at one point, “if only there were free trial periods.” Even though this is truly impossible to happen, there’s still another way for you to prepare yourself for the responsibility of parenthood: owning a puppy. As strange as it seems, a family dog can better prepare you when dealing with family decisions later on.
How? Well, this article enumerates some reasons why having your first pet dog can help make you a better parent and might contain the answers you are looking for. Read on to learn more!
Teaches You How to Be Patient
Dogs, especially when they’re still young, require a lot of care. You have to prepare their supplies, take them on a vaccination and puppy worming schedule, feed, bathe, and most of all, give them a great deal of your attention. Most of the time, you might find yourself waking up in the middle of the night to soothe your crying puppy or let them go to the bathroom.
In addition, you are also faced with the challenge of teaching them to walk properly on a leash, how to follow commands, even the ABCs of potty training. These things require plenty of time and effort. Hence, it will allow you to understand them and be a lot more patient than you were before.
This may not be what you expected when you took one home, but the experience is almost the same when caring for a baby. Like caring for an infant, you may also need to stay awake throughout the night and teach them how to talk, walk, and read as they grow. However, the transition will not be as drastic as it could have been if you haven’t experienced those things (with a pup) already.
Helps Strengthen Family Bonds
Moms take significant, not to mention complex responsibilities in the household – from being the world’s best chef to becoming the best teacher. True, a mother’s role is constantly evolving to fit with modern standards. But, it also can’t be denied that their importance in preserving good family relationships should be recognised.
Managing the family entails maintaining the physical and emotional aspects of her family’s life and creating a lively environment where a healthy interaction can occur. When you are faced with these roles, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and be scared. However, preparing yourself by having a trial run with a puppy can come to your rescue.
When it comes to family activities, a pet dog is often the centre of attention. Everyone takes them for a walk around the neighbourhood, gets down on the floor and plays with them, or shares the responsibility of bathing, grooming, and feeding them. Believe it or not, all these interactions can help build stronger and closer family bonds.
Learn to Appreciate Quality Communication
Dogs certainly can’t talk and tell you what they want or what’s wrong. However, they have their ways to get their points across and communicate non-verbally with their human counterparts. Of course, this will ultimately depend if their owners know how to listen and observe well, too.
In child-rearing, most studies about parent-child relationships suggest that a healthy connection always starts with quality communication. Like training a dog through clear hand signals, you can also better communicate with your child by being clear with your messages to avoid confusion and cause serious communication problems.
Helps You Make Important Health Decisions
By observing subtle signs that your dog is feeling sick, you will soon recognise when to seek professional help. You will also start to understand dog health classes, measure and recognise a medicine and be conscious of what to and what not to feed them. This can be a good training ground when it’s already time to replace these with health knowledge about children.
Offers Benefits for Your Kids
Besides teaching parents, pet dogs can also teach your children important life lessons as they face the real world. These include being responsible, compassionate, patient, loyal, among many others. Dogs can also help your child improve their social skills, build their confidence, and sometimes offer them comfort when they don’t feel like interacting with people.
Takeaway
Although there are still so many obvious differences when caring for a dog and a child, you can still use the experiences you had as a fur mom. The results might be slightly different, but the rules are the same for both sides. All in all, with the reasons mentioned above, it is pretty apparent that owning a pet can surely help you become a supermom and a better parent.
