Children are fascinated by animals, and they love pets. Every child, when he or she reaches a certain age, will want to own a pet.

Unless you have always been a pet lover and owned a pet before your kids came along, you may be thinking something like what I thought when my children first asked me if they could have a pet, "Not over my dead body!" 

As if I didn't have enough to do already.

And then they grew a little older, and they persuaded me to buy them one rabbit each, and they promised me until they were blue in the face that they would take care of their pets. 

So I relented.

The surprise was on me: my children learned several meaningful life lessons and skills from owning and caring for their rabbits, and I became convinced that no child should experience childhood without owning a pet, too. 

Lesson One

The first lesson they learned was responsibility. I made it clear from day one that I would, under no circumstances, care for the rabbits, and I put the onus entirely upon them to ensure the rabbits were fed and had their cage cleaned out once a week.

I don't remember my children ever failing to meet this responsibility, nor do I remember the rabbits ever going without food. 

Lesson Two

I instructed them to sort out who did what and when they did it, which meant they had to practice the skill of negotiation, which they did brilliantly.

They set up a schedule where my son, who was a morning person, fed the rabbits in the morning. My daughter, who has always been a night owl, fed them in the evening. They took turns cleaning the cage out too; one cleaned it out one week, and the other, the next.

Lesson Three

They also had to pay for their rabbit's food out of their weekly allowance. To do this, they learned how to budget their money to keep their rabbits fed.

Lesson Four

Because I worked and homeschooled, my schedule was tight. The pet feed store was about a half an hour away. My children had to remind me in advance when they would need a ride to the pet feed store to buy more rabbit pellets and hay, so I could schedule it into my week. 

I think this would fall under "planning," no?

Needless to say, they fell in love with their rabbits. Stella and Alfie were a source of childhood joy for them; they adored these little creatures.

Lesson Five

They learned how babies were born, too, and witnessed the maternal instinct in action. One day, Stella, the black bunny, started doing funny things in the cage. She was moving the hay around and making a pile of it inside the little house the rabbits had for shelter in their cage. 

A few hours later, we discovered her giving birth to six little bunnies. My daughter had kept saying that she thought she was pregnant, but I kept thinking that was impossible. 

Wishful thinking would be more like it.

Lesson Six

As the bunnies grew, my children gave them each a name based on their particular personalities or physical characteristics. There was one bunny that was the runt of the group, and they named her Shadow.

I loved the sense of poetry in her name; two little kids naming the runt of the litter Shadow. I put this lesson under “observation,” a vital skill in life if you are to understand, not who people pretend to be, but who they really are.

Lesson Seven

They learned about death, too. We went overseas one year for three months and left our bunnies under the care of some friends. About halfway through our trip we received a phone call that the little Shadow had died. 

Grief-stricken, my children discovered that death follows life and that their bunny was now in bunny Heaven. I explained to them that we are given gifts in our lives, and sometimes those gifts are taken away, and we need to learn to deal with the loss and trust that everything is as it should be. 

And I convinced them that Shadow was happy where ever she was, and they accepted her death gracefully.

Lesson Eight, Part One

When we returned home, we found that the white Rabbit, Alfie, had funny bumps in his ears. Off to the vet we went with poor little Alfie shaking uncontrollably in his rabbit carrier The vet announced that he had ear mites and gave us some liquid medicine that needed to be administered two times every day. 

My daughter, a natural caregiver, took it upon herself to give Alfie his daily and nightly doses. We read about ear mites and how much discomfort Alfie was in, and we all felt pain for him. 

We bemoaned the fact that it took us several weeks before we realized he had even been in extreme discomfort, which made us feel even worse.

Children nurture their natural compassion and empathy by caring for a pet. Little Alfie was prone to a disorder that cost us $1000 at the vet the first time he succumbed to it. After that, I did a little research and learned that we could treat him naturally at home. 

I cannot count how many nights, over the years, we had to take turns keeping a watch on Alfie and giving him natural medicine until his system kicked back in. Sometimes we would even watch the sunrise together, and the immense relief and elation we felt when he bounced back was indescribable. 

Lesson Eight, Part Two

My kids even wrote a story about Alfie and Stella from a rabbit's perspective.

The rabbits were the civilized animals who were constantly being interrupted by these strange looking creatures who wanted to pick them up and hold them every day and who tried to put funny restraints on them and make them walk in the backyard (bunny harnesses; we never could get them to move) when they would rather eat and lie in the sun. 

From Alfie and Stella's eyes, we learned about the daily habits and peculiarities of my children's lives. 

Lesson Nine

And then we moved. We drove cross-country to Pennsylvania; me, two teenagers, and two rabbits.

It was a long haul for the rabbits, and I wasn't even sure they'd survive the trip, but I took the chance anyway. I knew my children would grow homesick, and their rabbits would make it less so, which both proved true.

What I didn't anticipate was having to make the move all over again, but we did. Only this time, my children and the rabbits were older, and we realized that the rabbits would probably not survive the journey back to California.

So we found a farm with a kind woman who loved caring for animals, and my kids put the rabbits in their new cage. Feeling that they were under good care, we turned around and headed back to the West Coast.

And that was that. A heavy-hearted but brief parting of ways.

Lesson Ten

There was one thing I didn't mention. The rabbits saved me from something I remember my parents having to do that was very awkward. 

Thanks to a book on rabbit care, my children learned about the birds and the bees. They put two and two together, and voila.

One day the lightbulb went off, and they came running to me and said, "Mom, we just figured something out...!"

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Elizabeth Y. Hanson is a homeschooling thought-leader and the founder of Smart Homeschooler.

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