Animals Are NOT Behaviour Management Tools

My 65-year old auntie has a habit of using the 'scare tactic' on our children, and animals seem to be her scare tactic tool of choice.

“Don’t touch the cat! He’ll scratch you.”

“Don’t go there! The cicak will bite you, you know. They like to go behind the cupboards.”

This lizard thing got to our older son. He used to cry whenever he heard the “chk-chk-chk” sounds of the lizard. It didn’t occur to us at first that he was crying because he heard a lizard and already had negative associations with this harmless little creature. Obviously the scare tactic worked!

Then for a long time, he didn’t seem too bothered by lizards and we thought that he was over them.

Until last night. On our way up to the bathroom for his regular pre-bedtime ritual suddenly he let out this piercing scream and stopped dead in his tracks.

“EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEKKKKKKKKKK!!! Cicak!!”

It was this tiny little baby lizard making its way up the wall, trying to escape its predators (i.e. us) and just get on with its life. I’m sure it was more scared of us than we were of it. Unfortunately, it’d been demonized as this fierce creature that bites little boys just because they go to certain areas of the house where they shouldn’t.

Another one is dogs. Don’t approach the dog, she says, he’ll bite you. Or, Don’t go near the dog, he’ll chase you until you fall down.

Aargh! While we don’t particularly want our children to get friendly with dogs and start petting them, there’s no reason to teach him that all dogs are absolute monsters that will bite.

Generally, we favour the matter-of-fact approach. "If you pull his tail and it hurts him, he will probably defend himself by scratching you." It also teaches them to respect the animal and not treat it like a toy.

So far, so good. Both our children are not scared of our cat, Harun, and love to play with him. In fact, Abang even comforted Harun when we had to take Harun to the vet.

"It's ok, Harun," he said, "you feel better, Dr Wong give you ubat."

It's very satisfying to see they are confident enough to play with Harun (but under adult supervision). They also love playing with their auntie's cat (called Rabbit, but that's a blog for another day). Occasionally when either cat or child gets a little too spirited, then play time is over.

And that's ok because each knows how to walk away from each other.