Growing gains

Teamwork builds, family bonds strengthen when children tend to animals

Debra Melani, Special to the News

Published June 26, 2006 at midnight

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The smell of pancakes lingers as Michal Ford grabs a bowl of table scraps from the kitchen counter and scurries out the door. It's 9:30 on an already-hot June morning, and she and her sisters are getting a late start.

The 16-year-old tosses yesterday's leftover salad and fruit pieces on the ground, attracting a growing flock of chickens. Her sister Rachel, 14, releases a miniature horse from its stall in a nearby barn and begins her feeding and watering chores.

Meanwhile, Leah, 11, feeds the family's two Labradors, who greet her with nudging noses and wagging tails.

For the Ford girls, it's the same hour-long routine every morning and again each night. Some kids might call it torture. Summer is for sleeping in and watching Cartoon Network, right?

But as health experts worry about dwindling family time and childhood obesity in a generation attached to video-game controllers, giving children animal-focused responsibilities could be a parent's best move, youth development and child psychology experts agree.

"We're certainly not raising couch-potato kids," said Jeff Goodwin, Colorado's director of 4-H youth development programs, who notes that a growing majority of 4-H members are not rural residents (see sidebar). "We're raising kids who are doing useful things."

4-H is planning a recruitment effort in the Denver area this fall, Goodwin said.

Animal care, whether with livestock or house pets, can aid children emotionally and physically and help teach important lessons about life and relationships, psychologists say. And the best part? The kids won't even notice.

"All kids love animals, of course, so that's rewarding in itself," said Vicki Ford, whose daughters and 8-year-old son, Tim, help care for four cats, two dogs, five horses and more than two dozen chickens on their 18-acre property near Lyons. "You don't have to motivate them. They enjoy it."

The mood during chore time confirms her assessment.

"It's like a humongous place of pets," said Michal, navigating a maze of gates and fences, retrieving a hose, filling a chicken feeder and shooing hens from underfoot.

Rachel jokes about Grace, the miniature horse, as she feeds her. "She's really old and grouchy. She lives with a companion chicken named Claudia, because she gets lonely and because Claudia is a dysfunctional chicken who can't live with the others."

Learning and dealing with the personality traits of their animals offer lessons in observation, problem- solving and compassion, Vicki Ford said, using the grumpy horse as an example. "They care for her anyway. They can look beyond the negative traits. And they consider the animals' needs before theirs."

The Ford kids might be less enthusiastic on winter mornings, when the temperature dips to 10 below zero and the water is frozen. "But they never complain about taking care of the animals," their mother said.

Gina Elliott, whose family has raised chickens, pigs and cows at their home near Boulder since her children were young, said her kids were surprisingly intuitive with their animals.

"They could just look at one of their calves across the pasture and say, 'Mom, so-and-so doesn't look right. Can you keep an eye on her when we're at school?' " said Elliott, whose kids are young adults now.

Tending animals also built teamwork and family bonds, Elliott said. Her four kids have always called on each other in a bind, even through college and into adulthood, she said. "They know that they can depend on each other no matter what, and that's pretty darn important."

Animal care can pull families together, said Carol Beresford, a child psychiatrist with the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, noting the increasing use of horse therapy for families of children with special needs.

"If everyone is interested and active, it can be a tremendous family thing," Beresford said.

Hard work and perseverance are mandatory when caring for lots of animals, which can lead to family and fitness time.

Rachel chats as she hoists a 75-plus-pound hay bale with striking ease for her lean, teenage frame. Family hay days can involve eight hours of loading and hauling the heavy bales, she said.

Children also learn the importance of exercise for their animals, which leads to family exercise, Vicki Ford said. "We go on lots of family walks at night. The girls sometimes ride alongside with the horses."

Biology lessons abound. Children with animals often diagnose and treat veterinary problems. From giving worm medicine and vaccines to the horses to recording symptoms and vet visits for all the animals, the Ford children have lots of experience.

"One of the more interesting things I've learned is how to tell a horse's age by looking at its teeth," said Michal, who developed a card system to track all of the animals' care. She plans to go into medicine.

Animals also can provide parents a teaching tool for some intense life lessons. Gina and Dave Elliott's children helped with calving at a young age, and the Fords watched the birth of their horse, Sweety.

From a young age, her children have had "a pretty innocent view" of mating and reproduction, Vicki Ford said. "They see that as really normal and natural."

Animals inevitably provide children with another of life's lessons: death. It's tough when the kids lose an animal, but they learn about the food chain, life cycles and predator-prey relationships, Elliott and Ford said.

"Sometimes the best experience for them, as kind of a precursor to a more traumatic loss, would be the loss of a pet," said Dr. Jeffrey Dolgan, a psychologist with Children's Hospital of Denver.

Raising animals also can offer business and finance lessons. While cooling off in the barn, the Ford girls open a refrigerator packed full of egg cartons, explaining how they date and sell them.

"We save the egg money for family vacations," Rachel said.

For the Elliotts, their oldest son's inquisitive mind helped start a family business. When Ben was an eighth-grader, he noticed a growing demand for natural beef. He asked his parents why they didn't promote their beef as natural, since it was. So the teenager took on the task of marketing, posting signs at school and church. The result: Colorado's Best Beef, near Boulder.

Whether it's livestock or house pets, parents must be sure the kids are developmentally ready before putting them in charge of animal care, for the kids' and the animals' sake, Dolgan and Beresford emphasized.

"Very young kids just aren't capable of providing good care yet," Beresford said.

Ford and her husband, Bill, cared for the animals until they taught the kids the tasks, slowly turning over responsibilities based on age. For instance, Tim is responsible only for some fish-feeding and indoor cat care.

The moms also make sure their kids have plenty of other activities: music lessons, reading time, social events.

Sometimes peers struggle to understand their animal-chore-focused life, Rachel said. "A lot of our friends couldn't imagine spending that much time on anything but a computer." But they wouldn't trade it for a thing, the sisters agreed.

"You get to know your animals, and that makes it more fun," Rachel said. "It's almost like having another set of friends."

Advantages of 4-H

In 2005, a survey of preteens and teens randomly selected from around the state compared non-4-H students with 4-H members. It found that 4-H members were more likely to:

• earn A's in school;

• be community and school leaders;

• feel useful and important;

• empathize with others;

• express compassion and caring;

• give money or time to charitiesSource: Colorado State University Cooperative Extension

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