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Don't Flush the Fish! - What Parents Should Know When A Child's Pet Dies

By Deborah Antinory
Director of Therapy at the Davison Counseling Center in New Jersey, professional speaker and author

(BASKING RIDGE, N.J.) What can a parent do when their child’s pet dies? Many parents buy pets for their children to teach them how to handle responsibility, but when those pets die, it is often a child’s first experience with death. The way that parents handle pet loss has long-reaching effects for children as they begin to form beliefs and ways to cope with death.

"I say not to flush the fish because many children feel that the way you treat their pet’s death is how you would treat them if they were really ill or dying," says Deborah Antinori, licensed therapist and author of the award-winning audio book Journey Through Pet Loss (ISBN # 0-9668848-1-7, YokoSpirit Publications, ©2000, $19.95). "Parents need to show they care about the pet because the child cares."

Pet loss provides a golden opportunity to teach anyspiritual, religious and philosophical values parents have. It also opens up the door to talk about other losses that have occurred that children may bring up — the death of a grandmother or friend, or fears about the impending death of an elderly family member. All of these areas of concern provide opportunities to teach children about the most difficult aspects of life, those aspects they will encounter with more frequency as they age

Tips on discussing pet loss with children:

  • Give kids an opportunity to express their feelings through words or drawing
  • Have a memorial service of some kind
  • Take time to teach about the cycle of life with children’s books that deal with pet loss and read themwith your child
  • Create a special pet memorial album of pictures

Antinori also recognizes that parents themselves are surprised at how devastating it can be when their family pet dies and other people don’t understand their grief.

"When it comes to the death of a pet, there’s a tendency for people to minimize someone’s loss, because they don’t have animals and don’t understand the attachment," says Antinori. "Through the book I wanted to offer something to people who are being given insensitive advice such as, ‘It was only an animal, you’ll get another one.’"

Submitted by:

Elaine Froelich, Publicist
Phenix & Phenix Literary Publicists, Inc.
2525 West Anderson Lane, Suite 540
Austin, Texas 78757
(voice) 512.478.2028 X 206
(fax) 512.478.2117
elaine@bookpros.com
http://www.bookpros.com

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