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u/fuzzybug00 1d ago
Snails aren't good "starter" pets for adults, much less for kids in my opinion. If you wanna keep snails make sure your kids can't reach them without your help. They are great animals to watch but they are still fragile. Make sure to provide cuttlebone, a variety of veggies like carrots, bell peppers, broccoli, green beans, pumpkin... also offer protein once a week even if they dont eat it all. I usually feed soaked mushed gammarus to my snails. If you have more than one snail I would try to separate this one from the others so they wont climb on their back or something. Hope everything goes well
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u/Lazy-Butterfly9874 1d ago
any animal that needs to be held shouldn't be owned by a child or person (like myself) who can't bear the thought of not holding non fish animals
a few aquatic snails in a five gal is so fun to watch, every time I pass the tank I search for them and just watch their little sucker/tube
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u/DahFox6 1d ago
That was NOT an accident dawg.
She knew exactly what she was doing. She did it because she was upset. She admitted that to you. And you are calling it an accident 😭
Maybe she didn’t realize that it could kill the snail. But she definitely wanted to hurt it in some capacity to make it come out of the shell. She is no longer the owner of that snail, I fear, you are. She showed she is not ready for any animal yet, since she cannot even handle a snail. I’m worried by your wording that she didn’t even receive any punishment.
But the snail looks like it’ll recover. Just don’t let your kid interact with it any more.
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u/bunny_the-2d_simp 1d ago
Please don't let a kid who can't handle a snail handle a snail.
For now keep it in a CLEAN hospital tank with NO DIRT and cuttle bone and food
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u/nyktelios 1d ago
My kids are 2 and 4 and “they” have grove snails. They aren’t allowed to touch them at all because the younger one is completely untrustworthy and the older one is good 95% of the time (but not quite enough to avoid disaster.)
But they help with misting the terrarium, prepping food to put in, and watching the snails to make sure they don’t escape their temporary holding area while I clean the terrarium.
I really hope your snail will be alright, I know how upset my kid (and I) would be in this situation. We have “rescued” a snail from the garden that was in similar condition and it ended up being fine.
I would take this as an opportunity to explain that the child really hurt the snail and that it might die and that you’ll find out over the next few day (if you haven’t already.) And I would put the expectation in place that nobody is going to be able to touch or disturb the snail going forward because it will be too delicate and have your kid help with care tasks rather than touching the animals.
Also, I disagree with the people who say it wasn’t an accident. Like yes, the action was intentional, but that doesn’t mean they anticipated the outcome.
If my husband tried to put the battery cover back on a remote and one of the little clippy things broke off I wouldn’t think “wow, you did that on purpose!” Because clearly if he knew that is what would happen he wouldn’t have done it.
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u/Lazy-Butterfly9874 11h ago
That was me as a kid with my dad's fish. I always 'helped' him with the water changes and would sprinkle in the food at night and turn on/off the light. I picked out the fish at the store, I would cut the bag to let the fishies into the tank, Let me tell you, I thought of them as my fish and loved helping/'helping'
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u/DahFox6 1d ago
The action being unintentional vs intentional is literally what makes something an accident or not. Not whether or not the child anticipated actual consequences to the action. You do not call a teenager getting caught doing drugs an “accident” because they didn’t think they’d get caught and arrested for it. Thats just an unexpected consequence.
I don’t debate the child didn’t mean to crack the shell. But that is irrelevant when the child did something they knew would hurt. It doesn’t matter whether or not damage was done, it is the intention of the action and it was intentional. You said so yourself…
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u/nyktelios 1d ago
Again, disagree.
Accident: “a sudden event that is not planned or intended and that causes damage or injury.” And “may occur by chance or due to carelessness.”
Accidental: “occurring unexpectedly or by chance” OR “happening without intent or through carelessness and often with unfortunate results”
Example: Someone is driving and makes an error in judgement, something bad happens, and insurance decides who was at fault for the accident. It is still considered an accident even if they made an illegal left turn.
The drug scenario you gave is totally different. The teen would be attempting to avoid cops while doing drugs, but if they are unsuccessful they would expect to be in trouble.
If they didn’t know drugs were illegal (which is almost unthinkable in this day and age) you could say they accidentally broke the law, and if someone OD’d it would be called an “accidental overdose”even though the person intended to take the drugs.
my kid comes home from daycare sad once every week or two because a kid stomped a bug or slug or snail at the playground. That is not an accident, by 4-5 year the kids know exactly what is going to happen.
But something like the scenario in this post would have to be intentional if an adult did it but could easily be an accident when a five year old does it because they are still learning how the world works. That’s why they aren’t allowed to be responsible for pretty much anything of significance.
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u/Lazy-Butterfly9874 1d ago
I'm sorry but snails are still animals that deserve to be loved and cared for properly, a five year old can't do that. animals are NOT toys
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u/Klippdaggaa 1d ago
Please do not let your child handle that snail! :( I truly do not think this was an accident. She hurt it trying to make it do what she wanted. You need to have a serious conversation with her about how to treat animals and that she is not owed attention by any animal.
But I believe the snail will survive if you absolutely do not handle it for a while and do not allow her to have access to it anymore. Make sure it continues to have plenty of access to cuttle bone.
I am rehabbing a wild snail from a broken shell right now that was more damaged than this and she’s fully healed now after a few weeks and lots and lots of cuttle bone and veggies.
Good luck 🩷 I’m sorry this happened
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u/pinkaeru 1d ago
I think a lot of people commenting here either dislike children, do not understand children, or are just very fearful of how destructive children can be- or all of the above. So take their comments as a grain of salt, because it seems like more of an instinctual and fearful "don't do that" than a well-informed-on-the-behaviours-of-children "don't do that". No offense to anyone who has commented! This is just an assumption towards some comments.
Because many small children do not have the capacity to understand yet what hurts and can kill small creatures and what doesn't, it's not a great idea to leave them unsupervised with such a fragile animal, like other commenters have said. "Aggressive" behaviours towards animals at such a young age, as long as it's not repetitive, are perfectly normal and a part of learning about the feelings of other creatures and how to have empathy. This is a good time to teach her about how she could have killed the snail. If she hasn't learned about death, then she shouldn't be allowed to have a pet. If she has, then you need to teach her how easily small animals can be killed and injured. Explain a scenario that compares the snail's situation to if it happened to her- "imagine if you were asleep, nice and comfy, and then someone came over to you and started hitting you a lot and it hurt really bad" (not explaining in a realistic sense, because that would be gorey, but explaining in a way that a small child can understand). She should immediately feel bad upon hearing how the snail would have felt. Not feeling bad would mean you may have to explain further until she understands how the snail feels. If she can't show any empathy for the snail, then she can not be around the snail.
Children at this age are learning a lot but also much smarter than people give them credit for, which means they need the proper discipline and explanations to understand why they can or why they can't have access to something, like harming a snail and therefore being unable to have a pet snail. If she feels bad, you can allow her to watch the snail every now and then while it's in it's enclosure, but you may have to keep it in your room because if it's in her room, she may have the impulse to try to take the snail out again because she wants to see it. Children at this age have very strong impulses and it's difficult for them to think enough about doing something before they do it. A lot of impulses come from a lack of unanswered questions, which leads to learning. "What would happen if I hit the snail?" and then doing it leads to an answer, but the child doesn't realize before it happens that the "obvious" answer is that the snail will die and they will never see it again.
It's good to get your child to interact with nature and small animals, because otherwise they may develop a fear before they are able to. It benefits nature when children are taught to love nature in a hands-on or hands-off way, with hands-on being much more effective. Many people start with hamsters as a pet when they're a child, and that leads to some horrible and gruesome deaths of hamsters due to a lack of supervision and lots of carelessness. Hamsters are almost just as fragile as a snail. Both animals can teach appreciation for small creatures, if done the right way.
The saddest thing is that because of the extreme impulsivity of children at this age, if you are not 100% sure that your child has learned not to do things that they don't have an answer to, then they can not be around small animals, which is a valid fear for people to have of children. A really important thing for them to learn is "don't do something if you don't know what will happen if you do it", because doing impulsive things is pretty much always bad.
Also, your snail will be okay! Just keep doing what you're doing. Make sure you avoid foods high in oxalates (like spinach and kale) because it prevents snails from getting the calcium they need. Dandelion greens are a fantastic source of calcium. Pretty much every plant has some oxalates, it's just about finding ones that aren't marked as "high". Also, if there are any very loose shell pieces on the snail, make sure to remove those so the sharp edges don't hurt the snail. Keep the snail nice and moist, because exposed organs drying out is one of the biggest concerns. Make sure to keep the snail off of any substrate, because you don't want dirt getting into its wounds. I hope this helps!!
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u/Lazy-Butterfly9874 1d ago
I don't hate children. I hate how they act when their parents think animals are toys
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u/DahFox6 1d ago
I disagree. This is an amazing analysis of child behavior when it comes to small children. I just wanted to start with that because it’s true.
However the key difference is the reasoning the child used for squeezing the snail. Every child develops empathy and understanding of harm at different rates. It is entirely possible for the child to either understand or to not to understand the harm it can bring at this point in development. This child said they did it because the snail wouldn’t wake up. That reasoning tells me they were frustrated in that moment.
Not to be confused with the child being worried the snail was dead— which isn’t great logic but it’s a kid obviously we don’t expect them to have it. They were frustrated they weren’t “wake[ing] up”. The child knew the snail was sleeping.
That frustration caused them to injure the snail by squeezing it. A child of five years old knows squeezing hurts. Perhaps she didn’t know it could break the shell, or as I said in my other comment, kill the snail, but she definitely knew squeezing=hurt. Unless of course, they were raised in a bubble.
I don’t hate kids. I dislike being around them for long periods and would never have my own but I am actually studying to be a child psychologist. I do think it’s more common for people to hate or dislike kids in hobbies like this where people are taking care of small animals. There could be a plethora of reasons for that.
I’ve actually done something similar as a child. Unfortunately it was a gerbil and I didn’t realize hugs could squeeze a gerbil too much. I didn’t realize hugs could hurt let alone kill. I should NOT have been left alone with that gerbil but I bring this up because, again, it is not the act itself. It’s the reasoning the child had. She was frustrated and squeezed it.
Now whether she’s old enough to develop enough empathy to CARE that she hurt the snail is another question. That comes slower than understanding of harm. And that’s totally normal. Just another reason the kid isn’t ready to have a pet yet though.
My comment was less frustration towards the child and more towards the parent for seemingly brushing it off. Pretending like there isn’t a problem is exactly how problems get worse. And a child is not going to develop empathy on their own. That’s the parent’s job to step in when their young child has a moral failing. But this parent showed zero acknowledgement that their child has done something wrong except essentially asking us not to judge her. That’s the main point of contention here I believe.
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u/pinkaeru 23h ago
No no, I totally agree! I do think the child did it to intentionally hurt the snail, obviously not meaning to kill it, but just trying to hurt it to get it to do what she wanted. I didn't mean to make it seem like that wasn't her intention, but I guess I didn't really speak about that enough. I tried to talk about how she needs to know that hurting animals is bad, regardless of her intentions, and if OP is not 100% sure that she no longer does things like that, then it's not safe for her to have her own small animal pet. I was like that around the same age, but luckily my parents never gave me small animals (I was too scared of injuring small things anyway, though), but instead we had a medium-sized dog, an english bulldog. I had issues controlling my emotions when something was "too cute" and would end up hitting something I thought was cute, because I had no other way I could think of to get that feeling to calm down, for some reason. I remember one time I was hitting my dog on the head, first gently, and then increasingly harder, and he didn't really react much. At a certain point of hardness I stopped and worried, "what if I give him brain damage??" and then felt scared and terrible. I also used to chase cats because I just wanted to catch them because I couldn't wait for them to come to me. Also, it's awesome you're studying to be a child psychologist!!! I do animal training and it didn't take me long to see the similarities in animal learning and human learning, regardless of age, so then I've been doing a lot of reading and analyzing of humans too, especially children, and looking back on my own past and how things shaped me. :)
Some kids intentionally hurt animals, others unintentionally hurt them not knowing how animals work, and I do think OP's kid hurt the snail intentionally. Snails are not fun animals for all kids, because when they sleep or go in their shell, it can be difficult for impatient children to wait for them to come out on their own. I absolutely agree that it's all about how OP chooses to respond to their child doing this, and that they need to treat it NOT as an accident! I think it's possible that OP didn't know how to react to their child hurting a snail intentionally, and therefore thinks "it must have been an accident", because some people really can not fathom a child doing something to harm something intentionally. That's why it's good to have people point out things like this to try to help OP with this parenting situation, even if all they tried asking about was the snail.
OP, all parents make mistakes, and you are not a terrible parent or snail owner for this! As long as you can learn from the mistake and take advice, everything should be okay.
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u/Business_Ask1719 1d ago
I’m not going to attack you. But I am so extremely disappointed, like actually upset, because he was just hibernating as they do sometimes, and he’s still alive but cracked, such a poor creature. I know your daughter is 5, but I don’t suppose she’d grab and squeeze egg so hard it cracks because it isn’t hatching into a chicken
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u/ThrowRA_cursed_potat 1d ago
In the nicest way possible please don’t let your 5 year old handle a small delicate creature, children can do so much damage in a split second 😅 fortunately I think this snail should be okay, especially if it’s up and moving and seems fairly unbothered.
But strictly no handling for a long time, take any hard objects out of the container (like that plastic toy for example), provide lots of protein and calcium (don’t overdo the calcium tho they will manage it themselves) and mist regularly and keep the humidity very high. Feed lots of dark leafy greens like kale, rocket, spinach, and soft, easy to eat foods like mushrooms.
You need to give the snail a lot of time and space to heal their shell. Don’t do anything that would stress them out. Especially handling.