Death of a Caterpillar - insight to a child's thinking

I think your kids are absolutely right and very smart. A kid being cruel to ANY living creature, animal or insect, is extremely bad. I'm 22, soon to be 23 and I NEVER kill any kind of bug purposefully (and if I kill one on accident I feel bad). I even go out of my way to avoid stepping on ants! lol. Call ne crazy, but I just do not likr kiling things, ANYTHING. I think a kid who knowlingly and happily kills anything really should be watched cloesly. As far as I'm concerned there is nothing stopping him from seeing what will happen if he throws a cat against a wall. I really hope his parents start participating in his life more, and get him to fix his behavior. Maybe you could leave a little anonymous note telling them they're raising a sociopath! lol

Oh my gosh, your daughter has wisdom beyond her years. I had a similar incident with a caterpillar and my kids years ago, how ironic. My kids thought it was very bad but the preschool teacher said they were overreacting - I disagreed and told my kids they were on target. The boy who crushed the caterpillar turned out to do very disturbed things just a couple of years later. We went to a beach bonfire together and he was taking live sea critters and burning them in the fire, watching them writhe and laughing. All the other kids were mortified, not just mine. Needless to say, we stopped hanging around with these people - and I can't tell you the awful things that wound up happening in that family. It's good your children can identify this stuff, you've done a good job already.

There was one time when a caterpillar fell off from the tree and me my 2 children saw it. I was on panic as I am not very fond of wormy things I stepped on the caterpillar. My children accused me of killing the caterpillar. Then my daughter said mom there will be no more butterflies anymore because you killed the caterpillar. Then my son cried and my daughter just consoled his brother and she said maybe next time there will be another caterpillar and we will tell mom not to kill it so there will be more butterflies. I felt so ashamed with what I have done. Of course I didn't mean to offend them and it made me realize that children as young as they are know how to care. I appreciated my children even more because of that. Sometimes as adults we tend to forget the importance of little things, such as the importance of a caterpillar.

Yes children are impressionable at that age. And as your daughter thought parents that do not take time to teach nature etc., The little boy probably had not had the learning that it would in time turn into a beautiful butterfly. I had 5 children so I had everything from fish to tadpoles, hundreds of catapillers, even to snakes and spiders. My youngest when he was 4 years old he come running in the house after being at the pond and is dragging 2 bull frogs with him. he had one in each hand and was holding each under their front arms and their long legs dangling as he rushed in. All I can hear is MOM MOM can I keep it? So getting him to understand they needed to live in the pond and why etc, my son was not having ANY of it. So he breaks me down and I tell him to put them in the bathtub. he stopped and thought a minute, and said Why the bathtub? We have a swimming pool and I could swim with them. I explain with the chorination and other chemicals no they could not survive in the pool. So finally got him to put them in the bathtub with a little water. While he runs back to the pond to find MORE FROGS, my husband showed up from work I had my mind on dinner and did not the bathtub. All of a sudden I hear What the heck are these? Thats when it jogged my memory Frogs in the bathtub! Went and got the frogs put them in a bucket for my son, and returned to dinner. My son played with the frogs all evening on the deck. Poor frogs. The next day was Saturday and I had to work leaving children with father. We all know how that goes. Dad asleep on the couch. Kids doing their thing. So in the afternoon before I got home, my girls brought some friends over and asked if they could go swimming. My husband come out to check chemicals in the pool and finds BOTH bullfrogs at the bottom of the water. My youngest son did not want them to jump out of the bucket so he put them in the pool overnight. Needless to say and talking with my son beforehand, he really wanted those froggies to swim in the pool.