What raising a puppy can teach us about caring for children?

And where the comparison stops

For the last four months, I’ve had the privilege — and, at times, the frustration — of watching Atlas grow up. He is already enormous, despite being only 6 months old and about half his expected adult weight. There is something slightly ridiculous about looking at a dog who already takes up so much space and reminding myself that, technically, he is still very much a puppy — with a lot more growing still to do.

Physically, he may be getting bigger by the week, but emotionally and developmentally he is still learning how to navigate the world. And perhaps that mismatch — a very large body containing a very young puppy — is one of the things that has made me think so much about children and development.

Living with a puppy has been interesting, funny, exhausting and occasionally bewildering. I’ve watched him learn about us and the world around him, while we’ve been learning about him. Things that seemed impossible a few months ago have become ordinary; other things I thought we had completely cracked have mysteriously reappeared.

And somewhere along the way, I started noticing how often caring for Atlas made me think about my work with children and families.

Anyone who has ever lived with a puppy knows that they can be delightful, affectionate and funny — and completely exhausting.

They bite things they shouldn’t. They become wildly overexcited. They forget things you were certain they had learned yesterday. They struggle when they are tired, hungry, frightened or overwhelmed. And sometimes, despite your very best efforts, they wee on the floor.

There are moments when caring for a puppy can feel strangely familiar to anyone who has cared for children.

I’m not suggesting that children and puppies are the same. They clearly aren’t. Children have extraordinarily complex emotional, cognitive, relational and social lives, and they develop within families, communities and cultures in ways that cannot be compared with training a dog.

But there are some interesting parallels in how we think about care.

Behaviour is communication

When a puppy starts biting your ankles at seven o’clock in the evening, it is tempting to think: Why are you doing this? You know you’re not supposed to bite me. But perhaps they are overtired. Perhaps the day has been too stimulating. Perhaps they need something to chew. Perhaps they simply don’t yet have the capacity to regulate themselves.

Children’s behaviour can invite similar questions.

A child who shouts, refuses, withdraws or has a meltdown isn’t necessarily making a calculated decision to be difficult. Behaviour happens within a context.

Instead of asking only:

“How do I stop this behaviour?”

we might also become curious about:

“What might be happening here?”

That doesn’t mean all behaviour is acceptable. Understanding behaviour and accepting behaviour are not the same thing. Understanding can, however, help us decide how best to respond.

Regulation comes before self-regulation

We don’t expect a young puppy to arrive knowing how to settle themselves. We create routines. We reduce stimulation. We provide reassurance. We notice when they are becoming overwhelmed. Gradually, with repetition, experience and development, they become more capable of managing themselves.

Children also learn emotional regulation in relationships. Before they can consistently calm themselves, they often need adults who can help them manage feelings that are simply too big to hold alone.

This is sometimes called co-regulation. And, inconveniently, co-regulation requires something from the adult too. It is considerably harder to help someone else regulate when we are furious, frightened, exhausted or overwhelmed ourselves. Which brings us to something I find particularly useful.

Connection and boundaries: a two-handed approach

Good care isn’t simply about being endlessly accommodating. Puppies need boundaries. Children need boundaries too. One way of thinking about this is a two-handed approach.

In one hand, we hold empathy and curiosity — both about the child and about ourselves.

We might wonder about the child:

What might be happening for you?

What are you trying to communicate?

What do you need from me right now?

But we can also become curious about our own response: What am I feeling right now? Why has this particular behaviour got under my skin? What am I frightened might happen if I don’t stop it? What does this remind me of? What expectations am I bringing to this situation? Sometimes our reactions tell us as much about our own histories, experiences and pressures as they do about the behaviour in front of us. Curiosity gives us a little more room to notice that before responding.

On the other hand, we hold boundaries: I understand that you’re angry, frightened or overwhelmed — and I still won’t let you hit me.

Neither hand is enough on its own. Empathy without boundaries can leave children without the predictability and safety they need. Boundaries without empathy can become rigid or punitive. And without curiosity about ourselves, we can easily mistake our own emotional response for evidence that the child’s behaviour is the problem.

Holding both hands allows us to communicate: I am interested in what is happening for you. I am interested in what is happening for me. And the boundary remains.

The same principle works surprisingly well with puppies. I can understand that Atlas is overtired and desperately needs to chew something, notice that I am becoming increasingly irritated by my furniture being eaten — and still calmly remove the table leg from the menu.

Connection and boundaries aren’t opposites. Good care often requires us to hold both.

Development matters

There is something almost comical about repeatedly telling a puppy something and then being surprised when they cannot reliably do it. They are learning. Yet adults can sometimes fall into precisely this trap with children:

We’ve talked about this.

You know better.

How many times do I have to tell you?

Knowing something and being developmentally able to do it consistently are not always the same thing. And development isn’t linear. Something a child — or puppy — manages beautifully one day might be much harder the next. Being tired, hungry, anxious, excited or overwhelmed can temporarily reduce anyone’s capacity to use skills they ordinarily possess. Adults aren’t immune to this either.

Leaving the house requires logistics

There are, of course, some practical differences. One considerable advantage puppies have over small children is that, once they’re old enough and settled, you can leave them at home for a while.

Unfortunately, the moment you decide to take them with you, this advantage disappears. Going anywhere with Atlas seems to require the logistical planning of travelling with a baby. Water. Bowl. Food. Treats. Poo bags. Lead. Spare lead. Something to lie on. Something to chew. Something to occupy him. Something else to occupy him when he decides the first thing is boring. You start out thinking, We’re just popping out for an hour, and somehow find yourself packing half the house.

It’s a lighter comparison, but there is something underneath it too. Caring for someone means anticipating needs they may not yet be able to anticipate for themselves.

As children — and puppies — develop, that balance changes. We gradually do less for them as they become increasingly capable of doing things themselves.

Perhaps part of caring well is continually asking: What do you need from me now — and what are you ready to begin doing for yourself?

Relationships change behaviour

We sometimes talk about behaviour as though it exists entirely inside an individual. But behaviour is also relational. A puppy may behave differently with different people, in different places and when the environment changes. So do children.

From a systemic perspective, this becomes particularly interesting. Rather than locating the “problem” entirely within the child, we can look at the interactions around them:

What happens just before?

How do other people respond?

What happens next?

When doesn’t the difficulty happen?

Who finds it easier to respond differently?

What seems to help?

The aim isn’t to find someone to blame. It is to understand the pattern. And once we can see a pattern, there may be more possibilities for changing it.

When the system changes

I was away on holiday last week, and coming home gave me a rather good real-life example of this. Atlas was initially overjoyed to see me. Then, once the excitement had worn off, he started testing the boundaries. While I had been away, the mice had apparently played. Some of our usual rules had slipped a little and, in Atlas’s understanding of the household, I seemed to have been demoted to third in the pack.

My partner was very supportive. When Atlas challenged me or didn’t respond, he would step in. It made perfect sense: he was trying to support me and reinforce the boundary. Except nothing changed.

After some reflection, we realised something interesting. His stepping in to help me might actually have been helping to maintain the very pattern we were trying to change. Atlas was learning that when something really mattered, my partner would eventually step in. However supportive that was between the two of us, it wasn’t helping Atlas learn to respond to me. We needed to stop thinking only about Atlas’s behaviour and start thinking about the system around the behaviour.

In systemic family therapy, one useful idea for understanding this is triangulation. Murray Bowen described the triangle as the smallest stable relationship system. When tension develops between two members of a system, a third can become involved. This may reduce or redistribute the immediate tension without necessarily resolving what is happening in the original relationship.

Of course, Atlas is a dog rather than a third human family member, so I’m borrowing the idea rather than suggesting this is a clinical example of family triangulation. But as a way of thinking systemically, it was remarkably useful.

The question changed from:

“How do we get Atlas to behave?”

to:

“What are each of us doing that might be helping this pattern continue?”

That required my partner to do something that was perhaps counterintuitive: support me by stepping back.

It also required us to think together about which rules mattered, how we would respond consistently, and how Atlas could experience me setting and maintaining those boundaries rather than waiting for somebody else to reinforce them. In other words, we weren’t just asking Atlas to change. We changed our part of the system too.

That is one of the things I value most about systemic thinking. When something isn’t working, the question isn’t simply Who is causing the problem? Instead, we can become curious about the relationships, responses and patterns surrounding it. And sometimes being supportive doesn’t mean stepping in. Sometimes it means stepping out of the triangle so that another relationship has room to develop.

But children aren’t puppies

This is where the analogy needs to end.

Children aren’t creatures to be trained into compliance. They develop identities, beliefs and values. They make meaning from their experiences. They notice power and fairness. They belong to families, peer groups, schools, communities and cultures. Their relationships with the adults caring for them can influence how they come to understand themselves and other people.

And as children grow, good parenting increasingly involves something that puppy raising doesn’t: supporting another human being to become separate from us.

They will disagree with us.

They will develop values we didn’t give them.

They will make choices we wouldn’t make.

Eventually, our job is not to produce an obedient child, but to help a person develop enough security, confidence and autonomy to navigate their own life. Perhaps that’s the most important difference.

Curiosity before judgement

Still, there is one lesson from puppyhood that might be worth keeping. When a small creature is completely losing the plot, we’re often surprisingly good at wondering:

Are they tired?

Are they overwhelmed?

Do they need reassurance?

Have I expected too much of them today?

Perhaps we could offer children — and ourselves — some of that same curiosity.

Not because boundaries don’t matter.

Not because every behaviour is acceptable.

But because behaviour nearly always makes more sense when we understand the context in which it occurs.

And sometimes the most useful question isn’t:

“How do I make this behaviour stop?”

but:

“What is happening between us right now — and what might we both need?”