How to Teach Kids to Handle Pet Hermit Crabs

Video Transcript

Hi! I am Debbie with expertvillage.com, talking about having hermit crabs for pets and we want to talk about how to teach your children, how to safely handle hermit crabs. So, you want them to feel confident and safe with your hermit crabs and you want to them to get them out and play with them, that’s what they have them. But, you need to teach them how to hold them and you need to teach them how to handle them. So, no one gets pinched and no one gets scared. One of the things I would like to do is have little gloves for the kids to wear. These can be in your discount stores during the spring time, they have a little baby garden gloves for kids, any kind of glove or winter glove would work, something that would prevent in case that a crab decided to pinch, prevent the skin from getting pinched. So, that’s a definite must. When you are teaching your child how to hold the hermit crab, teach them to pick him up from the back of his shell, let them know that he may be coming out of a shell, looking around and not to get worried. Now, crabs can reach around. He is touching my thumb right now. You need to teach the kids that they don’t need to be scared of that, to be cautious but if I do get scared not drop him, to tip him back, he will go back into the shell or again you can blow on him just a little bit and he will go back in; but you want him to be active, you want him to come out, what you just need is to teach him what to expect basically, so they don’t get frightened. The other thing you need to caution kids about, often they will get the crabs out of the habitat and walk away and this crab is hidden for the edge of the table right now, so you need to caution the kids, they will run away and they will hide and you won’t find them. I have had them escape before and it took two weeks to find them in a classroom and in at our house. So, it is really important that you teach the kids, if they want to get the crabs up, they cannot walk away from them. I suggest that they stay on the floor with them, so that they are not tempted to drop them, keep stays as low as possible on the floor and wear their glove. Teach your kids to be gentle with the crabs, to not have any big sudden movements that might startle the crab and teach them to understand that the crabs are only taking care of themselves. If they think they are going to fall, they are going to hold on just like if we were going to fall, we would hold on. So, as long as they understand that, they are going to have fun with the hermit crab.

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