kids and the chameleon - advice needed

[iloveskittles]

hi there, so we have a three month old panther chameleon, my baby.

my step kids are coming here next weekend, and they haven't yet met him, as he has only been here for a week and a half...

they are young, and i guess you could say i am concerned about my cham getting stressed. as kids love to help (sometimes without asking first), i would like some suggestions or ideas to ease him in.

do you have a set of rules? certain aspects you get them to help you with? do you have some kind of lock on the door? should i move him? right now he is on our second floor in the den in a corner that the only traffic he gets is when we are checking on him. the second floor also holds the kids bedrooms. our top floor is our bedroom and bath.

anyway, just looking for some ideas. i guess i wouldn't worry if my cham was a bit older.

thanks

 

[dnallivah]

I can't speak for everyone but what I have three kiddos - 4, 7, and 8. I'm also a first time cham mom so I'm a bit on the skittish side and ask poor Sang about a million chapter length questions.

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When I got my little miss I put her cage on top of my dresser so that she had a high and safe vantage point away from them.

I lied at first and told my kids that they needed to be very very quiet around her. Why? Because my 7 year old moves much slower and doesn't jump around if he thinks that he needs to be quiet. I've since come clean and explained why I fibbed to them.

I allowed them to take turns misting her cage - NOT her. Like the lower half of the plants. I would sit them on top of my dresser with a hand mister and let them soak the hell out of the lower half of her setup.

Once I felt like she wasn't freaking any more over them, I let them hold non clear feeding ups (and then clear feeding ups) for one worm only. Only one kid at once - totally different feeding times as I didn't want her to be overwhelmed.

I actually allowed my kids a little hold time here and there in the midst of all of this. Even my four year old can reign in his crazy to allow her to crawl all over him for a few minutes of cham time. She's super cool with all of them and will hand feed without a blink as long as they don't reach too far in her cage. Outside they occasionally annoy her because the boys just have too much energy.

Other than if they are just watching her, they are never unsupervised or allowed to spray or feed her.

 

[Juliaf3]

I have three children as well. 7, 5, and 2. When we got our new arrival, no one was aloud to disturb him for two weeks. Not even me. We went, tossed in crickets and went on about our day. In the mean time, we did chameleon projects. Finding stick for the cage, sanding them down, picking where their stick should go, drawing chameleons. Talking about chameleons. Looking at different bugs we could feed him etc.... I also talked about boundaries. Explain we are giant big scary monsters to them, and the only way to change how they felt was to walk slow around the cage, never bump or hit the cage, to always be on our knees around the cage, because we do not look so big that way, and to NEVER force them out of their cage. If we didn't do these things, when he got big, so would his teeth and he would bite us and not like us. I showed them pictures of chameleon bites and they definitely did not want a mean chameleon after that Once good boundaries were established, I started giving them more responsibilities. Allowing misting, feeding the feeders, then eventually let them hand feed a few. My eldest is not to into the chameleons we have currently. The nails freak her out. She is more into the smaller species such as carpets and company. My five year old how ever absolutely loves them. He enjoys holding them and is surprisingly gentle. Involving them in their care and doing fun chameleon related crafts worked wonders for me. They just love to be included. My two year old loves to look, but rarely touch. He occasionally will "pet" their spines but that's as far as he goes.

My advice, include them in everything. Even if its simply cleaning poop out of the cage. You could put a lock on the cage if you wanted. My boys are pretty wild, but mind well. I do not have a lock.

 

[iloveskittles]

Thanks so much for the replies.
We will do chameleon crafts and introductions! I also grabbed some kid level chameleon books from the library.
The suggestions and stories are fantastic, I appreciate it!