Love our two guinea pigs and the kids love them too. Very gentle and sweet, plus they eat our leftover veggies and fruits. Our kids are old enough to change the cage and feed/water them.

Guinea pigs are very friendly and they each have their own personality. You will need to do regular cage cleanings because dirty cages do stink.

Anonymous wrote:Rats, super friendly and smart

+1

yep, know for being the sweetest, most pet-like rodent, communicative...we had one for about 5 years, devastated when she passed away

Gerbils.

Easy to take care of, don't stink, only have to clean their cage ever 3-6 weeks. Get a glass aquarium with a mesh lid and fill with aspen bedding (not pine), they chew on bars and plastic. Give them paper towel tubes and boxes to chew on (they need to chew). If you're lucky they'll dig tunnels and make nests. They're a lot of fun to watch.

Get at least 2 from the same litter. They're a lot of fun. If they're socialized properly, they'll never bite and you may be able to hold them. If you definitely want to be able to hold them, look for someone who breeds gerbils because they'll be socialized already.

Guinea pigs hands down- hamsters are nocturnal and not as active during the day when you kids want to play with them and can be temperamental. I have experience doing extensive research with kindergartners on the best way to care for guinea pigs so there is a wealth of age appropriate books for you kids to go along with their new pet!

Guinea pigs are very social and can live for 5-9 years- I definitely agree with another poster who said to get two. I also recommend the Metropolitan Guinea Pig rescue if you have time to go through the adoption process. The vet and spay/neuter their pigs so no surprise babies!

If you go the pet store route I strongly recommend finding a good exotic vet for two reasons- a lot of the little pigs coming from the pet store get respiratory infections and get sick and die quickly if untreated. My vet also said that pet stores aren't great at confirming the sex (so chance of surprise babies!!)

Rabbits are a bit labor-intensive, and they really aren't meant to be in cages.

http://eddyrambo.com/bunny-facts/

Guinea pigs might be a better bet.

http://www.calicavycollective.com/

Why the eff do you want a rodent when you could have a loving dog?

I've always heard rats are great pets because they are smart and friendly. But I don't know if I could get past that tail...

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I had two gerbils growing up. The most important thing to do, no matter what type of pet you get, is DO NOT get one of each sex. My childhood was spent delivering baby gerbils to the only pet shop in town who did not feed them to snakes.

I thought it was hard to tell what sex they are to begin with - how does one make sure?

We found our hamster was a girl 2 days after we brought her home from the pet shop and we suddenly had 9 hamsters.

Anonymous wrote:I assume if you're looking for a pet for your child, you believe your children are responsible enough to take care of it and not hurt it. Guinea Pigs have extremely good temperments and I always favor them for children. hamsters can be mean and bite, so you may want to wait until they're older for hamsters. I'm a big fan of chinchillas, but I had one as an adult I don't know how it would do with yound children (especially because it's adorable tail comes off as a defense mechanism if it's seized by it).

The same thing happens to gerbil tails. Also, they bite and HANG ON.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Guinea pigs or rabbits. Guinea pigs are very easy to care for, and they can be affectionate. Unfortunately they don't live very long, but neither do most rodents. Rabbits are good if you have the space. They're very gentle. But it's cruel to keep them in a small hutch all the time; you need to give them more space to roam.

Hamsters are ok but can be temperamental. Gerbils are entertaining to watch but they are nasty little buggers. At least all of ours were. And they are not cuddly/snuggly, and they're very small so can be easily injured if your kids are too rough. Guinea pigs and rabbits are bigger so they're easier for small kids to hold.

We went through all of these, plus fish, when I was a kid. I loved animals but was always crushed when they eventually died. Finally we bought cats which were so, so much more rewarding (and lasted four times as long). I'm still a cat owner 20 years later.

I'm a guinea pig PP and agree with this. One of our gerbils got injured and the other actually started chewing on the injured leg. Maybe he was trying to help... but I doubt it.

I wrote the quoted post and yes, our gerbils turned out to be vicious little cannibals. We had two sets. In the same-sex set, one killed the other. In the opposite-sex pair, the female killed the male and ate him. I really don't recommend gerbils. I wasn't going to post this but then I saw that others had similar experiences!

Anonymous wrote:I had two gerbils growing up. The most important thing to do, no matter what type of pet you get, is DO NOT get one of each sex. My childhood was spent delivering baby gerbils to the only pet shop in town who did not feed them to snakes.

I thought it was hard to tell what sex they are to begin with - how does one make sure?

I had two gerbils growing up. The most important thing to do, no matter what type of pet you get, is DO NOT get one of each sex. My childhood was spent delivering baby gerbils to the only pet shop in town who did not feed them to snakes.

Children have to be gentle with rodents. Hamsters and gerbils are tempermental. We had the most luck with Chinese dwarf hamsters, at least they were friendly.

Guinea pigs much more durable.

Not to scare you but growing up we had hamsters and they had babies. My parents knew to separate the dad from the babies but a few days later the mom killed and ate most of them.
My daughter had two mice that seemed friendly enough to each other until last week, one killed the other and ate his leg.

Anonymous wrote:Guinea pigs or rabbits. Guinea pigs are very easy to care for, and they can be affectionate. Unfortunately they don't live very long, but neither do most rodents. Rabbits are good if you have the space. They're very gentle. But it's cruel to keep them in a small hutch all the time; you need to give them more space to roam.

Hamsters are ok but can be temperamental. Gerbils are entertaining to watch but they are nasty little buggers. At least all of ours were. And they are not cuddly/snuggly, and they're very small so can be easily injured if your kids are too rough. Guinea pigs and rabbits are bigger so they're easier for small kids to hold.

We went through all of these, plus fish, when I was a kid. I loved animals but was always crushed when they eventually died. Finally we bought cats which were so, so much more rewarding (and lasted four times as long). I'm still a cat owner 20 years later.

I'm a guinea pig PP and agree with this. One of our gerbils got injured and the other actually started chewing on the injured leg. Maybe he was trying to help... but I doubt it.