When I was little and busy celebrating my sister’s birthday, something very, very bad happened.
I killed her budgie. Her budgie named Lucky. The budgie that was her birthday present. You know, on her birthday.
I didn’t mean to kill the bird. It was an awful, intensely traumatic experience – yes – but one that never happened with malicious intent. I was young, and I didn’t understand that budgies do NOT belong at parties, let alone in a lounge room full of bustling, excitable, jumpy children.
I’m still affected by that accident to this day.
That’s why when I read a mother’s plea for help on an online parenting forum, titled “Our four-year-old killed our puppy”, my stomach did a flip.
After finding the family’s new puppy motionless in their backyard, the anonymous mother explained she checked the household security camera to see what had happened.

That's when she saw her little boy, some half-an-hour earlier, forcefully throw the puppy down on the ground.
"My poor baby instantly broke her back as she landed," the mother wrote in the since-deleted post. "My four-year-old grabbed a teddy and tapped our puppy numerous times (maybe trying to wake her) then... came upstairs to me and asked for kisses and cuddles."
The mum-of-three went on to say she was unsure if her handling of the situation - which included sitting down her children and calmly asking what had happened - was inappropriate, and questioned if her son's aggressive outburst indicated a deep-seated issue.
Top Comments
Four-year-olds have limited impulse control and have a very loose grasp on empathy even towards humans. Many struggle with regulating emotions and navigating interactions with adults and children their age, and the line between aggression and play can often be blurred (and aggression when upset or angry is still considered normative, if an inappropriate coping mechanism, at this age). Anyone with more than one child under five can attest to the fact that "rough-housing" can quickly turn from fun to tears as a result of not understanding appropriate boundaries. Whenever I hear about these type of incidents with toddler/preschool-aged children, I always wonder where the supervising adult was and why the child was left alone with the animal long enough to inflict mortal injury.
Apparently many serial killers have signs as early as four years of age. This kid should be watched.