First Pets

I think it is good to have a family pet, and slowly give the kids responsibilities for it. Their first task may be to fill the water bowl everyday, then feed, then pick up poop, then walks, etc. When they are able to prove that they can take care of a pet, then they might get their own. My "first" was a bird (we also had cats and a hamster). I don't remember when I had to start taking care of it myself, but it wasn't very interactive, and I much preferred cats. When I got older I did everything for the cats, so even though they were the family's, I saw them as mine.

We have had just about every pet imaginable!
Everyone knows about cats and dogs, but we also had:

Hamsters- Not all that lovable, escape artists, not really trainable, and sometimes even the most friendly ones bite.

Rats-more friendly and trainable than hamsters, but a lot of people have hang-ups about getting a rat.

Ferrets-VERY lovable and friendly, smart as heck, trainable, you could litter-train and let run free, get along with other pets if trained right... but they stink. Even if they are unscented, bathed regularly, de-scent stuff added to water, and cage cleaned... there will always be that ferrety smell.

Chinchilla- Kinda like a giant ultra-soft hamster without the escape-artistry... needs a dust bath every day, which is really fun and cute to watch... we used vanilla scented dust, which added to the appeal. The main problem with Chuck (hee hee. chuck the chinchilla) was that he pooped A LOT! every time we held him we wound up with a handful of little black pellets. Put him in an exercise ball, it gets in the air cracks.

Fish- fun to look at, but that's about it.

Birds- we had canaries and parrots... parrots are high maintenance and get pretty annoying sometimes... my canary flew away. :'(

Hedgehog-One of my favorite pets because it was soo unique... One was super-friendly and the other not so much. Had to wear gloves to handle her. They also kinda smell bad.

Rabbits-Fairly lovable... I didn't really work on training mine so much, but apparently my SIL had hers box-trained! :)

Turtle- We had a little water turtle and a small tortoise... the turtle was not much fun, but my brother really liked it. (it was his...) The tortoise was better, but still kinda boring. Not much you can do with something so slow.

Good luck! My vote is cat by the way.

We are big animal lovers here too. We currently have a dog, two cats and an iguana. I bought my son a fish when he was three (I took care of it, but he would feed it everyday with me). He lost interest in the fish in less than a month. My daughter wanted a hamster at age 3, so I thought ok, we'll try it. It was horrible. I was afraid she would hurt it because it was too small and once it nipped at her little finger and then she didn't want to even hold it anymore. We did have fun watching it in it's ball and rearranging and added toys to it's home. IMO cat's are the most easy and entertaining animal for the care required. Don't get me wrong, I am a total dog person too and I would recommend getting a dog once you get a house, but I would just get one, a family dog and have the kids help take care of it. Cats are easy because you don't have to let them out multiple times per day or make sure that they are still getting enough exerise outside even in the winter.

We have always had dogs and cas. Currently we have three of each.
I have had hamsters and vowed never to have another in my life. They are worse than mice adn they can escape. My sister and I both had one as teens.
My kids have had a fish, which died very quickly. It was one of those fair fish.
We have had a firebelly toad which I killed, :o( oops
We have had tadpoles that we watched turn into frogs then some of them got sucked up into our filter, very bad.
Now we have a praying mantis that we feed moths to every night.
So far so good. The children are responsible for feedign the cats and dogs and cleaning up after them but they dont' do it without a reminder or me nagging, so they get nothing like a rodent that would be my responsilbilty.
My 15 yo wants a chinchilla. HA yeah right.

i was 7 before i had MY FIRST pet, i let my daughter have HER first pet at 5 (hamster), worked out perfect, she had to have my supervision to clean cage, feed and water and had fun watching it play in it's ball.