About the editor: I was mesmerized by the amount of rhetorical energy sparked by the story of the 9-year-old girl in 4-H and her hapless pet goat.

In the practice of psychotherapy (and all health care), we are ethically and legally required to provide “informed consent” before commencing any treatment. Perhaps 4-H and Shasta County carnival officials should learn how to give full informed consent to children caring for animals sold for slaughter.

The children should be told how it feels to say goodbye to the animal.

In order

For that, the adult officials may need their own emotional response

–

Education because they seem to have forgotten the feeling of falling in love and the sadness and heartbreak that follows when they lose that love.

By all means bind children with your words, but only after you are sure they know what you bind them to. The children did not create the contract words that the adults did.

Or maybe kids just shouldn’t play a part in killing animals just yet. Maybe killing shouldn’t be what you grow up with in the first place, maybe a better plan.

Barbara Sophia Eurich-Rascoe, PasadenaThe author is a psychologist.