This is the kind of dismissive response that isn't good for anyone.
It would have been much improved if you could somehow provide a foundation for why you think what you think and if you could leave the things that you literally just made up out of it.
I vibe with his comment, so I'll go to bat for his statement, even though I don't precisely know what he was going for.
Kids are very variable, and a simple one time statement of "don't hurt animals" will absolutely not move the needle much in one direction or the other as far as your kid's temperament. Some kids are inclined towards violence from a very early age. Biting, throwing rocks, eye pokes, you name it. The amount of socialization it takes to remedy this can be immense, we're talking tens of thousands of little lessons and lectures, rather than a single "don't do that".
And for what its worth, I'm speaking second hand as well. My daughter is on the complete opposite end of the violence spectrum, passive to the point of shutting down completely if someone intentionally hurts her, which is also a behavior you need to coach against for practical reasons. I've talked with parents on the violent end though, and their problem is at least an order of magnitude harder to deal with.
w.r.t. valval's comment, I agree in that I think these kinds of behaviors are mostly invisible to people not only to people without kids, but also to people whose kids haven't been the age in question in a couple of years. People forget things they themselves have experienced rather rapidly. I have lots of coworkers with multiple kids who still publicly display surprise when someone with a 0-2 year old is suddenly out frequently because their baby is sick or has a medical appointment.
I do agree that his comment is too dismissive, but I think its a reflexive response to a world at large that oversimplifies child rearing to the detriment of parents, which is how I read your comment.
Ah yes, because only parents know how to parent. It's not a qualification.
And his behaviour is certainly different from my experience as a kid of never wanting to and never actually harming anything beyond flies and mosquitos.
