Oh, I can feel a soapbox coming.  :-)
 
I have two daughters, aged 9 and 4, and besides the two ferrets, have two
cats and three dogs.  For the most part, the pets and the kids are off
limits to each ohter, except under CLOSELY SUPERVISED moments.  Personally,
I think this is as it should be...since kids can get hurt by pets, but they
can also hurt the pets.  My 9 year old tripped over one of our dogs two
years ago and broke her leg...last summer we got her a hamster to begin
teaching/talking about pet ownership and animal care.  She's doing much
better about being aware and conscious of the animals.
 
My four year old is PETRIFIED of the ferrets.  She's also, of course,
strangely attracted to them.  :-) they are fuzzy, after all, but they also
have TEETH.  If the ferrets are out and she is on the ferret side of the
baby gate, she will freak, get scared, and even begin to whimper.  So we
have carefully timed ferret times when the kids are home.  (while they're at
school and after they go to sleep are ferret playtimes...) Both my ferrets
have nipped my kids' ankles and scared them...I don't yet trust Simmie
(youngest) with the kids at all, but Coco seems to be a LOT less nippy
(almost eight months).
 
I guess it's not a soapbox, just an obersvation: I FIRMLY believe in teachig
kids about animal treatment, and keeping contact to a minimum when they are
together..and always supervised.  No one on this list has said anything
different, so I guess I"m preachign to the converted.  ;-) Sorry.
 
As for Debbie, it disturbs me that your boyfriend is abusive to his
ferrets...one, because he's abusing ferrets, but two, because in my
experience--or as my mum used to say--you can tell everything about a man's
personality by how he treats an animal.  And, in my experience, there's very
little you can do (short term, a few years, etc,) to stop a man from
treating an animal unlike a living thing...I guess that's my "feminist
nonsense" coming through, as I was told by a guy in California who, oddly
enough, offered me a chance at a great job designing graphical user
interfaces.
 
Ramble mode off,
 
Laurel
 
"a complicated life has so many opportunities..." -Karen Finley