Last weekend I went to a family BBQ at which I saw my cousin, I'll call Abi. She has 3 DCs (7, 4 and 1) and I have a nearly 4 year old. I was sitting chatting to Abi and her eldest two and we got talking about the food. In this I mentioned in passing that I really liked the sausages from a farm shop we sometimes go to and that they are from the pigs they breed on the farm. Suddenly Abi is glaring at me. I'm unclear what I've done but move the conversation on swiftly. When the children run off a few minutes later, Abi looks annoyed and says to me "the children don't know where meat comes from and I don't appreciate you bring it up". I was really surprised and said "oh, sorry" and she stalked off. Had I known her views, I would have respected them.
Now I'm the first to admit that Abi and I are quite different in many respects, which is of course fine. Of particular relevance here, she is vegetarian (I am not but no problem with her being one) and she is quite girly (I'm not) and she is not brilliant at coping with tough messaging so on one level I can see why she finds skipping the topic appealing. But I was still quite surprised at the approach and couldn't help but feel it would lead to problems. Her eldest is hardly a baby any more and isn't it going to come to a nasty shock when she finds out where her food comes from? The children do eat meat but it mainly seems to be things like ham, nuggets and sausages etc which obviously don't immediatley resemble the animals they come from so I could see why the children wouldn't have made the link themselves yet.
Don't get me wrong, I've not been subjecting my DC to gruesome details of slaughterhouse practice or reiterated at dinner time "Milly the Moo Cow died to give you this beef casserole, now eat up", but DC does seem to get that sausage come from pigs, steak comes from cows, chicken breasts comes from chickens etc and sees meat being chopped up at the butchers. We visit farms to see the animals and with fish we look at fish in the aquarium/lakes etc but DC also enjoys going to the fish counter and taking home a fish to cook.
So, AIBU to think that if children and going to eat meat then they should gently have the idea of where meat comes from raised with them in age appropriate ways? Or is Abi's approach normal and I'm out of step with what is appropriate?
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AIBU?
To think children should know where meat comes from?
55 replies
TheClacksAreDown · 28/07/2015 11:00
OP posts:
WizardOfToss ·
28/07/2015 11:18
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