AIBU to worry school topics are overwhelming my son?

[BeWittyZebra]

DH (42)and I (42) have 3 boys (11, 8, 6). Eldest started big school this year (independent) and has honestly thrived settled quickly, made friends, loves that it’s all boys, and has thrown himself into everything (hockey, cricket, science club, beekeeping, music, piano lessons etc).

He’s always been a bright, thoughtful kid and recently started philosophy and an environmental club at school. He’s absolutely loving both, which I would normally be really pleased about. I studied philosophy at uni myself so I do “get it”.

However over the last couple of weeks things have ramped up quite a bit. He’s suddenly decided eating meat is “evil” and that we are “killing animals because of our greed” (his exact words). To be clear, we are absolutely fine with him wanting to be vegetarian whether it’s a phase or not we will support him. We’ve adjusted our shopping and DH and I are cooking separate vegetarian meals for him, so it’s not about refusing to support that.

The issue is more the intensity of it all. Last week he refused to eat the dinner I’d made and had a snack instead because it didn’t contain meat. The next day the same thing happened, and when we sat down together, he refused to join in properly, sulked, and told us we were “evil” for eating meat.

Since then it’s become a bit of a theme, lots of quite intense statements about morality, the planet, humans being selfish etc. I seem to be getting daily moral debates/questions from him and it just feels quite heavy for an 11yo. I’m starting to wonder if he’s a bit overwhelmed by it all? Almost like he’s having a mini existential crisis.

On top of that, it’s not just food he’s now very anti-car and keeps going on about how bad ours is for the environment. He actually came to us with a list of cars we “should” be getting instead, which felt a bit… much for his age.

He’s also started asking quite challenging questions for example, if we’re happy to eat cows, why wouldn’t we eat our dog, what makes one animal different from another, why do we value some and not others etc. I can see where it’s coming from, but again it feels quite intense for his age.

I don’t want to shut him down or dismiss his views.

I’m also, if I’m honest, slightly irritated with the school I completely understand the value of philosophy and environmental awareness, but this is an 11yo and it feels like quite heavy stuff to be taking on so intensely. And we are paying the best part of £30k a year.

AIBU to think this is a bit much and needs reining in? Or should I just let him work through it and support the vegetarian angle properly? And would you speak to the school or leave it?

Would appreciate perspectives, especially if anyone’s had similar with this age group.

You’re paying £30,000 and they still expect him to think? Outrageous!

My 12 year old is a bit like this (also at independent school but I think it’s a personality thing rather than a school thing!). To be honest I’m pleased that she’s being encouraged to develop her own thoughts and feelings around things, and it encourages healthy debate.
ETA and also, often she’s right, it just feels uncomfortable for us because she’s challenging things we do and how we live.

Honestly (as a vegan) I agree with a lot of what he says and the reason why it feels uncomfortable/difficult is because there is no good reason why we farm certain animals and cherish others, other than culture. He feels his views strongly, he is young and just needs to learn that he needs to respect other people's choices and some topics you have to agree to disagree on.

Ethics/the environment are certainly good areas to feel passionate about and I would be very happy if my sons grow up to have this outlook but I understand that the 'criticism' must be hard - discussion is okay, personal attacks are not.

Re the car - I’d be telling him when he can drive and afford a car he can choose whichever one he wants and in the meantime he can feel free to walk.
If he wants to be vegetarian and the rest of the family isn’t, 11 is an excellent age to learn to cook for himself.
He seems like he’s reached that annoying age where he thinks he knows better than everyone else. They all do it.

I'm not really sure what you expected OP?

He's got the opportunity for what sounds like a fantastic education.

He's thrown himself into it and is engaging fully.

He's asking logical and relevant questions secondary to this.

Some of them are uncomfortable questions. Children do make us uncomfortable with some choices we make (ie, stance on abortion, death penalty etc) and information that we parrot. That's a good thing!

Ultimately you are not in a position where you can pick and choose his subject matter and that's accepted when you take the school place.

You cant expect him only to ask comfortable questions- he's a child!

That said, it does sound like he could use some support in courtesy and appropriate ways to hold and engage with controversial topics.

My niece went through a similar phase, courtesy of lessons relating to the environment at school. I said that electric cars are all good and well, but they are very expensive (they were fairly new at the time), and if she aspired to have one as her first car when she was older, she had best start saving up for one. Then I asked if she particularly liked walking or cycling, as she could take that up as her means of getting around, and her family would meet her at the place where they were going. She stuck to riding in a non-electric car in the end, as it was easier to get around, and to go on holiday and things!

As for his diet, he is more than welcome to be a vegetarian (if you are happy to accommodate that), and perhaps he can learn to cook a few vegetarian meals himself. If you can respect his decision not to eat meat, he will have to learn to respect the decision of people who do eat meat and fish.

Sounds like he has bought into some of the concepts and sounds like he is forming his own opinions on topics. This age group often go in a bit gung ho and can be black and white. You should be proud he cares.

the veggie thing - great opportunity for him to learn to cook. My eldest dd was veggie for about 10
months and we supported by buying her different food / sometimes adapting meals but a lot of the time she was expected to cook her own food. She’s no longer veggie (bacon won!) but she’s a great cook now.

other issues - engage with him and discuss ways forward. Can’t see a problem with him walking more rather than being driven.
he will likely mellow.
however, he does need to learn how to be respectful to those who have different views and this is a great teaching opportunity.

He sounds great!

If he were my son, I would be so glad he is thinking and questioning. I would try to talk to him about my own struggle to walk the line of uneasy compromise on environmental and ethical issues. It is fundamentally important for us figure out the extent to which we can 'think globally, act locally', to learn about ways we can be idealistic, to understand when we have to compromise, how to act on our principles without doing harm to our cause. It is also interesting to think about whether our own decisions matter in a larger sense, or whether they are just a way to soothe our feelings.

This is such an important and interesting topic for him to be thinking about. It is also great that his school is encouraging him to question the sources of information, and to try to understand the validity of arguments he is presented with- sounds like a wonderful school, and a very dedicated teacher.

He sounds like a typical 11 yr old/early teen, as far as his views are concerned and a typical privately educated boy - rude and opinionated with far too much belief in his own importance.

I'd recommend helping him ride a bike, if he can't already and helping him use public transport. Send him for a moderately heavy bag of groceries by bus or something. He's probably right about cars but understanding the infrastructure problems with moving away from cars would add to his education.

Also see if he can contribute to cooking - what's his ethical position on meals including vegetarian food that mimics meat in flavour / appearance? And remember constraints you don't have that other people experience ie. whilst veggie/vegan protein can be cheap (eggs, lentils etc) some cuts of meat can also be cheap, some people have health conditions where they feel better eating meat, some families can't afford to cook different meals for different people or even to experiment much with different foods in case somebody doesn't like them.

He's thinking and this will be so important for him in the future both eventually in work but also in resisting peer pressure as an older teenager.

I think your son has a point - if you eat cows…why not a dog - both are sentient beings….

children are perhaps more aware of the realism of the current ecological collapse of our planet and the consequences of climate change… but is not yet selfish enough to ignore them.

I felt the same as a teenager and it drove my desire to study and have a career in Climate Change adaptation.

Yes you should drive a lower emissions car, yes you should use public transport as much as possible and you should absolutely consider your carbon and methane footprint!

You seem hostile you your son’s awareness… I have no idea why?

Our world needs more children like your son!

I think your.son is going through a common teenage stage where they they think they know everything. Hopefully he will get over himself. Or turn into a Cancel Culture Woke.

As for eating meat and the the family dog. Of course you wouldn't

Does he know that in the following countries dogs are widely eaten as everyday food.

China, South Korea, Viet Nam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Myanmar, and parts of northeastern India such as Nagaland.

There’s no judgypants moraliser like a tweenager unfortunately! They have all of the self-righteousness and none of the experience to have any awareness of the bigger picture.

No child who says that his parents are evil because of their food choices is great.

Some firm words need to be had, OP, about how he expresses his opinions. I would not accept this from mine.

He is just going through the perfectly normal phase of realising that his parents don't know everything and aren't right about everything. And he is exercising this newfound knowledge.

It's fine, it is a bit annoying when they suddenly know better than you about everything, but it's a normal part of development. And tbh, part of it will be annoying because he may sometimes have a point.

Let him be veggie if he wants to be (I went veggie at 13 and still am 40 years later!) while making it clear that you expect him to respect other people's choices about what to eat without lecturing them about it. Praise his interest in the environment while explaining that it's your decision as to what kind of car you're going to drive because there are other factors to consider.

Basically encourage his independent thinking and the development of his moral values while teaching him that there is a time and a place to express these and a time to keep quiet and respect other people's choices, which might be different from his own.

You are living with an incipient teen. He is recognising that he has views that differ from yours and is challenging every value in an idealistic and intense way. This could last a while.

He is being taught to think for himself and question. It’s a good thing. Eventually, he will be less idealistic. But adult children still challenge their parents’ ideas and values!

My DS decided this at 5 and I was happy to oblige, he goes to a state school. He’s always been super sensitive and principled, he found out what meat was and said he wouldn’t eat it again and hasn’t! He even checks whether sweets are vegetarian at school before eating… He just loves animals and can’t bear the thought of eating them. I have zero issue with this, I don’t know why you’re still trying to get your DS to eat meat when he’s said he doesn’t want to.

I think this is just how it goes when you have a "bright, thoughtful kid" as they learn about the world. The school is just teaching normal things and as he thinks so deeply, he's reading a lot more into it than others. I have a child like that and I was one too. I don't think you'd have a different experience at a different school, it's just his personality.

I was asking these same questions at 11. For me, it definitely wasn’t coming from school or even the internet. Because I grew up in the dark ages.

This is a fantastic opportunity for him to develop critical thinking skills. “Cars are evil” is one moral statement. But what if his dad had a heart attack and he had a choice between a horse drawn cart and a car to get to hospital. Would he choose the cart if it meant his dad died? Why? Why not? Push back on these questions. Get him to think and back up his assertions. It’s fantastic he’s exploring these things, but it’s not as simple as stating something as fact. Make it a critical thinking exercise.

Also it’s fine to sometimes say, I don’t want to have this discussion right now. Let’s talk about what you did in beekeeping. Get him involved in cooking vegetarian meals for the family.

The intensity seems to be the issue not the thoughts behind them, something tells me if the op, or any of us, was a fly on the wll in the classroom ans interviewed the kids afterwards they would have different ways of thinking what was taught

I know this a well over used idea but I dont think this is normal thinking, turning vegetarian is normal same as the uni students who run around and sign up to all those charity and cuases when starting uni so they 'find themselves'

Being a cause is different to thinking you have found one

It’s a (good) part of growing up. He’s branching out and you are not the overriding authority figures in his life any more. It’s a good thing he’s engaging with school groups guided by teachers - could easily be friends or randoms online.

I think it’s a hard adjustment as a parent when your kids stop taking what you say as gospel! But this is crucial moment to engage with him as he matures. Try to avoid the instinct to shut him down because you know better or don’t appreciate the challenge.

This sounds like a normal 11yr old to me.

Calling it "big school" rather than "secondary school" (or "prep school" if you're going private maybe) is quite infantilising. And this, combined with you being upset he's asking "challenging questions" suggests that maybe your problem is your child growing up, rather than that the topics are overwhelming him.

I'm also confused about how you're catering to his vegetarian preferences. In one breath you say you're cooking him seperate meals but in the next you say he's refusing to eat the meal you cooked because it contains meat and later say "should we support his vegetarianism properly?"
You should absolutely be supporting his vegetarianism completely and making him separate meals any time you cook with meat and/or fish (depending on his preference). I get it's a bit of a pain but this is genuinely important to him. It may be a phase or it could be for life but it's something he feels really strongly about and has clearly given thought to. Don't just pay it lip service and then ignore him - you'll only alienate him.

I would engage! What a brilliant thing for him to be challenging received wisdom, and asking WHY.

So you could talk about the COST of eco cars. What’s the carbon cost of producing these new cars in China or wherever and transporting them to the UK and “throwing away” existing cars that work perfectly fine? what is the risk that all these new, very heavy hybrid and electric vehicles are damaging local road surfaces which then need heavy machinery and materials to repair? I genuinely don’t know the answers but I’m interested!

With vegetarianism: what happens if the whole world turns vegetarian? Do we have enough arable land? Are some animals more ecologically sound than others?

Perhaps we should eat only seasonal wild venison and insects?

What about food miles and water consumption - are some vegetables worse than others?

And what about HOW we grow those vegetables - learn about intensive farming using enslaved bees for mass pollination (tragic, especially in US), and learn about chemicals.

Fine so now we decided we can only eat organic vegetables and grains/seeds and drive electric cars and have solar panels on their homes. We are middle class, we can afford it. What about all the poor people - do we force them to do the same via legislation? How does the country afford that? Why should poverty mean people can’t afford to make moral choices? Ok so NOW we need a revolution so that people CAN afford to live clean lives by redistributing wealth. Is the real problem here capitalism itself, and the underlying problem that humans are selfish creatures who don’t really see past their own noses?

Also - if everyone stopped eating chicken there’d be no chickens. So those lives wouldn’t exist. Better to have happy organic chickens that die and are eaten, or no chickens at all?

Or, If it’s a moral issue of taking a life - ok, perhaps we should just eat free-range cows, because taking the life of one happy cow to feed a family for a week is better than, say, eating four fish?

I would push back on the use of the word ‘evil’. This is a religious concept and you can talk about vegetarianism in more enlightened terms.
if there is anything I would talk to the teacher about, it’s this. See: Donald trump’s use of this word. Bush’s use of this word to justify the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. Etc.

This is a lazy stereotype. Having taught extensively in both private and state schools I can assure you I’ve encountered just as many rude and opinionated children in both.

OP - don’t allow him to express his views rudely, but do listen, engage with him, challenge him etc. It’s an important skill to learn to debate (and this is something the independent sector tend to be good at), so he also needs to listen and be open to counter-arguments.