How do I explain that a pork chop comes from a cute little pink piggie?

[ScummyMummy]

My 3.5 y.o. boy's developing a conscience early... he turned to me today during tea whilst we were happily chomping fish fingers and said confidently: "we wouldn't eat a real fish with a body, would we Mummy?" I felt terrible. Am seriously thinking of turning veggie immediately as I can't quite bear the thought of telling him that not only is what he was eating a real fish with a body but that chicken legs, sausages, burgers and chops also come from real and cuter animals... Can't quite see partner going along with veggie plan though... Hastily changed the subject but no doubt it will come up again. Has anyone found a good way to deal with this?

Actually Scummymummy, I was really upfront with my kids telling them that the animals we see in the fields are "born to be eaten", but that this still means they have to be treated kindly whilst alive and taken care of. My 7 yr old is now really into food: we live literally next door to a field full of sheep and we see them being taken to market, but he still loves lamb chops! I think the fact that he sees the farmer taking such good care of his animals has struck a chord.

I'm sure kids are more resilient than we give them credit for sometimes, or are mine just weird!!! ?

My DS1 must be sadistic then, he loves looking at all the fish in the fish counter and had great fun helping his dad cut up and prepare a whole salmon, they even gave it a name!

Dp is always telling ds that he's eating a pig or sheep (and no he isn't vegetarian). He sometimes points out chickens and says thats what we're having for tea. We're going to a farm today so no doubt he'll be pointing out the pigs and telling him thats his breakfast in the morning. It makes me cringe. I can accept eating chickens as I hate birds but pigs I have a bit more of a problem with. Ds has watched nature programs where the animals are eating each other and we just tell him that its nature they're just eating their dinner. He's fine about it. I was a bit worried about the program where the crocs eat the wildebeest when they're crossing the river but he just accepts that all animals have to eat. It doesn't seem to have traumatised him though, I think all kids go through this stage and some do refuse to eat meat so be prepared in case your child has more conscience than the rest of us heathens!

DD was 4yo when we first talked about eating dead animals - in a supermarket in Oz - isn't it funny how these picutres sitck in your mind? I can see the fridge we were standing in front of, as I type this!

She doesn't have any qualms about it. She saw our cat chomping on his first kill earlier this week and I worried how she would handle that. We were halfway to school before she said 'Poor bird' and I replied 'Well that's what cats do'.

I worried about this too - for no reason. DD was around 3.5 when she twigged that the chicken she was eating used to go cluck cluck, but it didn't seem to bother her. I just said that we only eat animals that had died (she was going through a 'death' phase so that probably helped!). Can you go along with Oxocube's idea of just saying that we have to treat them nicely while they're alive, but once they have died then it's OK to eat them. Maybe you could tell him about the cycle of life or is he a bit young?

We've not hit this yet, but I don't think it will be too much of a problem as dd is used to it in everyday life - and she's 2yrs 10 months. SHe loves helping her Grandpa to gut salmon, and she knows that the black cow that was in our neighbours field unti about 4 months ago is now in our freezer (partly - he's pretty evenly spread around the area actually!). And we have already picked out the chickens (in the garden at the moment) that we are eating over Christmas (mmmmm - home grown organic chicken for CHristmas lunch, much nicer than turkey). Children were crought up this way for thousands of years, and I am glad that our kids live on a farm, not just for this but for loads of other reasons!

We hit this when ds was about 4 - asking what he was eating, response was 'gammon', his response was 'what exactly is gammon', explanation from me included pigs on the farm are only there to be eaten, etc. etc, half expecting him to no longer want his lunch, his response to that was 'mmmmm nice pig' - is there any hope??

My ds - rising 6 - thinks that animals that eat other animals are 'bad animals' (we were watching Life of Mammals this week!) and asks why they can't eat something else. We've tried the 'it's just nature - everything has to eat' angle, but he's not convinced. So far he's not too bad about eating things himself but I have to admit we skirt round the issue a bit - he hasn't yet made the connection between animals in childrens' farms we visit and those dull looking packets we buy in the supermarket.
On a similar note, does anyone else have a problem with all the endless childrens' books which have cute talking farm animals, in cosy little farms? No milk quotas, abbatoirs or foot and mouth there. Unless you're fortunate enough to live, like susanmt here, on a farm, (home grown organic chicken - yum!) how do you bring together fantasy and reality and when?

at 7 and a half my daughter decided to become a vegetarian because she saw City Slickers the movie - the one where they bring "Norman the cow" back home. the film was basically about ranches and cattle drives and lots of questions came up which ended up in answers like which had words in like - hamburger, mcdonalds lovely juicy steak - and such - so daughter decided she didnt want to eat any normans and became a veggie - a great factor was that i was also a veggie at the time - still it worried me she wasnt getting the right vitamins etc. - it lasted a year!

I say to my little boy that all fish/bacon/pork etc is meat. so when speaking to him over dinner, its 'eat up your meat'.

That way u can avoid them getting upset about the whole piggie/sheep and cow thing, until they are older and can make up their own minds. Unless of course you are vegan from day one.

adding to that.. my little boy is only 2.5 so I suppose we havent really got to that 'what exactly is this meat' stage!

Will never forget my mum loudly discussing how she ate guinea pigs (on a holiday in Peru) in front of a cage of pet guinea pigs and a gaggle of kids (who were all fascinated). Should I start hiring her out?

This Christmas we had leg of ham on the bone. Ds (3.5 years) was fascinated and wanted to know why there was a bone in the ham (he usually just sees the sliced variety from the deli). We explained that it was from a pig's leg and that it was special ham we were having for Christmas. He was most concerned about the pig having only 3 legs (did it hurt the pig to have his leg chopped off?) but was perfectly happy about it once we explained that the pig was dead and that no one would take a leg off a living animal to eat. From then on he asked for a pig leg sandwich...

There has been much continues discussion about meat and where it comes from (eg beef from cattle, lamb from..well, lambs, chicken from chooks etc) and he seems to understand completely now and has no problem with it. I don't think the being from a farm would have helped too uch in this area as we don't kill and eat any of our own animals on farm, but we do shoot rabbits, I guess and the dog eats them! Maybe this helped!

Ds2 is practically a veggie and was facinated by the turkey this Christmas. When I took it out of the oven, he asked, "Is it dead then?" All I could say was "Yes, very!"

Just remembered this - when ds1 was about 6, he was taken to lunch by my nanny at someones house. This person served up salmon. She was the sort of person who's dead serious about her food and (dare I say it), a bit snobby. Ds1 looked at the salmon and said loudly "Is that real dead fish?"