How to tell my little boy about where meat comes from?

[Sharkbaitooh]

My little boy will be 4 in may, and both my partner and I are vegetarian. We have decided to raise our little boy eating meat and dairy and want any decision he makes around eating meat to be his own when he’s old enough to decide. That being said I don’t want to hide where meat comes from and think it’s important that he understands the cycle of life etc. He’s recently started to understand the concept that different animals eat each other and he wasn’t very impressed and said it wasn’t very kind. (We were playing an orchard kids game where you catch fish and if you pick up a shark the shark eats all of the fish you collected and you lose your fish. I tried to explain that some animals eat other animals, and sharks do infact eat fish, his response again was “no mummy that’s not kind, sharks are kind they don’t eat fish”. Soo .. I guess I wouldn’t mind some opinions on the best way to approach it! When we eat our meals at the moment for example if he’s having mince meat we have quorn and don’t mention that it’s different but I know we should probably start to be more open about it. It’s hard because you’d think being vegetarian (since I was 11 now 34) I’d want him to be the same but I really don’t want to put him off meat just because of our preference as adults.

Hmm, tricky. I'm not veggie, but my oldest son is, has been since he was five and found out what meat was and how it got to our plates. He can't bear the thought of it. Sounds like your son will make a similar choice

OP, I live in a mixed house (me vegan, DH and DC omnivores but predominantly plant-based). DH and the DC tend to not buy any meat that needs more than 'place in the oven' prep (eg meat on pizza and chicken nuggets OK, a beef joint not OK). When they go out then they order what they want. However, the vast majority of all our meals are vegan. Would this sort of approach work in your home maybe - eat vegetarian at home and let him choose when you're out?

@EileenGC that’s really interesting to know, and a different way of looking at it.

I don’t want to hide the fact we are vegetarian at all, it just hasn’t come up yet in conversation with him, he hasn’t questioned what we are eating or not eating for example. When he asks the question, my partner and I have already agreed we will tell him we don’t eat it. Perhaps over time when he is a little older we will have meat in the house less and less for him. He doesn’t eat it every day and most of the time it’s chicken or pork although he does eat it also at pre-school.

I feed my son meat, despite objecting to the killing process, because personally i don’t want him to make decisions based on my opinions and morals. The same way I will let him choose if he wants to take up a religion.

Your position is philosophically confused.

You presumably aren't taking your child to church?

You have chosen for him - you chosen that he eats meat.

Some things are binary! He is isn't both vegetarian and meat eater - you have chosen for him.

The point is - my children can stop being vegetarian/meat eaters when they choose (the side I am on doesn't actually matter).

@ContessaDiPulpo that’s quite a good way of approaching it too, I will chat with my partner about this as once he starts school we will be eating more and more meals together. At the moment due to work he has his main meals often at nursery - but you’re right it’s going to get trickier and trickier.

@inquietant thanks for the opinion :)

I also don't understand trying to parent without passing on your morals/views.

You state your case, they do as you do until the point they don't want to.

I don't give a lecture on eternal damnation every day, I just live.

My mother didn't buy South African apples in the 80s - it would have been deeply weird for her to buy them for me!

I feed my son meat, despite objecting to the killing process, because personally i don’t want him to make decisions based on my opinions and morals.

That doesn’t make sense. You have chosen for him, chosen to give him meat. It’s like you assume meat eating is a neutral option.

I think it's a good idea for kids to have a little meat when in a veggie household so they can digest it if they choose when older.

But it's strange that you don't eat it and he does. If I were you, I'd either eat it with him or (in normal times) find a meat eating friend or relative to have it with him.

Sitting eating different things and giving your child something you think is morally wrong doesn't sit right!

@inquietant I’m clearly having trouble trying to express my feelings and thoughts to you in a way you understand, so perhaps we will just have to agree to disagree as im not finding your comments helpful and also making me feel like a rubbish mum right now. I’m trying to do my best for my child, I came here for advice and for the most part people have been supportive rather than judgemental. Perhaps best we agree to disagree.

Is it really that odd to bring dc up as meat eaters when you're a vegetarian? I'm surprised at how many pp who think so as parents who mention bringing up their dc as vegan from a young age usually get criticised for doing so. Yet the same principles tend to apply - they avoid animal products for ethical/moral reasons. I'm wondering if pp who think the op is strange for feeding her ds meat, would support raising very young dc as vegans too?

I have no skin in the game btw. I'm an omnivore, as is my dd, though neither of us eat a huge amount of meat. She's nearly 7 but has known that we get meat from animals for as long as she was old enough to understand that kind of thing. She isn't aware of how brutal the industry is, but she understands that beef is from cows etc. She went through a very brief phase of not wanting to eat meat when she was about 4/5 because she didn't like to think of the animals suffering. I was happy to support her with this, but it only lasted about a day.

I do find it a bit strange how much you're hiding from your ds though op. I think you're digging a bit of a hole and should be a bit more honest with him about things like the fact neither of his parents eat meat. Also the talk of animals being kind/unkind is a bit of a strange one to me, but I realise that came from your ds.

Put on a David Attenborough doccie - Planet Earth, any of them really.
Omnivores eat meat.

@BaggoMcoys thanks for this, I think going forward I’m going to have to be more open and upfront with him about us not eating meat. I think it will probably create more problems later down the line. I do want to just say though as I’ve said in previous posts it’s not a case of outright lying to him, it’s just never been discussed. He’s 3 and the conversation has never been raised until now. I initially asked the question about how to discuss it with him as I do want to be honest with him about things and it seems to have morphed into quite a different topic.

[quote Sharkbaitooh]@inquietant I’m clearly having trouble trying to express my feelings and thoughts to you in a way you understand, so perhaps we will just have to agree to disagree as im not finding your comments helpful and also making me feel like a rubbish mum right now. I’m trying to do my best for my child, I came here for advice and for the most part people have been supportive rather than judgemental. Perhaps best we agree to disagree.[/quote]
Yes, that's fine, of course.

I'm just expressing my view, and it isn't 'right', it's just how I view things.

I'm sorry you say you feel like a rubbish mum - remember I have never met you so have no view on anything other than the issues you've discussed on here, which are no doubt a tiny part of your while life.

I'd have said "No, sharks aren't kind...some animals are kind...dogs for example can be kind but not sharks. Sharks only care about eating and having baby sharks"

All wild animals (most animals, to be honest) only care about eating and having babies. Poor bloody sharks are persecuted enough (around 100 million killed per year by people) without spouting rubbish that some animals are kind and some aren’t. I’m sure the baby bird that my dog caught and killed in the garden didn’t think he was very kind

I would just tell him the truth at the earliest opportunity. That some animals need to eat each other to survive, and that he eats other animals too. To be honest though, it sounds like he might be happier being a vegetarian. I take your point about not wanting to force your choices on him (I haven’t eaten meat for about 15 years) but by giving him meat you’re still forcing a choice on him!

Whole, not while

[quote Sharkbaitooh]@inquietant I’m clearly having trouble trying to express my feelings and thoughts to you in a way you understand, so perhaps we will just have to agree to disagree as im not finding your comments helpful and also making me feel like a rubbish mum right now. I’m trying to do my best for my child, I came here for advice and for the most part people have been supportive rather than judgemental. Perhaps best we agree to disagree.[/quote]
You aren't being a rubbish mum but you're making weird parenting choices. We all take moral stances on things all the time - or we should. We are obligated as parents to raise our children with morals and ethics that match as far as possible our own. It's impossible to raise children 'morally neutral' as almost everything is a moral choice in one way or another.
If you are ethically opposed to killing and eating animals then it makes zero sense to raise your kids in a way that doesn't match that. It's inconsistent and incoherent and bizarre.

Thinking about this a bit more, I don’t see how you being vegetarian comes into it. Surely by this age he know that some animals eat other animals - even a bird eating a worm or something (does that make birds ‘not nice’??) or even dinosaurs eat other dinosaurs, some are plant eaters some are meat eaters, it’s pretty well covered in books and films for his age group. And if he eats chicken surely he’s made the link between that and the farm animal. Either you underestimate his understanding or you’ve really gone out you’re way to shelter him and avoid having this conversation.

I raised dd as vegetarian at home, but outside of the house she was welcome to eat whatever she wanted. Once she got to about 3 and made the connection between chicken on the farm and chicken you eat, she stopped eating that, and then came a "what animal is it?" check before she ate anything. She has not eaten meat since then, although eats fish because she didn't like fish as animals so they were fair game...

With my dd, I think she may have made the link herself with chicken and fish - she's always eaten a lot of those. I can't remember if she asked about beef and pork, or whether I volunteered the information but I think that she asked which animals they were - based on already understanding the concept because of chicken and fish.

Your ds is younger than i realised, so I think my approach would be to just let him lead on asking questions about food and where it comes from, and to be as honest as you can be with the answers. I'd probably try and revisit the kind shark topic though, and explain that animals have a natural instinct to eat and they know the types of food that is best for them. If he knows any cats or dogs, maybe you could explain that they eat meat/animals too, and that they're still friendly to him, and not unkind, they're just doing what animals do. (Sorry if that's a rubbish idea).

I'm a vegetarian and have always been honest with DD about where her food comes from but have never tried to persuade her. She had about six months aged five when she didn't want to eat meat and has since gone back to eating it. I'm very happy for her to make her own mind up but would always rather be honest.

It's surprising that a 4yo isn't aware that animals eat each other.

I'm also really confused as to what you call his meals if you're not hiding the fact that you're eating something different?

Is he never aware that it's Chicken X or Pork Y or Beef Z for dinner?

We've always spent time at farms and zoos (even museums as pp mentioned dinos), and dc has watched a lot of nature docs from an early age. There was no big reveal, it was just something that dc became aware of and saw for theirselves.

FWIW I'm a vegetarian and a lone parent to have always catered for dc as a vegetarian at home. DC was free to eat the meat option at school/nursery and at grandparents house, restaurants, or parties/playdates. They still ended up as veggie through choice (now teens).

i don’t want him to make decisions based on my opinions and morals

You lost me there, to be honest. How far does this extend? Not letting him know that you vote, so he won't find out that representative democracy is one of your values? Keeping quiet during a relative's anti-immigrant diatribe, so he won't feel pressured to be tolerant?

It is a very odd approach to parenting.

You are being dishonest your child at the moment, on most days. You and dh are making an ethical decision for yourselves but refusing to tell dc you are making the opposite choice for him.

If you were worried about the health implications, I would understand (I'd know you were wrong, but what parent doesn't worry about their dc's health?).

But surely parenting is about showing your dc how you live and modelling what you believe to be good behaviour, and helping them be ready to make their own decisions as they grow. You're treating your own ethics as a dirty little family secret.

I'd just wait until he asks. In my experience most children get to a point where they are interested and ask without being prompted.

My four year old has recently had homework about this subject, ‘life cycle on a farm’ I think it was called.
I’m vegetarian, but DH and DD both eat meat. She did stop eating it for about two days after doing the homework..