#ParentingDilemma #MeatEaters #VegetarianismDebate #ToddlersSayTheDarndestThings
Are you facing a parenting dilemma when it comes to discussing the truth about where meat comes from with your young child? 🤔 It can be a tough situation to navigate, especially when your toddler starts questioning the origins of their food.
## The Problem:
You recently found yourself in a sticky situation when your three-year-old niece innocently asked you why you didn’t want any chicken at dinner. You decided to tell her the truth – that you don’t like eating animals. While you were being honest with her, this revelation has led her to refuse chicken altogether, causing distress for your sister (her mom) who finds it challenging to feed toddlers as it is. 🍗😬
### Understanding:
It’s understandable that your sister is upset about the added challenge of accommodating your niece’s newfound aversion to meat. However, it’s crucial to remember that toddlers are naturally curious and absorb information like little sponges. 🧽 Being truthful with them about where their food comes from can lead to unexpected reactions, like in this case.
## Practical Solutions:
Here are some practical solutions that can help you navigate this delicate situation with your toddler niece and her mom:
1. **Communication**:
– Have an open and honest conversation with your sister about the situation. Explain your perspective and listen to her concerns. Finding common ground is key.
2. **Education**:
– Instead of shying away from the conversation about where food comes from, use it as an opportunity to educate your niece in a gentle and age-appropriate manner. 📚👧
3. **Alternative Options**:
– Offer to provide meal ideas and recipes that satisfy both your niece’s newfound preference and your sister’s need to ensure she gets proper nutrition. 💡🍏
4. **Respect Choices**:
– Respect your niece’s decision not to eat meat, while also respecting your sister’s challenges in feeding her. Finding a balance that works for everyone is key.
## Conclusion:
In conclusion, it’s essential to remember that every child is different, and their reactions to certain information can vary. While it’s important to be truthful with them, it’s also crucial to handle sensitive topics with care and understanding. Ultimately, supporting both your niece and your sister in their choices and finding common ground will help navigate this situation smoothly. You’re not alone in facing parenting dilemmas like these – we’re all in this together! 💖👶
Remember, the key is to approach these situations with empathy, understanding, and a willingness to find solutions that work for everyone involved. Stay strong and keep supporting each other through the ups and downs of parenting! 🌟 #FamilyFirst #ParentingStruggles #HonestyIsKey
You gave factual information, without opinion or embellishment, which is appropriate for children at that developmental age/stage.
NTA
NTA.
What was her solution. Never tell the kid chicken, pork, etc are animal products? Your sister needs to learn now that kids are curious and you have to learn to communicate with them
NTA – Do kids not sing Old MacDonald Had a Farm anymore? I’m pretty sure I put it together eventually that the chicken that went cluck, cluck here and cluck, cluck there ended up on my plate eventually. Anyway, she’s a toddler, this is a phase that will last a few days.
NTA: i can see where that might be traumatic info but you just honestly answered the question without getting gorey or emotional or judgy it sounds like, which frankly isn’t the worst thing to do with a toddler. They deserve real answers to their questions as long as the answers are factual and not totally age inappropriate. I knew beef was from cows etc as a kid but i grew in Montana.
You also told her why you didn’t eat it.
Honestly knowing kids, its really likely she’s saying it to copy you because she finds you someone to emulate. Kids do that. If you loved cheese and explained it made your bones strong, maybe she’d be eating cheese the next day. That’s normal kid behavior
Soft YTA.
What you said was true, but *very* unhelpful.
It genuinely *is* hard to feed toddlers, and for some it’s The Hardest Part of parenting them. If your niece is in the second camp, it was pretty shitty of you to make an already uphill battle even harder.
Unfortunately, for many kids the most difficult macronutrient to convince them to eat is protein, and it’s pretty uncommon to find a toddler (much less a picky toddler) willing to eat enough lentils or beans to meet that need.
I feel like this is similar in some waya to an experience I had babysitting. I was vegetarian for nearly a decade for ecological reasons, and I am very concerned about how the climate is changing.
However, when the ~12 year old older sibling came home and told the ~7 year old sibling that there was going to be no water soon and that we would all either die or have to move, the seven year old *freaked out*- and instead of saying “well, he got the timeframe wrong but the gist is correct”, I comforted her and very much white lied about the effects that we as individuals could take to prevent that outcome.
Was it true? Not entirely. But it *did* help her calm down enough to stop crying and eventually sleep, which was the more important priority for that time.
**I think that engaging with kids seriously and truthfully in a developmentally appropriate way is important, but not if it’s to the detriment of a more important physiological or developmental need.**
Ehhhh, slight yta.
There’s definitely a point that she’d find out, but you effectively forced her parents to do it plus the ‘everything dies’ conversation now if they hadn’t already.
Like, merited mistake, but still kind of a bad move.
NTA.
It’s a basic fact that every kid finds out eventually. Most kids are fine with it. Maybe she’s a little sensitive and needs time to process it. But she will. If not from you, she would’ve found out elsewhere.
NTA. It doesn’t seem like you were preaching any vegetarianism, you only said “I don’t like eating animals.” You framed the statement as a personal preference. The disconnect occured because the 3 year old didn’t understand that chicken nuggets come from those barnyard birds in her picture book, or that fish sticks come from the kinds of creatures she saw on Finding Nemo.
Granted, I do understand how a 3-year-old’s developing language skills and deductive reasoning might have not filled those gaps in on their own just yet, but that doesn’t make you an AH. This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the kiddo realizing things that seem like basic knowledge to our adult understanding.
Soft YTA
Anything that involves something controversial or difficult is something you should let parents explain.
“I don’t like it” is a sufficient answer for a toddler.
As an adult I can’t even stand to think about the fact that meat is from animals while eating it or I can’t. (And, I’m aware I don’t *have* to eat it but it is more difficult to manage my autoimmune conditions when when I don’t.)
YTA. Work on your tact. A 3-year-old doesn’t have a strong foundation in ethics, whereas you have arrived at your position as an adult. Your niece literally cannot understand your rationale. Moreover, in my opinion, you should know this, implicitly. Others may disagree. But I think you were out of line and should have known better.
YTA. There are multiple ways to answer this question truthfully, factually and neutrally:
“I don’t care for meat.”
“Some people eat differently than others!”
“In your family, you eat meat. In mine, we choose not too. Isn’t it cool how we can be different?”
Look, at age 2, we began to explain to our kids where foods come from. We talk about how all animals have to eat, and some eat plants and some eat other animals. But…that’s a convo your niece’s parents should get to lead. AND, whether you realize it or not, your answer implied that eating animals is wrong or bad, when in reality it’s just a different choice.
NTA. Her kid should already know that. My son knew that hamburger = cow, bacon = pig, and chicken = chicken when he was that age. Kids are curious and I have always just been honest with mine.
Damn, I was the opposite. One time when I was around 5, my dad brought home deer meat from hunting. He told me it was deer and I said it was really good and to get more. The exact words I used were “daddy go kill Bambi.” Moral is, you really can’t predict these things. Kids are unique and not every tactic works with every kid. Certain kids handle certain bits of information better. It’s a kid by kid basis and you had no reason to believe that she would be so upset over it. You’re NTA, it’s fine. She’s 3 and will probably grow out of this soon.
NTA someone would have told the kid at some point
“This isn’t A lamb we’re eating. It’s lamb!”
NTA, she asked a question, and you answered in a factual and truthful way. She’ll be fine, even if she never eats meat again.
NTA this is the normal age to learn this and she’ll probably go back to eating meat soon. In my experience, children who don’t make the connection until later are actually more likely to become vegetarian
NTA – my kids know from an early age where meat comes from. I’m not sure why a parent wouldn’t explain? If I give my kids chicken I tell them dinner is chicken, what does she call it?
NTA. It’s okay to not eat meat
NTA.
Basic knowledge should be shared. Meat is meat, it comes from animals. That’s really all there is to it.
NTA. People are really comfortable lying for no reason. If you were honest from the get-go, there’d be no shock. These people are the ones who get shocked when gets are devastated about Santa lies or “staying together for the kids” while making their home life a hostile war zone. So weird.
My BFF and her 2 year old were at a place that sells eggs, so chickens running around. She said “chicken! bok! bok!” then “chicken, yum yum” then thought for a bit and said “chicken … bok bok… yum yum? Owie.” Could just see her putting it together. (Now, she ended up being the kid who when someone said “bacon is made from pigs!” she would reply “yes… delicious, delicious pigs” so it did not traumatize her)
NTA.
Kids come up with a million wild excuses not to eat things. One of my kids wouldn’t eat lettuce because she didn’t want to eat leaves. My other kid wouldn’t eat fish for a while because she made the connection with the fish in our aquarium and multiple discussions about pets vs food could not sway her.
Even if you had just said that you don’t like it or don’t want it with no explanation, niece would probably still internalize it as something along the lines of “I shouldn’t have to eat this if I don’t want to, as well!”
NTA
You didn’t go on a tirade and show her anti meat propaganda or anything. You just honestly answered her question as to why you were not eating meat. I get that kids can be really picky and that sucks but it’s not your fault for giving an honest answer to a question.
NTA you told her a fact, the end.
NTA.
your niece would have found out some way or the other. maybe all she needs is some time to process this information, and things might go back to normal.
NTA
You stated your preference in a very neutral way. You didn’t say people shouldn’t eat meat. Sure, it may be new information to a toddler that meat comes from animals and some people don’t eat it because of that. On the other side, just because she is a toddler it does not mean she needs to be sheltered from all information or all that new information needs to come firstly with a discussion between her and her parents. They can talk to her about it if they want to or she asks them. I honestly think being sheltered from things to that extent is not helpful in the long run. It is also definitely not your responsibility to know not to tell such basic things about how people chose things to eat differently for some reason or another, counting it was age appropriate information and you weren’t preachy. If they want to have the first say on how new information in handled then they should have talked to her about it sooner, but, honestly, parents in general don’t have that much control and must accept that some things are discussed after their child has heard about it from someone else. It is inconvenient that she doesn’t want to eat meat but, again, not your responsibility to that extent and not something she would not find out sooner or later (and it was not too soon).
For example, should we hide that we dye our hair (say it is natural or something) so that a toddler won’t want to dye their hair and throw a fit? There are a number of examples of how toddlers can be inconvenient over basic new information. Well, that happens. Toddlers are bad with food sometimes, so you can do the usual strategies to counter that if they don’t want to eat meat for a while.
NTA. It’s not your duty to keep your niece ignorant of a basic fact about a category of food, especially when she broached the subject.
NTA. It’s reasonable for her to know this.
I don’t get all the people here coming down on the OP for telling her niece “the truth” about meat, as if it’s some big secret we keep from kids, like “the truth” about the tooth fairy or the Easter bunny. Kids should know what their food is, even toddlers. Maybe I’m biased because I came from a restaurant family so food was a big part of my upbringing. NTA.
Nope . NTA
NTA you just answered her question truthfully and you weren’t trying to convince her not to eat meat.
I think it’s fair to be open and honest with children about where food/ meat comes from. NTA
I remember getting garpy at the thought of eating chicken. I now live on a cattle ranch.
Life is harsh. Sheltering kids does them no favors.
NTA. Kids need to know where their food comes from. We raise animals and eat them. My kid sees and knows this.
NTA. Plenty of kids know this and don’t care. When I learned this it really affected me. I didn’t stop eating meat then but I ate less and less and now I’ve been vegetarian for 15 years. But my brother learned the same time I did and loves meat!
I guess my point is kids would find out soon enough, and the age at which they find out isn’t the determining factor as to whether it matters to them.
NTA.
NTA at all.
Stating the truth about your reasons without judgement is your right, to adults and toddlers.
I have three boys 5 and under, and if one of my kids refused to eat for this reason, I would consider it my responsibility to teach him that different people have different eating habits. And the benefits of eating meat and why our family eats it and how we respect those who do not. That’s called parenting – explaining the world to your kids. Not just blaming someone else who did nothing wrong.
Got in trouble for the same thing. And she was 7.
Parents are insane as far as Im concerned. I dont know all these random personal rules of what to lie to kids about but apparently Im suppose to?
Whys it so normal to lie to kids? Makes em stupid.
NTA. I’ll never understand people who think lying is better.
As if that would have stopped her curiosity or not wanting to eat meat in the future.
Like how people think not teaching about sex keeps children from having it… it just doesn’t work that way. Ignoring stuff doesn’t make it go away just cause you wish it to.
Lmao people think kids are completely stupid NTA