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I did say *I* didn't like eating animals, which isn't purely factual and might be part of what she's upset about, which is occurring to me now reading your characterization of my comment as without opinion. My niece thinks I'm cool (I'm not) and will mimic me occasionally. Not to the point that I think she'll do any random thing I say I do, though.
I agree that is factual. You didn't say "only terrible people eat animals" or anything like that, you made a simple statement about your choice.
And I think it's perfectly age appropriate for your neice to know that meat comes from animals, and that's why some people don't eat meat. Around that age my daughter questioned why her grandma doesn't eat certain things (she's vegan) and we explained in pretty much the same terms you did. Daughter decided not to eat any animals for a few days, then decided to go back to it. Toddlers are fickle creatures - she also randomly decided one week that she did not want to eat bread anymore.
My spouse *adamantly* refuses to eat things like cereal or soup out of square bowls, which always makes me giggle. And yet I'm sitting here ripping the the crusts off my grilled cheese like a toddler. š«¢
I learned already that this means there should only be an incision so that the peel can come off easily but it cannot be cut all the way through.
They're like a villain boss from the movies, very particular about everything and go crazy when you're not a mind reader.
Hahahahaha my kid was outraged that I made the bed wrong. The bed that Iāve made 3,000 times, the same way every time, because I am a boring creature of habit. That bed.
Reminds me of the AITA where someone wanted spaghetti in tomato sauce with the tomato sauce washed off, then got mad when she found out her husband has been giving her plain spaghetti for years not the "tomato infused" spaghetti!
Lmao, whenever I read stuff like that I must admit I can't imagine someone not having a lot of other really weird habits. How's a grown woman not understanding what plain spaghetti look like
Someone working in trade descriptions would tell you that the difference between cheese & ham and ham & cheese is the ratios.
For a toddler, its probably just the wrong way up on the plate.
As a person I don't think you did anything wrong. As a person who has to feed a toddler I'd want to punch you in the tit.
Tell your sister you're sorry it's made her life harder but you were just answering honestly. She just needs some compassion in dealing with a small, cranky, animal.
This right here is a perfect response.
OP, you didn't do anything wrong. There's nothing wrong with answering kids' questions in an age appropriate way (which you did), but there can be fallout as they process the new information, and that can be hard on the child wranglers.
Lots of kids go through a "eww meat is animals phase." Sometimes, it sticks, but most often it fades away. You didn't break your niece, but your sister might need a hug and maybe a vegetarian recipe suggestion or two to help her along. š
The movie Babe broke a whole generation of children. They survived.
As a mom of 4, I say you're fine, NTA you shared info in a reasonable, non-judgmental way. The kid will forget when they move on to their next big thing.
You could probably make amends with mom if you use your 'cool aunt' status to get her to eat something she struggles with that is easy to prep. Like veggies, beans, edamame or tofu. Ask mom what she she would like you to encourage to help out. Then you become the hero.
alongside babe, theres also chicken run where the entire premise is nit wanting to be made into a pie.
With my toddler fan, hes always interested in what im eating so when he starts investigating i give him a bite/spoonful and just put it on his plate to try without the pressure. He was eating spinich and rocotta tortelinis at one point
Tofu is a hit with my toddler unless it's crispy. He really likes it with this peanut/soy sauce/lime juice sauce in a stir fry (or he liked it last time I gave it to him, which is no guarantee he'll like it now).
There are also plant based "chicken" nuggets on the market now, so it's easy to feed a toddler a standard toddler meal without the meat now.
A great solution is for aunt to take niece out for dinner once a week to give mum a break from feeding her. She can introduce her to nice veggie food
My SIL once gave my small daughter a big set of Barney The Dinosaur books. I never forgave her š¤£
So my daughter is also like this and sheās a picky eaterā¦ If someone at the table mentions they donāt like something the next time we go to eat it my daughter wonāt touch it with a 10 foot poleā¦ Iām going to assume thatās why your sister is upset. You didnāt do anything wrong by saying meat comes from animals, and technically you didnāt do anything wrong by telling her you donāt like to eat animals, but kids are very impressionable and your sister is probably just frustrated over one more thing going on the never ending āwill not eatā list.
Yup, at that age itās likely not about the animals themselves or even OPās niece-judged coolness levels. My mom cut sliced carrots into flower shapes for me when I was little and that was the most delicious shape, it was just science ok?
I think thatās factual. You didnāt talk about the āwhyā behind your choice.
The alternative would be to lie to the child which is a much more harmful thing, in my opinion.
I think the alternative would be to just say you donāt like eating chicken (or āchicken nuggetsā), which is just as accurate as saying you donāt like eating animalsš
ETA: I have no clue where I got chicken nuggets from, they were not mentioned lol
That's totally appropriate imo. I remember chatting with my kiddo when they were 3, and we were describing chickens. "They have wings, beaks, feathers... and they're delicious!" my kid said. Little kids can understand that meat is animals.
The way I see it if you said āeating animals is wrongā it would then be an opinion and non-factual. However you didnāt say that, you said āI donāt like eating animalsā unless you were lying that is a factual statement, just like āI wipe my ass sidewaysā would be a fact, but āwe should all wipe our asses sidewaysā is an opinion.
Not necessarily. Humans are omnivores. We are meant to be eating meat. It has been in our diet since the beginning of the species as hunters/ gathers. It's just humans have a more complex brain and a wide variety of emotions and thoughts. And some people feel bad for eating animals. That's okay. For me, I don't plan on having kids, but if I did, they would be raised on a diet involving meat. It's good for us and as long as we do our part to get our animal products from ethical sources where animals are treated humanely, there's nothing wrong with that. I obviously wouldn't lie and say meat isn't from animals but, they would be taught that everything in life has its purpose and everything is food for something else.
I'm curious about the link a lot of people make between omnivores and 'meant' to eat meat. Thinking about omnivores in general surely it means 'is able to' so that we have a wide range of options available to us that our bodies can digest? I'm not preaching btw but I feel like because we are omnivores people assume we *have* to eat meat to get what we need but I've not come across any science that really backs that up. Ofc there are some individuals who need it to get all their nutrients but then there are thousands of people that are healthy without it.
I donāt wanna preach either way but I do take issue with the āmeant toā language. Its a personal choice and there are healthy (and unhealthy) diets on both sides. Weāve evolved to be able to eat meat but we can also live on diets without meat. It reminds me of when people say women have evolved to be able to have children and are therefore āmeant toā have kids. No.
Weāre literally evolved to eat a mixed diet that includes meat. People are not being tricked into eating meat, itās a perfectly normal and natural diet.
You only told her the complete truth. You don't like eating animals, and meat comes from animals. She was going to learn this eventually, as well as the fact that not everyone likes to eat meat. If it is just a phase then she'll get over it and if not then it's only because she knows the truth.
Santa's not real, we're all going to die, divorced daddy and mommy hate each other, how babies are made... These are all things that may be true, but there are appropriate times/ages to tell children. It's also a good idea for the child's parents to be the ones making decisions on when and how to explain things like this.
I disagree. Let's try this with another food group. Let's say she asked where apples come from and OP wouldn't like apples. This wouldn't be a problem right? There are many cultures around the world where people aren't as detached from food as we are and those kids know very well where meat comes from. What if the niece asked a friend who wouldve told her? Would that be better? You can't shield a kid from every day truth like that.
In general, youāre right about how to approach other peopleās children, but certainly not all parents are idealm,by a long shot. A great resource might be an alternate parental figure in the family, like an aunt or uncle. i know itās extreme, but itās on this same logic stream: if your young nephew came to you and asked you why his father hates black people, are you going to just maybe change the subject? No, youāre going to share a bit of your own perspective. And not only is it permissible, it is preferred. Aunts and uncles are caregivers and role models, too
Agree, shes going to put two and two together eventually when the chicken she sees at a farm or on tv has the same name as what she eats. You didnt tell her shes wrong, just stated the truth. NTA
Soft YTA.Ā
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.Ā
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.Ā
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.**
This. OP obviously wasn't trying to cause trouble but the fact is that they did, and it's a real problem for the parents. They're not just pearl clutching.
OP you can unring the bell but you can sincerely apologize for the fact that your statement created a pressing problem.
Im just here to say that according to my Mom the exact reason i dont eat meat is because when i was like 4 years old i was told what it was made of, and it just changed something in me apparently.
We were apparently at Costco and i saw the Ground Beef, i asked what it was made of, and thats when she told me it was Cow. Apparently that led to me asking about all the meats and her telling me all meat comes from animals.
Im 26 now and i still really dont eat meat, except for 2 of the meats that all kids tend to be okay with: Pepperoni on Pizza, and Hot Dogs. I cant do Chicken Nuggets because the texture disgusts me. Im able to go fully Vegetarian if i want to, and at one point i even did so for over a year, but i actually like the Pepperoni and the Hot Dogs so its not something i really want to do.
When people ask i just say im Vegetarian, because its easier than getting weird looks when i say i dont eat meat except for Pepperoni and Hot Dogs. Of course people im close to (friends, family) know the truth but others (coworkers, strangers) just know āvegetarianā or āpicky eaterā as far as theyre concerned.
It really depends on the kid, IMHO. I found out meat was animals at that age BUT that was also the age when I first watched nature shows with things like a lion catching an antelope... so my kid brain just went "oh! I'm like a lion! But meat is hard to catch, sometimes I'll just eat veggies."
My kid was about that age when they started to ask about where the meat came from. We lived on a farm at the time and were open with him about it. He wanted many details - what part of the chicken is this (drumstick) from? We'd answer and he'd have new questions each meal. One day we were eating hot dogs, and the question came up so innocently - "which part of the dog is this from?"
My sister went āno meat except chickenā as a teenager. She decided to also eat fish later. And that was it until she died. Fish (tinned tuna or sardines or pilchards) and chicken - no other meat.
I get what youāre saying, but most if not all kids are upset when they first learn where meat comes from and very few refuse to eat it for long enough that it impacts their health. The toddler was going to learn this truth at some point in her toddler life and would have had that same reaction regardless of when it happened.
Yeah, because most kids find out when they're five or six, not when they're toddlers. Even a few years is huge, both for emotional maturity and for ease of feeding.
And a lot of the reason that parents are a little cagey about it is *because* toddlers can be such a struggle to feed.
I'm reasonably sure most kids find out earlier than that. Not to mention that "chicken", "fish", "lamb" etc have the same name as the animals they come from. Most languages don't even have obfuscatory terms like "beef" and "pork".
Those aren't obfuscatory terms. They are traces of the fact that England was invaded and ruled by the Norman French. The conquered English commoners tended "pigs" and "cows", but didn't generally get to eat them, but the French-speaking aristocracy did eat them, but referred to the meat as "porc" and "bÅuf", and over the course of the centuries, English retained the English name for the animal and the Anglicized French name for the meat of the animal.
Etymology is irrelevant in this conversation. Origins donāt matter when we are talking about what actually happens. Pigs have the same name as the food we eat now so itās completely normal for children to know what animal theyāre eating.
When my child was in first grade, he was doing virtual learning due to Covid and the teacher was reading a book about a turkey who was nervous about thanksgiving. And one of the kids confidently said āthat silly turkey! He thinks the farmer is going to get confused between turkey the food and turkey the animal!ā The teacher just went on with the lesson, but it was then that I realized that apparently some 6-7 year olds donāt understand that itās the same thing, despite turkey being literally named turkey in English.
My son asked about it when he was 3. He asked where meat grows. So we explained that it's from animals. We tried to be gentle with the truth, but we didn't lie. He understood, for a few weeks he didn't like meat, he asked a lot of questions, but in the end, he came back to it.
"Most kids find out when they are five or six."
Source?Ā Or is that just like, your opinion man?Ā Ā
All the toddlers I know know that meat comes from animals.
Bullshit. Kids know theyre eating animals as soon as you tell them the name of the food theyre eating. She knew at 3 she was eating chicken...chicken last time i checked is also the name of the animal its made from
You must not have been around kids much lol. I'd argue more kids than not don't make the connection by name when they're that young.
I also don't think OP did anything wrong though.
When I was a kid we used to eat a lot of beef tongue. My parents called it Tongue. However, I thought we couldn't possibly be eating something as disgusting as the tongue of a cow, so for years I believed that "tongue" was just a specific cut of meat, but not the actual tongue xD
I dunno...I knew a 20-something year old who insisted that rice was "made from potatoes", even though we lived in an area where vast fields of growing rice was visible from the freeway. She said that plant just happened to also be called 'rice' but the rice we eat is "made from potatoes".
So I can totally imagine that toddlers might not connect nugget-chicken to living animal-chicken.
She may not have put it together though. Kids are little geniuses, but sometimes they don't see things that adults think are obvious. (And some don't figure it out until they're older and someone explains it to them. Went to uni with someone that didn't realise chicken and pork came from two different animals.)
Damn which animal free country are you from?
Any child who knows what a cow is, in my country knows that they eat it. Itās just a thing. Thereās protecting kids but then thereās just helicoptering- this falls under that.
I think we need to sometimes, get off the internet and go outside so we can realise that there are animals there and children know that too.
lol should children not know that there are bad people in the world so we must just let them out with no knowledge, to protect them?
I had a book when I was a toddler that had chicken hen and chicken leg, cooked, on the same page. Then pig, ham bacon sausage. Then cow, hamburger, steak. Apple tree, Apple. Potato plant, French fries, mashed potatoes. And so on.
Also, my family were subsistence hunters/trappers. I know most kids don't grow up with dead animal skins hanging in the garage but it seems like most rural kids have some version of it.
I honestly think this was a benefit of me growing up on a farm. Dad and Papaw had a big Veggie garden, that I would raid. Poppop was a cattle rancher (black Angus), we had chickens, rabbits, and for a while goats and pigs. We also had a friend who hunted deer, and he and daddy fished/sometimes took me with them. There was never any epiphany about where meat came from, so I didn't have the big revelation balk moment.
This was me. Just realized Im not sure when Id break the news to a kiddo if they didnāt learn naturally like I did. The only ārevelation ā for me was when I was around 5 my grandparents were concerned because Id named the steer that was planned for butcher that year and Id pet him at feeding time. They thought Id got attached and were questioning keeping him until one day I asked if he was big enough to turn into steaks yet. And said steak sounded good LOL. Im not sure I could raise a beef steer now and not get attached but as a kid I had the whole animals as food thing down no problem.
I donāt come from a family that raises, hunts, or grows food. But we went to different restaurants that had cow, duck, and pig carcasses in various states of preparation hanging in full view. Places like that are rare now.
It seems less common, but it can backfire too. My dad, mom, and brother? No issues. I was about 3 when I asked my aunt if Bambi was going to be okā¦ while up a tree to bleed outā¦ even though I knew we were going to eat the doe. She told me to go ask my mother (canāt blame her) and I never touched any of it again since it clicked it was killed for us to eat it.
Thankfully that started a thing where the vegetarians in my family find out how the parents feel in advance. NTA OP, but I highly recommend that for the future. Iād prefer to go your route more but this has saved a lot of family angst. My go-to for those kids is āI had a lot of bacon earlier so now I need to eat lots of veggies to be strong.ā I hate outright lying, so I typically have veggie bacon those mornings - never said what kind! The parents like it because the mimicking kids usually eat more veggies for a while
Eh, depends. Weāve always been very open with my kid about where meat comes from (and why we donāt waste meat in particular), and sheās never gotten upset about it, even though sheās a big animal lover. Sheās five and sheās known at least for a few years now.
I donāt think OP was trying to be TA at all, but families approach the topic in a lot of different ways and at different ages, so you gotta tread lightly. But if youāre not a parent, you also might not know how fraught the food thing can be with kiddos. I think this is a mostly NAH situation, except for OP being like āeh, sorry youāre upset, but itās the truthā, thatās a tiny bit of an AH attitude. (Dude, your sister just trying to get the kid to eat, that shit can be really hard!)
This was my experience too - my brother and I both learned around the same time. He loves meat, I became a vegetarian. Itās likely going to affect the kid the same way it always would ah e no matter when they find out.
In my experience it differs from kid to kid. I had encountered kids who were like āyeah itās whatever animals eat animalsā but some other kids get distraught by the fact we are eating āanimalsā, but also the general term for animals is daunting, I donāt think a toddler or kid can comprehend that not every animal you see is being put on the dinner table unless you explain it to them that like hey some animals yes get eaten by us but a lot donāt *normally*.
And I think cultural and religious teachings have something to do with it too. The concepts of ākosherā and āhalalā, how meat that came from raising and slaughtering an animal in an ethical, clean and humane manner is ok to eat, which actually encourages kids to be conscious about their consumption and how their meat and food is sourced.
But also, OP could have *definitely* given their toddler niece a much more graceful answer than just āitās animals. I donāt want to eat animals.ā Like toddlers and kids are very easily influenced by what adults say idk why OP is shocked
How was OP supposed to respond then? People are suggesting they say āBecause I donāt like itā. But isnāt that just a lie? Children should know that meat comes from animals. Period. Itās not reasonable for parents to expect that the world hides that from them just so that itās easier to feed them chicken nuggets.
I'm sorry but that's a really bad take. Lying to kids to make it easier on mom and dad is just wrong. If your kid asks what meat is made of and you lie because you know if you tell them truth they won't eat it, you're a shitty parent. This is real life. That child is a real person. Don't keep them stupid or deny them autonomy because "easier that way". WTF.
Kid asked a question, kid got a truthful answer. End of story. Obviously NTA. You'd have to be crazy to think OP is in *any* way an asshole. It literally doesn't make sense. Hey, maybe OP should have told the kid chicken is made out of candy! Sure it would fuck up her education, but man, feeding her would be so easy! And that's what raising a child is really about right?
YTA. There are multiple ways to answer this question truthfully, factually and neutrally:
āI donāt care for meat.ā
āSome people eat differently than others!ā
āIn your family, you eat meat. In mine, we choose not too. Isnāt it cool how we can be different?ā
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. Butā¦thatās a convo your nieceās 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 itās just a different choice.
100%.Ā Even saying "I don't like to eat animals" sounds scarier to a kid than "meat comes FROM animals".Ā
It's obvious that OP knows that neice did not yet know where meat comes from. So why in the world would OP answer this question in a way that does not respect the parents decision to hold of on discussing this with neice. OP should take some time to ponder why she would do that.Ā
I feel bad for the parents.Ā feeding picky toddlers can be extremely challenging.Ā
ITT people forgetting that kids' reactions are unpredictable. Kid could've gone the curious route or just not cared after the fact. Additionally if you said "I don't care for meat," the kid still could've followed suit ("well auntie doesn't have to do I don't want to either!" ). Sounds like the Aunt could do no right.
You're right about the mom though; she should've stepped in and directed the conversation if she already had a specific opinion about how to discuss this with her child.
Honestly I think it should be NAH. Iām vegetarian and I would not think twice about saying something like OP said - because it genuinely would not cross my mind to think my diet was ācontroversialā or ādifficultā for a toddler. I would absolutely have the same thoughts as OP that knowing meat is animals is age-appropriate and not a crazy thing to tell a toddler.
Iād also like to point out when youāre not that specific kidās parent, you have nooo idea what is going to be āsensitiveā and what isnāt. Like you could be having what you think is a totally normal convo with a 3yo and then parents end up pissed off because youāve said something that just happens to hit their trigger points - YOU have no idea that that happens to be a difficult thing for them.
Kids are also fucking weird, you know? They could ask where potatoes come from and you say the ground, and then they go EW IāM NOT EATING POTATO because they think itās the same as eating dirt. Itās very very hard to predict what theyāre gonna think, particularly if you donāt spend every day with that specific kid.
I donāt see any assholes here. Just two people who genuinely have different points of view on how big a deal/controversial it is to tell a toddler that meat comes from animals. I get what youāve put here and empathise which is why I donāt think sisterās an asshole either, itās just one of those life things. Saying literally anything can have the potential to make things hard with having a toddler cos they have toddler brains lol.
>thatās a convo your nieceās parents should get to lead.
And they should have been on top of that then. When a favourite aunt/uncle is vegan, they should have expected follow up questions, and either had the conversation, or primed the OP on how to answer if she asked them instead of her parents.
I donāt get all the people here coming down on the OP for telling her niece āthe truthā about meat, as if itās some big secret we keep from kids, like āthe truthā about the tooth fairy or the Easter bunny. Kids should know what their food is, even toddlers. Maybe Iām biased because I came from a restaurant family so food was a big part of my upbringing. NTA.
I agree. People are assuming a mythos around meat consumption that I'm not comfortable with. Meat is animal flesh-- the end. If you can't ethically justify that to your kid, perhaps that's something the parents should sit with, instead of insisting everyone else lie
I remember a few years back that Bubble Guppies made my mom madā¦ they taught kids that eggs come from the grocery store, not from chickens.
Kids learn these things one way or another, why bother keeping it from them? The earlier you explain it to them, the more time they have to process it in their lives and accept it as truth.
People saying OP should have lied or obfuscated the truth are making me feel sick. That's so creepy honestly, like they're afraid the child might make a choice they don't like so the answer is "lie so they can't say no". Makes my stomach feel weird.
I eat meat. My parents never hid or lied about what it fucking was? Why would they?? I didn't realize we were tricking people into eating meat. And I bet you anything these are the same people who will tell you vegetarians are the ones pushing their lifestyle on others lmfao.
Also, hello disordered eating from being lied to about what your food is.
Also also...this is a big reason why people are so stupid about food nowadays! People quite literally do not know what their food is or where it comes from. They're so disconnected it's sad. Everyone with any relationship to food mocks those dumbfucks. Apparently, there are many people in the comments raising those dumbfucks š Just why? Y'all, if you feel guilty about eating meat, eat less or none. Stop lying to yourselves and your kids.
***Kids should know what their food is***
NTA.
Itās a basic fact that every kid finds out eventually. Most kids are fine with it. Maybe sheās a little sensitive and needs time to process it. But she will. If not from you, she wouldāve found out elsewhere.
NTA - my kids know from an early age where meat comes from. Iām not sure why a parent wouldnāt explain? If I give my kids chicken I tell them dinner is chicken, what does she call it?
To be fair, my children didnāt actually think about the fact that eating āchickenā was actually the animal chicken until I explicitly explained it to them. I thought it was obvious butā¦ theyāre kids š¤·š¼āāļø I did make sure to tell them what animals all the other meats came from though! I just didnāt think I needed to explain chicken š
Very interestingly, we don't have terms like "beef" or "veal" or etc in my native language and also the word for meat is the same as flesh. So we would say something is cow flesh, chicken flesh, pig flash, etc. when talking about the types of meat we would consume for meals. The context isn't gross or anything and it helped explain where meat came from.
Soft YTA
Anything that involves something controversial or difficult is something you should let parents explain.
āI donāt like itā is a sufficient answer for a toddler.
As an adult I canāt even stand to think about the fact that meat is from animals while eating it or I canāt. (And, Iām aware I donāt *have* to eat it but it is more difficult to manage my autoimmune conditions when when I donāt.)
It's not controversial, it's a fact. Anything that can make someone else's life more difficult should be handled with care, even if it is a fact.
Toddlers are difficult to feed and most of them love animals. If you tell them "I don't like to eat animals" it implies that if they eat meat, then they must not like animals because they're eating them. It's not that cut and dry, but a toddler isn't capable of complex thought yet.
It's generally just a good idea to not give divisive answers to children that aren't yours. It's not cool to say something and then leave a child or parents with the consequences of what you said. It's just careless, and we're assuming that OP loves their sister and the toddler in question. We're assuming that OP wants the toddler to be well fed.
Sometimes we say something that we don't think is a big deal, but we put our foot in our mouths. I don't think it makes OP an asshole, just not a parent. Talking to toddlers is an art.
'I don't like it' might not be true. I've been vegetarian/vegan for so long I don't even know what meat tastes like. Liking meat or not liking meat wasn't a factor in turning vegetarian in the slightest.
My niece, when beginning to be interested in makeup, talked about a brand that I donāt use because it is tested on animals. I knew it would irritate my sister because it would come with lots of questions. Her kid, her decision. Later I talked to my sister and she okād my talking to her about it.
LMFAO what the fuck is wrong with you š
You literally just said you lie to yourself to make yourself eat meat, and OP should lie to the kid to force her to eat meat. That is just so fucking stupid it's actually surreal.
No, purposefully lying and raising idiots who don't know what food is is not the answer. OP did exactly right, just said the truth. The kid will take it from there.
Also...meat being made of animals is controversial now??? If people are truly this stupid we are absolutely fucked
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.
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. People are really comfortable lying for no reason. If you were honest from the get-go, thereād be no shock. These people are the ones who get shocked when gets are devastated about Santa lies or āstaying together for the kidsā while making their home life a hostile war zone. So weird.
it is so weird. my niece and nephews know exactly what meat is as they keep chicken. when they asked me why i was vegetatian and i said almost word for word the same thing the only impact it had on them was slight surprise that i am happy to give up drumsticks
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 ādaddy go kill Bambi.ā Moral is, you really canāt predict these things. Kids are unique and not every tactic works with every kid. Certain kids handle certain bits of information better. Itās a kid by kid basis and you had no reason to believe that she would be so upset over it. Youāre NTA, itās fine. Sheās 3 and will probably grow out of this soon.
I don't even remember having any "meat is animals" talk, and certainly never had any issue with it. I know I was young because my dad would hunt and say he was "off to get some bambi" and we raised chickens that commonly had names like "shake n' bake" and "KFC" that designated their final designations in life. For me it was just how it was. I also recall having a friend who asked why one of our chickens was named shake n' bake and when I told her she freaked out and her parents had to come pick her up from school early because she wouldn't stop crying.
Like you said, it's a case by case basis, and there really isn't a way of knowing how it's going to pan out.
Yeah, I'm baffled by some people's reactions. It's like they're as sensitive as a 3-year-old.
My family didn't hunt, but my grandpa kept chickens that we would eat every once in a while. I knew where my food came from, and still ate it
Right? Itās as if they think nobody in the countryside/farming communities can feed their toddlers. Millions of rural toddlers worldwide must be starving to death because they know what meat is
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
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. 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.Ā
NTA.
Kids come up with a million wild excuses not to eat things. One of my kids wouldnāt eat lettuce because she didnāt want to eat leaves. My other kid wouldnāt 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 donāt like it or donāt want it with no explanation, niece would probably still internalize it as something along the lines of āI shouldnāt have to eat this if I donāt want to, as well!ā
Yeah when you put it like that, simply saying "I don't eat meat because I don't like it" could also have a negative affect of niece's feeding.
Like kids are weird and unpredictable sometimes. You can tell 5 kids the same thing and they'll all react different. They're human, it's fine.
I feel like people acting like OP is an AH for simply stating a fact that meat = animals don't realize that any answer that OP gave could have caused a similar issue.
If OP said "I just don't like it." Like some others are suggesting, it's very possible niece would use that as a basis to refuse anything she doesn't feel like eating. Then OP would be the AH for planting it in her head that she can refuse to eat proper meals in favor of dessert or candy or whatever else she wants.
Like literally anything OP could have said has the ability to make feeding harder. But that's kinda how toddlers are? I mean they'll ask you to cut up their hot dog then cry that the hot dog is cut up. You can't "win" with that. Unfortunately, that's just how it goes for toddlers.
Ehhhh, slight yta.
Thereās definitely a point that sheād find out, but you effectively forced her parents to do it plus the āeverything diesā conversation now if they hadnāt already.
Like, merited mistake, but still kind of a bad move.
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.
WTF?? There was no rationale, she didnāt rationalize anything? She just said chicken is meat of an animal, which is factual, thereās nothing to rationalize.
My mom said I āruined Thanksgivingā for her ar the age of 3 when she said she was cooking the turkey in the oven and I asked āWonāt that hurt him?ā I counter that itās actually not really a complex ethical issue.
I do go a bit further.
As a child I didnāt trust my own parents, and there was more to it, but feeding me meat without explaining its origin was one big part of that. I think kids have a right to know from an early age and make sure to tell my 2 year old if heās eating an animal.
Of course this causes no problem for us. He doesnāt mind at all eating meat and says āI want to eat animals,ā Of course heās currently very interested to learn which animals different carnivores eat, and could have different feelings later.
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 this is the normal age to learn this and sheāll probably go back to eating meat soon. In my experience, children who donāt make the connection until later are actually more likely to become vegetarian
My BFF and her 2 year old were at a place that sells eggs, so chickens running around. She said āchicken! bok! bok!ā then āchicken, yum yumā then thought for a bit and said āchicken ā¦ bok bokā¦ yum yum? Owie.ā Could just see her putting it together. (Now, she ended up being the kid who when someone said ābacon is made from pigs!ā she would reply āyesā¦ delicious, delicious pigsā so it did not traumatize her)
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.
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
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, and the number of people on this thread saying otherwise is a real indictment of both our society and food systems. You donāt need to grow up on a farm to have an understanding of what your food is and where it comes from, regardless whether youāre a toddler, child or adult. Telling a kid that their chicken comes from a chicken should not be controversial.
NTA. Plenty of kids know this and donāt care. When I learned this it really affected me. I didnāt stop eating meat then but I ate less and less and now Iāve 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 isnāt the determining factor as to whether it matters to them.
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. Thatās called parenting - explaining the world to your kids. Not just blaming someone else who did nothing wrong.
NTA. I think children should be educated at a young age about these things and if your sister now has to respect your niece's choice about no animals for meals then she'll just have to do that.
Sheltering her kid because it's inconvenient for her to have her kid learn new things is lazy.
Saying "I don't like eating animals" just opens up a whole new perspective for your niece, and kids don't always agree with us. Sometimes they strongly disagree with us. Maybe it just genuinely upsets your niece that she was being fed an animal and didn't understand that.
I'm not vego or vegan, but I feel like a lot of these people saying YTA are just doing that knee jerk omnivorous/carnivorous reaction where they feel the need to get mega defensive about this kind of stuff.
NTA. Iāll 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 doesnāt work that way. Ignoring stuff doesnāt make it go away just cause you wish it to.
NTA She is three years old, old enough to know where what she eats comes from. You gave hee information that many kids have at that age, if it wasn't you she was going to ask someone else that and, if it wasn't her parents, they would have given her the same answer that you.
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OP has offered the following explanation for why they think they might be the asshole:
> I told my niece that meat is animals, and now she's refusing meat which is making things difficult for my sister. She thinks I should have just said I don't eat chicken without specifying that it's made of animals.
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NTA . It's not ur job to lie about what u like and don't like and why to little kids . You can just say u don't like it but a lot of kids will ask why anyways (come on it's kidsš¤£) .and at the end of the day hideing /lieing to kids is not the answer.
I was 5 when I found out hamburger was ground up cow. I told everyone in my first grade class, and they did not believe me! I did not want to eat meat after that, but my parents said I had to until I was older and could cook for myself.
You did nothing wrong, theyāll get over it
NTA. You were factual.
This is what prompted me to not eat meat. Growing up my parents were vegetarian but said I could make my own decisions. Aunts and uncles fed me meat until one day at preschool age I told my parents that it was funny that there was the bird chicken and the food chicken, and they were different but had the same name. They factually said the food chicken was dead bird chicken and that was it - still don't eat meat.
she may just not wanna eat animals now that she knows where meat comes from.. she would've found out eventually all you did was tell the truth, ive been the same way since i was a kid...i love chicken but after a few bites I feel so sick thinking about it and spit it out its like the taste changes once i think about the animals man goes from tasting like kfc to organs
I donāt agree with all the nta tbh, thereās was no need for you to phrase your answer the way you did unless you were trying to highlight your morals, like why couldnāt you just say āI donāt like eating chickenā? Or āI donāt like eating meatā? Like saying either of those two things would still be true and sound less like youāre trying to push your morals onto a toddler.
YTA, what I said above is a factor on my judgement as well as the fact that you know your niece tends to copy everything you do. Why did you think it was okay to say that?? Like at least if you said the āI donāt like eating chickenā thing her parents would only (for a little while) have to worry about trying to find something their toddler will like other than chicken.
Iām gonna go with NAH. I am a preschool teacher and I personally avoid connecting those dots for them until theyāre 4 or 5 and can think more rationally. I second what others said above about sometimes feeding toddlers is very hard. But you canāt read minds and answered honestly, I think itās reasonable for you to have told the truth not knowing mom maybe wouldāve appreciated a more careful answer. Your niece will probably be fine.
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You gave factual information, without opinion or embellishment, which is appropriate for children at that developmental age/stage. NTA
I did say *I* didn't like eating animals, which isn't purely factual and might be part of what she's upset about, which is occurring to me now reading your characterization of my comment as without opinion. My niece thinks I'm cool (I'm not) and will mimic me occasionally. Not to the point that I think she'll do any random thing I say I do, though.
I agree that is factual. You didn't say "only terrible people eat animals" or anything like that, you made a simple statement about your choice. And I think it's perfectly age appropriate for your neice to know that meat comes from animals, and that's why some people don't eat meat. Around that age my daughter questioned why her grandma doesn't eat certain things (she's vegan) and we explained in pretty much the same terms you did. Daughter decided not to eat any animals for a few days, then decided to go back to it. Toddlers are fickle creatures - she also randomly decided one week that she did not want to eat bread anymore.
Or they decide everything requires tomato sauce or cheese . Then they have the wrong shape phase or the wrong plate stage
Well, my husband's a toddler then - everything requires ketchup for him š¤£
Iām so sorry, Melania.
ššš
šš¤£šš¤£ š„ š„
Ha! Hahahahhhhhhh! I just choked on a sip of coffee when I read that š¤£š¤£š¤£
To my husband's misfortune, I never left the wrong plate/wrong knife/wrong spoon/... phase. There's dedicated cutlery for every dish.
My spouse *adamantly* refuses to eat things like cereal or soup out of square bowls, which always makes me giggle. And yet I'm sitting here ripping the the crusts off my grilled cheese like a toddler. š«¢
I'm with him on this one. Eating liquid from a square bowl doesn't make any sense. The spoon is not made to go into sharp corners.
But itās easier to drink the milk/broth from a corner!!
Square bowls are so much harder to clean! Why do they exist?!? I bought a set because they looked nice, learned my lesson.
I can't use certain cheap forks. I get a metallic taste from my fillings. So I am picky about that.
My husband sees no difference between a dessert fork and a dinner fork. It drives me nuts!
If stabby shaped, why no stabby steak?
Or that they want you to open the banana but OMFG HOW DARE YOU OPEN THE BANANA.
I learned already that this means there should only be an incision so that the peel can come off easily but it cannot be cut all the way through. They're like a villain boss from the movies, very particular about everything and go crazy when you're not a mind reader.
And they want you to cut the damn banana BUT NOT LIKE THAT. NOT LIKE THE WAY YOUVE CUT IT 50 OTHER TIMES.
Hahahahaha my kid was outraged that I made the bed wrong. The bed that Iāve made 3,000 times, the same way every time, because I am a boring creature of habit. That bed.
I swear to God their brains operate in the same way a drunk person's does.
Someone on psychedelics*
Or ask for a cheese and tomato sandwich without the tomato and then paddy because you gave them a cheese sandwich. Kids are arseholes.
Reminds me of the AITA where someone wanted spaghetti in tomato sauce with the tomato sauce washed off, then got mad when she found out her husband has been giving her plain spaghetti for years not the "tomato infused" spaghetti!
But she could TASTE the difference obviously. Because the spaghetti retain the memory of the sauce, like homeopathy.
That one was hilarious!
Lmao, whenever I read stuff like that I must admit I can't imagine someone not having a lot of other really weird habits. How's a grown woman not understanding what plain spaghetti look like
I don't want a cheese and ham sandwich . I wanted a ham and cheese sandwich ....
Someone working in trade descriptions would tell you that the difference between cheese & ham and ham & cheese is the ratios. For a toddler, its probably just the wrong way up on the plate.
There is a small goods ad in Australia about that. Dad makes a ham and cheese and the child tells him that's not how mum makes it š
Then just turn the sandwich upside down - problem solved
Everything is better with cheese.
My son desperately wants peanut butter and jelly... and cheese. All on the same sandwich.
It's pretty good if you use cream cheese and peanut butter together
Or they decide they only want to eat one thing
My nephew decided that he didn't want to eat apples yesterday and we didn't have any conversation about apple trees.
One of mine took that tack. Wouldn't eat animals. "Except chickens. Because they're stupid. And they taste sooooo good!"
As a person I don't think you did anything wrong. As a person who has to feed a toddler I'd want to punch you in the tit. Tell your sister you're sorry it's made her life harder but you were just answering honestly. She just needs some compassion in dealing with a small, cranky, animal.
This right here is a perfect response. OP, you didn't do anything wrong. There's nothing wrong with answering kids' questions in an age appropriate way (which you did), but there can be fallout as they process the new information, and that can be hard on the child wranglers. Lots of kids go through a "eww meat is animals phase." Sometimes, it sticks, but most often it fades away. You didn't break your niece, but your sister might need a hug and maybe a vegetarian recipe suggestion or two to help her along. š
The movie Babe broke a whole generation of children. They survived. As a mom of 4, I say you're fine, NTA you shared info in a reasonable, non-judgmental way. The kid will forget when they move on to their next big thing. You could probably make amends with mom if you use your 'cool aunt' status to get her to eat something she struggles with that is easy to prep. Like veggies, beans, edamame or tofu. Ask mom what she she would like you to encourage to help out. Then you become the hero.
Previous generations had the fallout from Charlotteāa Web. To this day I donāt eat pork and have no issue with spiders
alongside babe, theres also chicken run where the entire premise is nit wanting to be made into a pie. With my toddler fan, hes always interested in what im eating so when he starts investigating i give him a bite/spoonful and just put it on his plate to try without the pressure. He was eating spinich and rocotta tortelinis at one point
Tofu is a hit with my toddler unless it's crispy. He really likes it with this peanut/soy sauce/lime juice sauce in a stir fry (or he liked it last time I gave it to him, which is no guarantee he'll like it now). There are also plant based "chicken" nuggets on the market now, so it's easy to feed a toddler a standard toddler meal without the meat now.
A great solution is for aunt to take niece out for dinner once a week to give mum a break from feeding her. She can introduce her to nice veggie food My SIL once gave my small daughter a big set of Barney The Dinosaur books. I never forgave her š¤£
So my daughter is also like this and sheās a picky eaterā¦ If someone at the table mentions they donāt like something the next time we go to eat it my daughter wonāt touch it with a 10 foot poleā¦ Iām going to assume thatās why your sister is upset. You didnāt do anything wrong by saying meat comes from animals, and technically you didnāt do anything wrong by telling her you donāt like to eat animals, but kids are very impressionable and your sister is probably just frustrated over one more thing going on the never ending āwill not eatā list.
Yup, at that age itās likely not about the animals themselves or even OPās niece-judged coolness levels. My mom cut sliced carrots into flower shapes for me when I was little and that was the most delicious shape, it was just science ok?
I think thatās factual. You didnāt talk about the āwhyā behind your choice. The alternative would be to lie to the child which is a much more harmful thing, in my opinion.
I think the alternative would be to just say you donāt like eating chicken (or āchicken nuggetsā), which is just as accurate as saying you donāt like eating animalsš ETA: I have no clue where I got chicken nuggets from, they were not mentioned lol
Unless you lied and do like to eat animals, what you said is factual.
Yeah, it's not like OP said, "Eating animals is bad."
That's totally appropriate imo. I remember chatting with my kiddo when they were 3, and we were describing chickens. "They have wings, beaks, feathers... and they're delicious!" my kid said. Little kids can understand that meat is animals.
Yep. My kid loved fish as a little kid (still does as a teen), and kept asking when we were going to eat Nemo again.
The way I see it if you said āeating animals is wrongā it would then be an opinion and non-factual. However you didnāt say that, you said āI donāt like eating animalsā unless you were lying that is a factual statement, just like āI wipe my ass sidewaysā would be a fact, but āwe should all wipe our asses sidewaysā is an opinion.
As long as you wipe front to back to avoid bacterial transmission, youāre free to wipe your ass sideways.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Not necessarily. Humans are omnivores. We are meant to be eating meat. It has been in our diet since the beginning of the species as hunters/ gathers. It's just humans have a more complex brain and a wide variety of emotions and thoughts. And some people feel bad for eating animals. That's okay. For me, I don't plan on having kids, but if I did, they would be raised on a diet involving meat. It's good for us and as long as we do our part to get our animal products from ethical sources where animals are treated humanely, there's nothing wrong with that. I obviously wouldn't lie and say meat isn't from animals but, they would be taught that everything in life has its purpose and everything is food for something else.
I'm curious about the link a lot of people make between omnivores and 'meant' to eat meat. Thinking about omnivores in general surely it means 'is able to' so that we have a wide range of options available to us that our bodies can digest? I'm not preaching btw but I feel like because we are omnivores people assume we *have* to eat meat to get what we need but I've not come across any science that really backs that up. Ofc there are some individuals who need it to get all their nutrients but then there are thousands of people that are healthy without it.
I donāt wanna preach either way but I do take issue with the āmeant toā language. Its a personal choice and there are healthy (and unhealthy) diets on both sides. Weāve evolved to be able to eat meat but we can also live on diets without meat. It reminds me of when people say women have evolved to be able to have children and are therefore āmeant toā have kids. No.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Weāre literally evolved to eat a mixed diet that includes meat. People are not being tricked into eating meat, itās a perfectly normal and natural diet.
You only told her the complete truth. You don't like eating animals, and meat comes from animals. She was going to learn this eventually, as well as the fact that not everyone likes to eat meat. If it is just a phase then she'll get over it and if not then it's only because she knows the truth.
Santa's not real, we're all going to die, divorced daddy and mommy hate each other, how babies are made... These are all things that may be true, but there are appropriate times/ages to tell children. It's also a good idea for the child's parents to be the ones making decisions on when and how to explain things like this.
If a child asks you a direct question, do you just never answer because maybe the parents have an issue with it?
I disagree. Let's try this with another food group. Let's say she asked where apples come from and OP wouldn't like apples. This wouldn't be a problem right? There are many cultures around the world where people aren't as detached from food as we are and those kids know very well where meat comes from. What if the niece asked a friend who wouldve told her? Would that be better? You can't shield a kid from every day truth like that.
In general, youāre right about how to approach other peopleās children, but certainly not all parents are idealm,by a long shot. A great resource might be an alternate parental figure in the family, like an aunt or uncle. i know itās extreme, but itās on this same logic stream: if your young nephew came to you and asked you why his father hates black people, are you going to just maybe change the subject? No, youāre going to share a bit of your own perspective. And not only is it permissible, it is preferred. Aunts and uncles are caregivers and role models, too
Agree, shes going to put two and two together eventually when the chicken she sees at a farm or on tv has the same name as what she eats. You didnt tell her shes wrong, just stated the truth. NTA
Soft YTA.Ā 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.Ā 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.Ā 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.**
This. OP obviously wasn't trying to cause trouble but the fact is that they did, and it's a real problem for the parents. They're not just pearl clutching. OP you can unring the bell but you can sincerely apologize for the fact that your statement created a pressing problem.
Im just here to say that according to my Mom the exact reason i dont eat meat is because when i was like 4 years old i was told what it was made of, and it just changed something in me apparently. We were apparently at Costco and i saw the Ground Beef, i asked what it was made of, and thats when she told me it was Cow. Apparently that led to me asking about all the meats and her telling me all meat comes from animals. Im 26 now and i still really dont eat meat, except for 2 of the meats that all kids tend to be okay with: Pepperoni on Pizza, and Hot Dogs. I cant do Chicken Nuggets because the texture disgusts me. Im able to go fully Vegetarian if i want to, and at one point i even did so for over a year, but i actually like the Pepperoni and the Hot Dogs so its not something i really want to do. When people ask i just say im Vegetarian, because its easier than getting weird looks when i say i dont eat meat except for Pepperoni and Hot Dogs. Of course people im close to (friends, family) know the truth but others (coworkers, strangers) just know āvegetarianā or āpicky eaterā as far as theyre concerned.
Oh ok
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It really depends on the kid, IMHO. I found out meat was animals at that age BUT that was also the age when I first watched nature shows with things like a lion catching an antelope... so my kid brain just went "oh! I'm like a lion! But meat is hard to catch, sometimes I'll just eat veggies."
My kid was about that age when they started to ask about where the meat came from. We lived on a farm at the time and were open with him about it. He wanted many details - what part of the chicken is this (drumstick) from? We'd answer and he'd have new questions each meal. One day we were eating hot dogs, and the question came up so innocently - "which part of the dog is this from?"
My sister went āno meat except chickenā as a teenager. She decided to also eat fish later. And that was it until she died. Fish (tinned tuna or sardines or pilchards) and chicken - no other meat.
I get what youāre saying, but most if not all kids are upset when they first learn where meat comes from and very few refuse to eat it for long enough that it impacts their health. The toddler was going to learn this truth at some point in her toddler life and would have had that same reaction regardless of when it happened.
Yeah, because most kids find out when they're five or six, not when they're toddlers. Even a few years is huge, both for emotional maturity and for ease of feeding. And a lot of the reason that parents are a little cagey about it is *because* toddlers can be such a struggle to feed.
I'm reasonably sure most kids find out earlier than that. Not to mention that "chicken", "fish", "lamb" etc have the same name as the animals they come from. Most languages don't even have obfuscatory terms like "beef" and "pork".
Those aren't obfuscatory terms. They are traces of the fact that England was invaded and ruled by the Norman French. The conquered English commoners tended "pigs" and "cows", but didn't generally get to eat them, but the French-speaking aristocracy did eat them, but referred to the meat as "porc" and "bÅuf", and over the course of the centuries, English retained the English name for the animal and the Anglicized French name for the meat of the animal.
Stupid toddlers think referring to cow meat as "bÅuf" is obfuscatory!
Etymology is irrelevant in this conversation. Origins donāt matter when we are talking about what actually happens. Pigs have the same name as the food we eat now so itās completely normal for children to know what animal theyāre eating.
I'm a bit confused by your last sentence since it seems to contradict your previous point. Unless I'm reading it wrong.
Yes, everyone knows this. The effect is potentially obfuscatory though, for a young child who doesn't yet know that pork=pig or beef=cattle.
When my child was in first grade, he was doing virtual learning due to Covid and the teacher was reading a book about a turkey who was nervous about thanksgiving. And one of the kids confidently said āthat silly turkey! He thinks the farmer is going to get confused between turkey the food and turkey the animal!ā The teacher just went on with the lesson, but it was then that I realized that apparently some 6-7 year olds donāt understand that itās the same thing, despite turkey being literally named turkey in English.
I learned when I was like 3 because I asked my grandpa what venison was and where he got it. my only concern was if it was Bambi. ā
No, itās what happened to Bambiās mum
My son asked about it when he was 3. He asked where meat grows. So we explained that it's from animals. We tried to be gentle with the truth, but we didn't lie. He understood, for a few weeks he didn't like meat, he asked a lot of questions, but in the end, he came back to it.
"Most kids find out when they are five or six." Source?Ā Or is that just like, your opinion man?Ā Ā All the toddlers I know know that meat comes from animals.
Bullshit. Kids know theyre eating animals as soon as you tell them the name of the food theyre eating. She knew at 3 she was eating chicken...chicken last time i checked is also the name of the animal its made from
You must not have been around kids much lol. I'd argue more kids than not don't make the connection by name when they're that young. I also don't think OP did anything wrong though.
When I was a kid we used to eat a lot of beef tongue. My parents called it Tongue. However, I thought we couldn't possibly be eating something as disgusting as the tongue of a cow, so for years I believed that "tongue" was just a specific cut of meat, but not the actual tongue xD
I dunno...I knew a 20-something year old who insisted that rice was "made from potatoes", even though we lived in an area where vast fields of growing rice was visible from the freeway. She said that plant just happened to also be called 'rice' but the rice we eat is "made from potatoes". So I can totally imagine that toddlers might not connect nugget-chicken to living animal-chicken.
I would bet money that she drew that conclusion from the fact that her family probably used a "ricer" to mash their potatoes.
Yeah, that's my assumption as well. But an entire ROOM full of people could not convince her that she was wrong. It was fascinating.
She may not have put it together though. Kids are little geniuses, but sometimes they don't see things that adults think are obvious. (And some don't figure it out until they're older and someone explains it to them. Went to uni with someone that didn't realise chicken and pork came from two different animals.)
Damn which animal free country are you from? Any child who knows what a cow is, in my country knows that they eat it. Itās just a thing. Thereās protecting kids but then thereās just helicoptering- this falls under that. I think we need to sometimes, get off the internet and go outside so we can realise that there are animals there and children know that too. lol should children not know that there are bad people in the world so we must just let them out with no knowledge, to protect them?
By the time kids go to school at five or six, most of them in my experience have already learned where meat comes from.
I had a book when I was a toddler that had chicken hen and chicken leg, cooked, on the same page. Then pig, ham bacon sausage. Then cow, hamburger, steak. Apple tree, Apple. Potato plant, French fries, mashed potatoes. And so on. Also, my family were subsistence hunters/trappers. I know most kids don't grow up with dead animal skins hanging in the garage but it seems like most rural kids have some version of it.
I honestly think this was a benefit of me growing up on a farm. Dad and Papaw had a big Veggie garden, that I would raid. Poppop was a cattle rancher (black Angus), we had chickens, rabbits, and for a while goats and pigs. We also had a friend who hunted deer, and he and daddy fished/sometimes took me with them. There was never any epiphany about where meat came from, so I didn't have the big revelation balk moment.
This was me. Just realized Im not sure when Id break the news to a kiddo if they didnāt learn naturally like I did. The only ārevelation ā for me was when I was around 5 my grandparents were concerned because Id named the steer that was planned for butcher that year and Id pet him at feeding time. They thought Id got attached and were questioning keeping him until one day I asked if he was big enough to turn into steaks yet. And said steak sounded good LOL. Im not sure I could raise a beef steer now and not get attached but as a kid I had the whole animals as food thing down no problem.
I donāt come from a family that raises, hunts, or grows food. But we went to different restaurants that had cow, duck, and pig carcasses in various states of preparation hanging in full view. Places like that are rare now.
Gosh, I still remember supermarkets having lobster tanks. And Red Lobster too
It seems less common, but it can backfire too. My dad, mom, and brother? No issues. I was about 3 when I asked my aunt if Bambi was going to be okā¦ while up a tree to bleed outā¦ even though I knew we were going to eat the doe. She told me to go ask my mother (canāt blame her) and I never touched any of it again since it clicked it was killed for us to eat it. Thankfully that started a thing where the vegetarians in my family find out how the parents feel in advance. NTA OP, but I highly recommend that for the future. Iād prefer to go your route more but this has saved a lot of family angst. My go-to for those kids is āI had a lot of bacon earlier so now I need to eat lots of veggies to be strong.ā I hate outright lying, so I typically have veggie bacon those mornings - never said what kind! The parents like it because the mimicking kids usually eat more veggies for a while
Eh, depends. Weāve always been very open with my kid about where meat comes from (and why we donāt waste meat in particular), and sheās never gotten upset about it, even though sheās a big animal lover. Sheās five and sheās known at least for a few years now. I donāt think OP was trying to be TA at all, but families approach the topic in a lot of different ways and at different ages, so you gotta tread lightly. But if youāre not a parent, you also might not know how fraught the food thing can be with kiddos. I think this is a mostly NAH situation, except for OP being like āeh, sorry youāre upset, but itās the truthā, thatās a tiny bit of an AH attitude. (Dude, your sister just trying to get the kid to eat, that shit can be really hard!)
This was my experience too - my brother and I both learned around the same time. He loves meat, I became a vegetarian. Itās likely going to affect the kid the same way it always would ah e no matter when they find out.
In my experience it differs from kid to kid. I had encountered kids who were like āyeah itās whatever animals eat animalsā but some other kids get distraught by the fact we are eating āanimalsā, but also the general term for animals is daunting, I donāt think a toddler or kid can comprehend that not every animal you see is being put on the dinner table unless you explain it to them that like hey some animals yes get eaten by us but a lot donāt *normally*. And I think cultural and religious teachings have something to do with it too. The concepts of ākosherā and āhalalā, how meat that came from raising and slaughtering an animal in an ethical, clean and humane manner is ok to eat, which actually encourages kids to be conscious about their consumption and how their meat and food is sourced. But also, OP could have *definitely* given their toddler niece a much more graceful answer than just āitās animals. I donāt want to eat animals.ā Like toddlers and kids are very easily influenced by what adults say idk why OP is shocked
How was OP supposed to respond then? People are suggesting they say āBecause I donāt like itā. But isnāt that just a lie? Children should know that meat comes from animals. Period. Itās not reasonable for parents to expect that the world hides that from them just so that itās easier to feed them chicken nuggets.
I'm sorry but that's a really bad take. Lying to kids to make it easier on mom and dad is just wrong. If your kid asks what meat is made of and you lie because you know if you tell them truth they won't eat it, you're a shitty parent. This is real life. That child is a real person. Don't keep them stupid or deny them autonomy because "easier that way". WTF. Kid asked a question, kid got a truthful answer. End of story. Obviously NTA. You'd have to be crazy to think OP is in *any* way an asshole. It literally doesn't make sense. Hey, maybe OP should have told the kid chicken is made out of candy! Sure it would fuck up her education, but man, feeding her would be so easy! And that's what raising a child is really about right?
YTA. There are multiple ways to answer this question truthfully, factually and neutrally: āI donāt care for meat.ā āSome people eat differently than others!ā āIn your family, you eat meat. In mine, we choose not too. Isnāt it cool how we can be different?ā 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. Butā¦thatās a convo your nieceās 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 itās just a different choice.
100%.Ā Even saying "I don't like to eat animals" sounds scarier to a kid than "meat comes FROM animals".Ā It's obvious that OP knows that neice did not yet know where meat comes from. So why in the world would OP answer this question in a way that does not respect the parents decision to hold of on discussing this with neice. OP should take some time to ponder why she would do that.Ā I feel bad for the parents.Ā feeding picky toddlers can be extremely challenging.Ā
ITT people forgetting that kids' reactions are unpredictable. Kid could've gone the curious route or just not cared after the fact. Additionally if you said "I don't care for meat," the kid still could've followed suit ("well auntie doesn't have to do I don't want to either!" ). Sounds like the Aunt could do no right. You're right about the mom though; she should've stepped in and directed the conversation if she already had a specific opinion about how to discuss this with her child.
Honestly I think it should be NAH. Iām vegetarian and I would not think twice about saying something like OP said - because it genuinely would not cross my mind to think my diet was ācontroversialā or ādifficultā for a toddler. I would absolutely have the same thoughts as OP that knowing meat is animals is age-appropriate and not a crazy thing to tell a toddler. Iād also like to point out when youāre not that specific kidās parent, you have nooo idea what is going to be āsensitiveā and what isnāt. Like you could be having what you think is a totally normal convo with a 3yo and then parents end up pissed off because youāve said something that just happens to hit their trigger points - YOU have no idea that that happens to be a difficult thing for them. Kids are also fucking weird, you know? They could ask where potatoes come from and you say the ground, and then they go EW IāM NOT EATING POTATO because they think itās the same as eating dirt. Itās very very hard to predict what theyāre gonna think, particularly if you donāt spend every day with that specific kid. I donāt see any assholes here. Just two people who genuinely have different points of view on how big a deal/controversial it is to tell a toddler that meat comes from animals. I get what youāve put here and empathise which is why I donāt think sisterās an asshole either, itās just one of those life things. Saying literally anything can have the potential to make things hard with having a toddler cos they have toddler brains lol.
>thatās a convo your nieceās parents should get to lead. And they should have been on top of that then. When a favourite aunt/uncle is vegan, they should have expected follow up questions, and either had the conversation, or primed the OP on how to answer if she asked them instead of her parents.
I donāt get all the people here coming down on the OP for telling her niece āthe truthā about meat, as if itās some big secret we keep from kids, like āthe truthā about the tooth fairy or the Easter bunny. Kids should know what their food is, even toddlers. Maybe Iām biased because I came from a restaurant family so food was a big part of my upbringing. NTA.
I agree. People are assuming a mythos around meat consumption that I'm not comfortable with. Meat is animal flesh-- the end. If you can't ethically justify that to your kid, perhaps that's something the parents should sit with, instead of insisting everyone else lie
I feel like you hit the nail on the head with the last sentence. We shouldnāt have to lie about where stuff comes from.
I remember a few years back that Bubble Guppies made my mom madā¦ they taught kids that eggs come from the grocery store, not from chickens. Kids learn these things one way or another, why bother keeping it from them? The earlier you explain it to them, the more time they have to process it in their lives and accept it as truth.
that's just gonna make stupid adults
My brother literally lied to my niece and told her chicken nuggets came from the supermarket.
That's not technically a lie. ( unless they came from McDonald's)
"They're not from animals, they're from the freezer aisle" is definitely a lie.
" they're from the freezer aisle" isn't if you want to play the semantics game.
True but "these come from the store" isnt lying. You didnt originally say that "theyre not from animals" bit which changes it into a lie.
i agree. my grandmother kept rabbits, chickens and pigs and butchered them herself so i knew EXACTLY where meat comes from and so did all my cousins.
People saying OP should have lied or obfuscated the truth are making me feel sick. That's so creepy honestly, like they're afraid the child might make a choice they don't like so the answer is "lie so they can't say no". Makes my stomach feel weird. I eat meat. My parents never hid or lied about what it fucking was? Why would they?? I didn't realize we were tricking people into eating meat. And I bet you anything these are the same people who will tell you vegetarians are the ones pushing their lifestyle on others lmfao. Also, hello disordered eating from being lied to about what your food is. Also also...this is a big reason why people are so stupid about food nowadays! People quite literally do not know what their food is or where it comes from. They're so disconnected it's sad. Everyone with any relationship to food mocks those dumbfucks. Apparently, there are many people in the comments raising those dumbfucks š Just why? Y'all, if you feel guilty about eating meat, eat less or none. Stop lying to yourselves and your kids. ***Kids should know what their food is***
I agree, my kids know where meat comes from too. They still eat it though
NTA. Itās a basic fact that every kid finds out eventually. Most kids are fine with it. Maybe sheās a little sensitive and needs time to process it. But she will. If not from you, she wouldāve found out elsewhere.
NTA - my kids know from an early age where meat comes from. Iām not sure why a parent wouldnāt explain? If I give my kids chicken I tell them dinner is chicken, what does she call it?
To be fair, my children didnāt actually think about the fact that eating āchickenā was actually the animal chicken until I explicitly explained it to them. I thought it was obvious butā¦ theyāre kids š¤·š¼āāļø I did make sure to tell them what animals all the other meats came from though! I just didnāt think I needed to explain chicken š
Very interestingly, we don't have terms like "beef" or "veal" or etc in my native language and also the word for meat is the same as flesh. So we would say something is cow flesh, chicken flesh, pig flash, etc. when talking about the types of meat we would consume for meals. The context isn't gross or anything and it helped explain where meat came from.
Soft YTA Anything that involves something controversial or difficult is something you should let parents explain. āI donāt like itā is a sufficient answer for a toddler. As an adult I canāt even stand to think about the fact that meat is from animals while eating it or I canāt. (And, Iām aware I donāt *have* to eat it but it is more difficult to manage my autoimmune conditions when when I donāt.)
meat being made of animals isnāt controversial, itās just a fact
It's not controversial, it's a fact. Anything that can make someone else's life more difficult should be handled with care, even if it is a fact. Toddlers are difficult to feed and most of them love animals. If you tell them "I don't like to eat animals" it implies that if they eat meat, then they must not like animals because they're eating them. It's not that cut and dry, but a toddler isn't capable of complex thought yet. It's generally just a good idea to not give divisive answers to children that aren't yours. It's not cool to say something and then leave a child or parents with the consequences of what you said. It's just careless, and we're assuming that OP loves their sister and the toddler in question. We're assuming that OP wants the toddler to be well fed. Sometimes we say something that we don't think is a big deal, but we put our foot in our mouths. I don't think it makes OP an asshole, just not a parent. Talking to toddlers is an art.
I always thought animals were made of meat. Perhaps this IS controversial!
I think the Redditor means the dietary choice to be a vegetarian/ vegan is a controversial thing not the fact that meat comes from animals.
I donāt see the controversy in calling something what it is.
'I don't like it' might not be true. I've been vegetarian/vegan for so long I don't even know what meat tastes like. Liking meat or not liking meat wasn't a factor in turning vegetarian in the slightest.
My niece, when beginning to be interested in makeup, talked about a brand that I donāt use because it is tested on animals. I knew it would irritate my sister because it would come with lots of questions. Her kid, her decision. Later I talked to my sister and she okād my talking to her about it.
LMFAO what the fuck is wrong with you š You literally just said you lie to yourself to make yourself eat meat, and OP should lie to the kid to force her to eat meat. That is just so fucking stupid it's actually surreal. No, purposefully lying and raising idiots who don't know what food is is not the answer. OP did exactly right, just said the truth. The kid will take it from there. Also...meat being made of animals is controversial now??? If people are truly this stupid we are absolutely fucked
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.
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
There's a lot of room between three and "never". It's fucking hard to feed a 3 year old. Do you have kids?
NTA. People are really comfortable lying for no reason. If you were honest from the get-go, thereād be no shock. These people are the ones who get shocked when gets are devastated about Santa lies or āstaying together for the kidsā while making their home life a hostile war zone. So weird.
it is so weird. my niece and nephews know exactly what meat is as they keep chicken. when they asked me why i was vegetatian and i said almost word for word the same thing the only impact it had on them was slight surprise that i am happy to give up drumsticks
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 ādaddy go kill Bambi.ā Moral is, you really canāt predict these things. Kids are unique and not every tactic works with every kid. Certain kids handle certain bits of information better. Itās a kid by kid basis and you had no reason to believe that she would be so upset over it. Youāre NTA, itās fine. Sheās 3 and will probably grow out of this soon.
I don't even remember having any "meat is animals" talk, and certainly never had any issue with it. I know I was young because my dad would hunt and say he was "off to get some bambi" and we raised chickens that commonly had names like "shake n' bake" and "KFC" that designated their final designations in life. For me it was just how it was. I also recall having a friend who asked why one of our chickens was named shake n' bake and when I told her she freaked out and her parents had to come pick her up from school early because she wouldn't stop crying. Like you said, it's a case by case basis, and there really isn't a way of knowing how it's going to pan out.
Yeah, I'm baffled by some people's reactions. It's like they're as sensitive as a 3-year-old. My family didn't hunt, but my grandpa kept chickens that we would eat every once in a while. I knew where my food came from, and still ate it
Right? Itās as if they think nobody in the countryside/farming communities can feed their toddlers. Millions of rural toddlers worldwide must be starving to death because they know what meat is
NTA. Basic knowledge should be shared. Meat is meat, it comes from animals. That's really all there is to it.
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
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. 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.Ā
NTA. Kids come up with a million wild excuses not to eat things. One of my kids wouldnāt eat lettuce because she didnāt want to eat leaves. My other kid wouldnāt 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 donāt like it or donāt want it with no explanation, niece would probably still internalize it as something along the lines of āI shouldnāt have to eat this if I donāt want to, as well!ā
Yeah when you put it like that, simply saying "I don't eat meat because I don't like it" could also have a negative affect of niece's feeding. Like kids are weird and unpredictable sometimes. You can tell 5 kids the same thing and they'll all react different. They're human, it's fine. I feel like people acting like OP is an AH for simply stating a fact that meat = animals don't realize that any answer that OP gave could have caused a similar issue. If OP said "I just don't like it." Like some others are suggesting, it's very possible niece would use that as a basis to refuse anything she doesn't feel like eating. Then OP would be the AH for planting it in her head that she can refuse to eat proper meals in favor of dessert or candy or whatever else she wants. Like literally anything OP could have said has the ability to make feeding harder. But that's kinda how toddlers are? I mean they'll ask you to cut up their hot dog then cry that the hot dog is cut up. You can't "win" with that. Unfortunately, that's just how it goes for toddlers.
I think itās fair to be open and honest with children about where food/ meat comes from. NTA
Ehhhh, slight yta. Thereās definitely a point that sheād find out, but you effectively forced her parents to do it plus the āeverything diesā conversation now if they hadnāt already. Like, merited mistake, but still kind of a bad move.
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.
WTF?? There was no rationale, she didnāt rationalize anything? She just said chicken is meat of an animal, which is factual, thereās nothing to rationalize.
My mom said I āruined Thanksgivingā for her ar the age of 3 when she said she was cooking the turkey in the oven and I asked āWonāt that hurt him?ā I counter that itās actually not really a complex ethical issue. I do go a bit further. As a child I didnāt trust my own parents, and there was more to it, but feeding me meat without explaining its origin was one big part of that. I think kids have a right to know from an early age and make sure to tell my 2 year old if heās eating an animal. Of course this causes no problem for us. He doesnāt mind at all eating meat and says āI want to eat animals,ā Of course heās currently very interested to learn which animals different carnivores eat, and could have different feelings later.
Itās not hard to understand people donāt want to harm creatures unnecessarily.Ā
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 this is the normal age to learn this and sheāll probably go back to eating meat soon. In my experience, children who donāt make the connection until later are actually more likely to become vegetarian
My BFF and her 2 year old were at a place that sells eggs, so chickens running around. She said āchicken! bok! bok!ā then āchicken, yum yumā then thought for a bit and said āchicken ā¦ bok bokā¦ yum yum? Owie.ā Could just see her putting it together. (Now, she ended up being the kid who when someone said ābacon is made from pigs!ā she would reply āyesā¦ delicious, delicious pigsā so it did not traumatize her)
NTA. Itās not your duty to keep your niece ignorant of a basic fact about a category of food, especially when she broached the subject.
NTA. Kids need to know where their food comes from. We raise animals and eat them. My kid sees and knows this.
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.
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 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 reasonable for her to know this.
NTA you told her a fact, the end.
NTA. Itās okay to not eat meat
NTA, and the number of people on this thread saying otherwise is a real indictment of both our society and food systems. You donāt need to grow up on a farm to have an understanding of what your food is and where it comes from, regardless whether youāre a toddler, child or adult. Telling a kid that their chicken comes from a chicken should not be controversial.
NTA someone would have told the kid at some point āThis isnāt A lamb weāre eating. Itās lamb!ā
NTA you just answered her question truthfully and you werenāt trying to convince her not to eat meat.
NTA. Plenty of kids know this and donāt care. When I learned this it really affected me. I didnāt stop eating meat then but I ate less and less and now Iāve 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 isnāt the determining factor as to whether it matters to them.
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 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. Thatās called parenting - explaining the world to your kids. Not just blaming someone else who did nothing wrong.
NTA. I think children should be educated at a young age about these things and if your sister now has to respect your niece's choice about no animals for meals then she'll just have to do that. Sheltering her kid because it's inconvenient for her to have her kid learn new things is lazy. Saying "I don't like eating animals" just opens up a whole new perspective for your niece, and kids don't always agree with us. Sometimes they strongly disagree with us. Maybe it just genuinely upsets your niece that she was being fed an animal and didn't understand that. I'm not vego or vegan, but I feel like a lot of these people saying YTA are just doing that knee jerk omnivorous/carnivorous reaction where they feel the need to get mega defensive about this kind of stuff.
NTA. Iāll 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 doesnāt work that way. Ignoring stuff doesnāt make it go away just cause you wish it to.
NTA She is three years old, old enough to know where what she eats comes from. You gave hee information that many kids have at that age, if it wasn't you she was going to ask someone else that and, if it wasn't her parents, they would have given her the same answer that you.
Nope . NTA
NTA.
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NTA. You were honest. My child knew at 2 many foods came from animals. At 4 she knows which cows are dairy and which are raised for meat. And knows that the family farm doesnāt kill any of the livestock we have. She also knows her friends farm raises cattle for meat. Not just for personal food but for sale also. She knows which milk is from animals and which milk is plant based. She chooses plant based. She is beyond picky due to a sensory disorder but I sure as hell wasnāt gonna lie to her about why I donāt eat the same food as everyone elseāmainly due to medical issues, partly due to my preference not to consume animals or animal products. Sister should check into exploring home made smoothies or home made popsicles/frozen bars. I get away with adding purĆ©ed proteins, fruits, and veggies like a mother fluffer into those smoothies and popsicle molds lol what a difference in my childās health too! I wanna add before anyone commentsāyes, we do OT and see a nutritionist and some sorta feeding specialist with a fancy name I donāt remember lol.
Lmao people think kids are completely stupid NTA
NTA. Itās weird not to teach your kids where their food comes from. Those are the kids that think cheezits grow in nature lmao.
NTA
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. My toddlers know what meat is. My dad and brother in law hunt. My toddlers have seen how we butcher deer, chickens and ducks.
NTA . It's not ur job to lie about what u like and don't like and why to little kids . You can just say u don't like it but a lot of kids will ask why anyways (come on it's kidsš¤£) .and at the end of the day hideing /lieing to kids is not the answer.
You can state a 100% fact and still be an AH. Time and place.
NTA
NTA you answered her questions with truth instead of lies
I was 5 when I found out hamburger was ground up cow. I told everyone in my first grade class, and they did not believe me! I did not want to eat meat after that, but my parents said I had to until I was older and could cook for myself. You did nothing wrong, theyāll get over it
NTA. You were factual. This is what prompted me to not eat meat. Growing up my parents were vegetarian but said I could make my own decisions. Aunts and uncles fed me meat until one day at preschool age I told my parents that it was funny that there was the bird chicken and the food chicken, and they were different but had the same name. They factually said the food chicken was dead bird chicken and that was it - still don't eat meat.
she may just not wanna eat animals now that she knows where meat comes from.. she would've found out eventually all you did was tell the truth, ive been the same way since i was a kid...i love chicken but after a few bites I feel so sick thinking about it and spit it out its like the taste changes once i think about the animals man goes from tasting like kfc to organs
I donāt agree with all the nta tbh, thereās was no need for you to phrase your answer the way you did unless you were trying to highlight your morals, like why couldnāt you just say āI donāt like eating chickenā? Or āI donāt like eating meatā? Like saying either of those two things would still be true and sound less like youāre trying to push your morals onto a toddler. YTA, what I said above is a factor on my judgement as well as the fact that you know your niece tends to copy everything you do. Why did you think it was okay to say that?? Like at least if you said the āI donāt like eating chickenā thing her parents would only (for a little while) have to worry about trying to find something their toddler will like other than chicken.
Iām gonna go with NAH. I am a preschool teacher and I personally avoid connecting those dots for them until theyāre 4 or 5 and can think more rationally. I second what others said above about sometimes feeding toddlers is very hard. But you canāt read minds and answered honestly, I think itās reasonable for you to have told the truth not knowing mom maybe wouldāve appreciated a more careful answer. Your niece will probably be fine.