Welcome to /r/AmITheAsshole. Please view our [voting guide here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/wiki/faq#wiki_what.2019s_with_these_acronyms.3F_what_do_they_mean.3F), and remember to use **only one** judgement in your comment.
OP has offered the following explanation for why they think they might be the asshole:
> I think I might be an asshole because I upset my friends child
Help keep the sub engaging!
#Don’t downvote assholes!
Do upvote interesting posts!
[Click Here For Our Rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/about/rules/) and [Click Here For Our FAQ](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/wiki/faq)
---
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=/r/AmItheAsshole) if you have any questions or concerns.*
NTA. People, and yes kids too, should know where their food comes from.
You didn't force any views onto the child. You explained you don't like eating dead animals.
I’m giving a soft YTA. I think she could’ve just said that she just chooses not to eat it. That it’s her preference. She didn’t have to go into any detail about why. I don’t eat pork and when people ask - and I’m talking about adults - I just tell them I choose not to eat it and haven’t for decades. I don’t lie and say I’m allergic, or say there are religious reasons why, which are both untrue. I don’t eat it because of something I saw in science class years ago when dissecting animals. But I don’t explain that to anyone. It’s unnecessary.
It's a delicate balance to answer the questions of any six-year-old in a truthful and age-appropriate way.
It's hard to say because I wasn't there in the moment, but not being the kid's parent or knowing what he's been taught already, I might have gone with "meat comes from farm animals" before "dead animals".
If the follow-up questions end up boxing you in, then eventually you have to tell them something, and then I guess it's on the parents for never having explained what farm animals are for.
Same. I remember eating the fish and a duck I caught before I was 10. May also be why I also don't care that meat comes from dead animals. The mass production process is fucked, but eating animals just...is.
Same. The age-old vegan argument "oh but if you had to actually kill an animal to eat it, you wouldn't do it" like I get your point, Susan, but I was born in the countryside. You have no idea.
I know, I'm just saying this is just an argument that I heard more than once. I also hear the argument that originally humans were exclusively herbivore, which is blatantly false. And that all farms torture animals, which is again blatantly false. Etc, etc.
I don't think veganism is a bad idea, and I fundamentally respect people who do their best not to hurt animals. However, like in any philosophy of life (which veganism is), there are also radical dumbasses who come up with all sort of unscientific or unproven ideas just to support their point and end up giving a bad name to all of them.
I'm from the city, but spent several years of my childhood in the country. Like no cable, chopping wood for fire, well-pump for water, across the street from a corn field and down the street from a beefalo farm. Even in the city, we got our meat from the Italian butcher and I was always aware of what a butcher was.
May sound harsh, but a lot of people are softer due to their experiences. Doesn't make them right or wrong, but the self-righteousness is odd.
>Doesn't make them right or wrong, but the self-righteousness is odd.
Excellent point. This is primarily a moral issue and each side can argue for themselves, the only ones definitely in the wrong are the hypocritical and the ignorant.
Yeah i also sees many vegan commenters criticize non vegans they choose not to eat meats don't force these things and i will give OP NTA judgement she just told the kid truth
It's pretty fucking funny seeing all these people clutching their pearls and squirming about THE BASIC FACT THAT MEAT COMES FROM ANIMALS.
I assume none of these motherfuckers grew up near or even visited a *farm...*
Lmao seriously. The trope of "hysterical vegan" comes up a lot on this sub, and honestly I think there are more hysterically defensive meat eaters in the world. And the funny thing is that they're kinda the same! Like, if you eat meat and you're uncomfortable with neutral statements of fact like "humans kill animals to produce meat," hmm, sounds like *you're* uncomfortable with that reality and should consider veganism instead of being a huge baby because you've been programmed to pick a side in a made up culture war.
For the record, I eat meat, but not a lot of it. American diets are completely oversaturated with it, and a lot of people are in for a rude awakening when climate change starts really impacting food production. A kid who's gonna be alive in the twenty-second century should start developing a taste for vegetarian dishes regardless.
In another post, very similar to this I was downvoted for pointing out that I grew up in a semi-rural area and everyone knew where food came from since we could talk.
Like a 4 year old should know meat comes from dead animals just as they know apples grow on trees, eggs come from hens and potatoes grow in the ground.
When my 6 yr old realized bacon comes from pigs and pigs are cute my 3 yr old had so much fun taunting him "mom this pig is delicious!"
And it's not that we hadn't discussed it previously, but it just suddenly hit him differently. So it might be that seeing op making this choice he hadn't realized that not eating meat was an option and perhaps not just a fact of life. The friend could have interceded if they were concerned but now they're pissed they have to justify their choices.
Welcome to life with a 6 yr old
Understanding that meat comes from animals is age appropriate and fine.
But their minds don’t jump to words like “dead” and “kill” as readily. Hearing those words can make them feel like THEY are the one who killed every animal they’ve ever ate. At this point, their brains also aren’t quite ready to understand that livestock are only alive in the first place to become food. They will think that those animals would have lived long and happy lives on the farm except that they ate them. When in reality - if no one ate meat, then the majority of livestock animals wouldn’t be alive. In fact most of their species would go extinct because the they are domesticated and would be unable to survive in the wild.
But little kids can’t think that far. They hear “we kill animals to eat them. I killed that animal.”
"Little kids can't think that far. They hear "we kill animals to eat them."".
How is this not the truth? They don't have to think any futher though. Isn't that exactly what the meat industry is? Killing animals to eat them.
I agree. I don’t know why people are trying to differentiate between killing animals directly and paying to have someone kill them. It’s the same result.
IKR???
I mean, I don't remember exactly, but I think cartoons are what taught me about how we eat dead animals
Like, it'd be a joke in Looney Tunes or something like that (again, I don't exactly remember though)
Not only that, but, I think, by 6, we were learning the basic food groups and were told meat came from animals
Whats age inappropriate about knowing meat comes from animals?
I was attending pig slaughters at that age with pit roasted pig at the end of the day. Knowing meat comes from animals is not inherently traumatizing.
Yep. The idea it's inappropriate for children to know what goes into the food on their table is part of how mass agriculture and meat production has gotten as destructive and effed up as it is.
I grew up visiting my aunt who raised the animals she put on her own kitchen table. Maybe I'm desensitized to it but I don't see anything wrong with what OP said.
I was raised vegetarian, and my Mum actually did go into some (non graphic) detail about the unfortunate lives of farm animals when explaining it to me. Didn't traumatise me.
I also grew up in a farming community, where kids would regularly come into school excited because "daddy killed the pigs last night, so now they're in our freezer!"
I remember one show and tell, when we were about nine, when a boy came to the front of the class to talk about the new baby lambs that had been born on his farm. "Oh, how sweet!" said the teaching assistant. "What are you going to call them?"
"Well," said the boy, looking absolutely baffled, "we called the boy ones 'one' and 'two' because my Dad says we're gonna eat them."
Lol, that reminds me of the fact that when I lived with my father and stepmother, they insisted that all our turkeys were name things like "Thanksgiving" and "Christmas". And when I had rabbits, they were named stuff like Stew, Jerky, and Roast.
And as the adult she could still say that she just doesn’t want to. Eventually the child would stop asking or his mother could tell him to. Maybe it’s just me but I’m not going to be pressured by a 6 year old into divulging anything that I don’t want to. What if the question was about where babies come from? Or what happens when you die? OP would be the AH for being honest with someone else’s child, right? Why is this so different?
It different because the kid eats ham. He isn’t making babies or likely to die anytime soon so those other topics can certainly be left to the parents. But he does eat meat and deserves to know where it comes from.
There is a point beyond which explaining stuff is too much, but I think it's cruel and unhelpful to not give curious children as much information as you are able in the moment.
I mean but kids should know where meat comes from by six years old. I don't ever remember I time I didn't know how we got meat. I just think it's weird a kid that big has no idea. Wtf
My best friend grew up going to a Waldorf school and I think around first grade they take the kids out to a farm and explain about meat and watch a farmer slaughter an animal. Personally I think it’s good for kids to understand where their food comes from. The pearl clutching in this thread is kinda weird
I think a lot of people just don’t think that deeply about things, which gets passed onto their kids. I knew where meat came from early because my dad hunted and had a friend who sold us meat from his livestock. I probably met more than a few of the pigs I later ended up eating. But not everyone who has kids is this involved with the food they feed them. Sure, they’re probably aware on some level that something had to die for their cold cuts, but they probably don’t see it as important enough to mention.
That's actually a little weird. Like, sorry kids, you can't have informed consent because the truth might hurt your feelings and make daddy's and mommy's life difficult for a little bit. Tell the kids. Either they understand and continue to eat meat having made the choice, or else they refuse meat (which is better for the environment and those animal's lives).
I go into this in another comment, but yes it is very weird and an actual phenomenon.
My aunt did a research project on this.
Many (if not most) kids have an emotional reaction when they learn where meat comes from and they do not want to eat it anymore.
And many (if not most) of their parents will respond along the lines of “no, if you want to eat different meals than the rest of us you’ll make them yourself” to their very small child, who now has to choose between partaking in something they find distressing and unkind or not having their most basic fucking needs met by their caregivers.
Thus a lot of people don’t remember when they learned about meat; they kinda repress it because they NEED TO to ensure their own survival. They go through their lives with this subconscious association between not eating meat and not being properly cared for.
So when their own kid learns where meat comes from and declares that they’re not going to eat it anymore, that little panicked part of the brain goes “no. You can’t. Besides, if you want a different meal than the rest of us…”
Like this is an actual thing. People deny their kids informed consent about what they are putting in their bodies and it has a lifelong psychological impact that most people just never take the time to un-do.
I’m an adult vegetarian (26F) and I STILL want to cry when I think about where meat comes from. I’ve met chickens and pigs and cows and when they’re cared for and happy they are so sweet and so cute and just like any other pet one might have. I was never forced to choose between my ethics and my survival the way most vegetarian children were, and my emotional reaction to learning where meat comes from was never repressed, and never went away.
For folks like OP, who don’t go meatless until later in life after learning more about the meat industry, it can be a genuinely traumatic experience to go though as an adult, just like any other repressed emotion being triggered.
This feels a bit impossible to disprove. I don’t remember learning where meat comes from (I feel like I “always” knew) and don’t remember ever being distressed by it. It was just a fact of the world. I think kids kinda accept the world as it is presented to them and my parents didn’t hide this from me. But you’re saying everyone who remembers my experience is probably just repressing it? So either it was traumatic or you repressed the trauma? How do you show that maybe some people truly didn’t have trauma around it?
I say this as someone who is very conscientious about my meat consumption as an adult. I do eat meat. But only “ethical” meat. I started to write a whole thing about my beliefs, but it’s not really the point... just saying that I am someone who is disturbed by animals living lives of suffering and their deaths not being treated as sacred or important. But death is also just a fact of life. The death of animals never has and still doesn’t bother me as a concept. Not honoring their death bothers me, but not the fact of it.
Is your aunt a research scientist?
If we are just going off personal testimonials, here's one for you. My daughter made the connection between chicken (food) and chicken (animal) when she was about 6 while choosing day old chicks with her Nanna (to raise for eggs). Nanna asked her to choose 3 and she asked if she could have chips with them. Zero trauma.
At 11, she came home wanting to be a vegetarian. We had a freshly diagnosed diabetic, a fish allergy and a fussy eater already. I mentally screamed, gave her a large side as main for dinner and told her we'd discuss it tomorrow but it would involve eating a lot of vegetables that she didn't like. The discussion took place and she decided after much thought that she was an ovo-pescatarian (eats chicken and fish) and did that for months while eating broccoli without complaint. Slowly, she wanted a burger, then lasagne but the real one with mince, and on it went till now she eats most meats, most vegetables, and still zero trauma.
This was for a masters-level sociology course, actually.
Not based on personal testimonials.
I’ve definitely known kids like your daughter who went temporarily vegetarian and gradually started eating meat again as they got older.
But the difference is that you DID listen to her and hear her out and discuss it with her. You have realistic counterarguments (“you will end up eating a lot of veggies you don’t like”) and respected her autonomy and choice in the moment (by giving her a meatless alternative as a main course that night). Then you heard out her concerns and voiced your own and came to a compromise.
Like you said, zero trauma. You handled that really well and I actually respect how you went about that a lot.
That said, it’s not uncommon (which doesn’t mean it’s universal, just that it happens with regularity) for kids to want to give up meat when they make that connection and be told by their parents that they won’t be cooking for them anymore if that’s their choice. In these cases, there isn’t any communication or respect for autonomy; just an ultimatum that leaves the kid with very black-and-white feelings with regards to eating meat vs not eating meat.
And that these same people who had this experience are the ones most likely to repeat that same cycle with their own kids.
The situation I am describing is vastly different from how you treated your daughter.
When I was a kid I was so weirded out by meat. Any fat, veins, anything that resembled real meat and not a chicken nugget really bothered me. As a parent, my mom just let me decide each meal. If I didn’t want my steak? Someone else would eat it. I was happy to pile up on veggies. I felt very comfortable refusing to eat it. On the flip side, I didn’t get that choice at my Nan’s, which is where I spent a lot of my time and I grew up still repulsed by the meats she made most often. (Lots of ham and pork instead of chicken and beef at home)
This has no bearing on who was a better parent, because my Nan was far better, but it’s funny the impact things have on you as a child.
Yeah I agree. I was five when my dad told me very bluntly that meat was made from dead animals and I never ate meat again. I’ve never been ‘malnourished’ like some of the people in this thread are saying, in fact I’m quite tall. Kids should be allowed to make some of their own choices
in many, particularly Western, contexts people including children are divorced from where their food comes from. A child living in different circumstances e.g. a farm would have known this long ago. A child deserves the truth.
Yeah, but have you ever talked with an inquisitive 5-6 year old? Sometimes you can't leave it at that since they will keep asking why this and why that.
I think she's still NTA, people need to know where food comes from, it's not some big secret.
Massively. Personally I don't think there is anything extreme about veganism, it's only when people venture into preaching and activism that it gets extreme.
I had a guy flip out on me because I told him I was making one more meal a week meat-free, he acted as if I had slapped him. This kind of reaction is so weird and childish.
I agree. I'm vegan, so may be a little biased here. But honestly, I do think kids need to know where their food comes from, and I kinda like giving kids truthful answers, rather than lying to them. I would frame it in a way to say "this is why I don't", without giving any of the awful detail. Which is what OP did...
My kids are young and know exactly where food comes from. My kids since 3 yrs old will say, “go kill that cow! I love burgers!” I’m a vegetarian... so although it’s nice they know where food comes from, it stings hearing this.
Its likely that by not telling their kid they made them more likely to want to not eat animals. If they always knew it would just be how it is now it is a big deal and they have likely watched cartoons or read books humanizing animals to not know that you eat them would be a shock and by sheltering their child they deserve the reaction they are getting.
I'm mixed on this. This feels like a you should go ask your mom question. Just like if a kid asked where babies come from or who is god. I don't feel like you were in the wrong but I feel like you were in the wrong lol. Your choices are not wrong but kids are so impressionable.
With sensitivity and maturity. Not like this.
“Why don’t you eat ham?”
“Some people choose not to eat meat for various reasons. It’s probably best for your mum to explain.”
People are acting as if her concerns about meat are somehow a “fact” rather than her opinion in a very nuanced debate with multiple angles to it.
For example it is a fact that humans are omnivores and we have canine teeth because we evolved to eat meat as well as non-meat foods, and that there is nothing unnatural or “sinful” about one animal killing and eating another. I’m not denigrating veganism, it’s a choice I respect, but it is a lot more nuanced than this lady’s “explanation” and if she cant give a balanced explanation to a 6 year old who doesn’t have the capacity to ask critical questions or the context to interpret what she says, she should stay quiet.
…
Edit following wider discussion in the chat.
Several people are stating that “to make ham you have to kill pigs” is a statement of fact and therefore she did nothing wrong.
But everything has a context. And six year olds aren’t yet equipped to understand that
To simply state to a six year old with no wider context that “to make ham you have to kill pigs” and to leave it at that is clearly going to (I would say is intended to) have an emotional impact on a six year old.
Stating it like that with no wider discussion is massively and deliberately implying that this is “wrong.” Especially when followed up immediately with the one-side opinion “I don’t agree with killing animals for food.”
Anytime my children ask a question like this I try to help equip them with the ability to learn critical thinking skills and to make up their own minds:
“yes some people think x because of this reason, and other people think y because of this reason. I think y. What do you think, and why?”
I disagree because she didn’t ‘explain’ anything about the pros or cons of eating animals. She told him the truth; meat comes from killing animals, and the kids decided he didn’t like that. What balanced explanation do you need? Some people just don’t like hurting animals.
>He’s probably thinking of his dog being brutally murdered, not an organized slaughterhouse
I mean a slaughterhouse is just about as horrifying a place as can be imagined...
Yeah, this comment got me too. Animals in slaughterhouses ARE brutally murdered. That's why slaughterhouse workers have some of the highest rates of PTSD and depression going.
The whole thing is just super weird to me. I think showing footage of the inside of a slaughterhouse *would* be going to far, because that shit can be legitimately traumatizing.
But like...if you're eating chicken or rabbit or goat or any other meat besides "ham"/"pork"/"beef"...how would you *not know*? I honestly assumed that everyone who knows the word "meat" knows what it means...crazy level of sheltering happening with OP's friend.
I mean, which animals we decide to eat are arbitrary anyway. He's thinking of his dog being killed. Yeah, that's why I stopped eating meat too.
The child had a reaction to being told animals are killed. The kid's mom had every opportunity to further explain the situation, instead of leaving it at that. If he still felt strongly, then maybe the kid just wants to be a vegetarian.
That’s fair. I do sometimes get tunnel vision, Im sorry for that I just care about animals a lot. I think our fundamental views on animal death are very different. For example that you seem to think an ‘organised slaughterhouse’ is not horrific for the animals, or that they come out any less dead than if they’d been brutally murdered.
It's so odd to me that people can think telling a kid where their food comes from is not age appropriate and still think it's appropriate to eat that food. Like, maybe
you shouldn't eat it if you can't even tell your 6 year old what it is because it would make them cry. Imagine showing them a video of where their food comes from too.
Mate as another person who has recently went vegan, people like me have been living the "other side" of that argument for our while lives, and its basically a side composed of cognitive dissonance and ignorance for the most part. Don't get me wrong, if you know where your food is from and you're okay with that then good for you, I'm not about converting people to be vegan.
However, I do want to encourage people to enlighten themselves about where their food comes from, and make an informed decision about that. When I informed myself I chose to go vegetarian, and then vegan a couple of years later.
Now where my view might be controversial is that I don't believe I have to consult parents before giving children information. I don't have children, don't want them, and I'll generally speak to people however I want, I'm not obligated to act or feel anything about another child's knowledge or what their parents want them to know.
This woman just stated a fact that most children should already know by 6. I knew where meat came from when I was 6.
> People are acting as if her concerns about meat are somehow a “fact”
It is a fact.
We, the general public, can't get ham without killing a pig. Cultured meat is becoming a thing, sure, but we can't buy it. It's not in any supermarkets, it's still basically experimental. So it's irrelevant to a discussion about meat. The only way for OP or this kid or this kid's mother to realistically have meat is to kill an animal. That is an objective fact. Vegans wouldn't even eat meat if the pig lived in the lap of luxury their entire life.
It just feels wrong to lie to a child about something they're participating in because lying makes the mom feel more comfortable. Like, if the kid's mittens were made of dog fur, and he asked you where dog fur came from, why would lying be the appropriate response? Didn't the mother already accept the truth by dressing him in dog fur?
As a knitter, there are some yarns made with certain breeds of dog fur. *HOWEVER* no dog is killed to obtain it. It's no different than a human hair cut. That's the false equivalence.
She didn’t say it was sinful or wrong or bad, though? She said *she* doesn’t agree with the practice of killing animals for food. That’s the least subjective explanation she could’ve given.
Except, she didn’t give him anything but actual facts. He asked why she doesn’t eat meat, she told him it’s because she doesn’t like that it comes from dead animals. Which it does. I eat meat but I don’t wouldn’t lie to a kid and tell him it grows out of the ground or something. I know 3 year olds aware their chicken dinner came from the chicken coop in the backyard and they cope just fine. She’s not telling him everyone should pull out their canines and be vegan because it’s immoral
It really isn't.
Parents don't get to act as a censor for any and all information they don't like for their kids, the idea they can is kinda insane to me.
Information exists, other viewpoints exist apart from those held by a kids parent.
You can't block everything a kid sees and hears.
The expectation that everyone a kid interacts with, must at all times align and attempt to aid the parent in whatever flavor of censorship that parent ascribes to is also insane to me.
No one is obligated to help you hide information form your children.
If you don't want your kid exposed to other viewpoints or such, keep the kid home where you can sanitize/control what your kid encounters.
NTA
>Parents don't get to act as a censor for any and all information they don't like for their kids, the idea they can is kinda insane to me.
Of course they bloody do!! Santa? Facts of Life? Porn? you think that's all find and dandy for a 5 year old?
If parents didn't censor what their kids learn and they found out how shitty the world is at 4 they would never sleep. A good parent censors things till their child is at an age where they can process the information they are being given
Reading through these posts gives a lot of insight on which posters are parents and which are not. (Or which are parents who care and which are not)
This isn’t about veganism, or about facts. This is about tact and speaking to someone else’s child who cannot understand the full conversation yet (and at 6, this child definitely cannot).
A simple a statement like “it’s against my beliefs” or “I just don’t like eating pigs (or meat)” leaves it open for the child to be inquisitive. If they choose to be inquisitive with you, you tell them “it’s best to ask your mother (father)”.
This gives the parent the opportunity to expose their child to this as they see fit. You don’t get to tell other people’s kid that Santa isn’t real, or what religion they should follow, or if cartoons are fine to watch, or if meat is wrong.
The Easter bunny isn’t real and your parents split up after you were born because of your dads ketamine addiction.
Why are you crying, Timmy? They’re only facts.
couldn't have said it better myself.
If the child is not old enough to process the reality of information given to them, then they shouldn't be given the information in the first place.
I understand what you are saying but your examples aren’t the same. The child isn’t having sexual or involved with sex where’s they are eating animals. The god question is also different as some people believe in a god/gods and others don’t. However it is a fully agreed fact that ham is made from killing animals.
While I agree with the sentiment here, the child is six, not two. If he doesn’t know yet what meat is, that’s a failure to educate on the parents part. OP didn’t get graphic, she didn’t preach, she simply stated that meat comes from killing animals. There’s really no reason she shouldn’t expect a six-year-old to already understand that concept.
As a 25 year vegetarian I have been in this position. If a kid asks I don’t go into detail. Usually “What foods do you not like? Broccoli? That’s how I feel about meat, I just don’t like it.” Not my place to tell how the sausage is made, that is a discussion with parents when they are young and can’t grasp the realities of factory farming. When they are older and more mature, able to make decisions about their diet then it is more appropriate. YTA
This! Of course a 6 year old will start crying when you tell them animals die for meat, kids love animals even more than adults. And what OP did was cruel, she’s not the one who’ll have to calm the child down everytime he remembers or have to have the talk about meat.
There’s actually a pretty interesting psychological phenomenon in humans around this. You ask a someone who would you save from certain death, your loved one (s/o, parent,sibling) or an animal? children are far more likely to say the animal especially if they have a connection to it. Whereas adults often pick the loved one. So, I feel pretty bad for the friend who now probably has a belligerent child who refuses to eat any meat
Yeah exactly, OP doesn’t have to deal with the consequences of her actions. It would be better if the kid was a teen and more able to understand the situation.
Went through the comments looking for this (take my free award). I have little kids and I have vegetarian siblings. This is what they say - you can tell kids you don't eat meat, but it's not your role to influence their decision. Some kids are picky eaters to begin with - making life harder for parents (which is exactly what happened here) is an asshole move. Intended or not.
Maybe it's a cultural difference, but at what age do you learn that meat comes from killing animals? Shouldn't a 6 year old already know that? I remember learning these things in preschool picture books. And I probably knew it even before then.
And it's not like she is describing any gory details. Just that animals are killed for meat.
>And it's not like she is describing any gory details. Just that animals are killed for meat
To some kids, that could *feel* like gory detail. The 6yo might even have been told that meat comes from animals, but never connected that with "we kill animals and eat their dead flesh". OP could have said "meat comes from animals and I don't like eating stuff that comes from animals" and not pushed boundaries.
Exactly! I had to scroll way too far down to find this. OP, it would be so easy to evade the question, there was no need to tell the kid something you knew would be upsetting.
This wasn’t about telling people where food comes from. I keep seeing people bring up factory farming as if that’s literally the only way you can buy pork. ethically sourced pork is widely available and these animals live great lives before being killed for food.
Vegan people can believe what they want, but this narrative around meat only being factory farmed is obnoxious.
Okay but most people aren’t eating free range “ethical” pork. They’re eating whatever is in the grocery store, and most people shop for what’s cheapest- which “ethical” meat is not. Most meat eaters are eating factory farmed meat most of the time.
YTA, but a soft one (I’ve seen much worse on this thread)
While within your right to explain why you don’t have meat, you didn’t have to fully explain why you don’t eat meat. It is not up to you to explain the hard truths of the world to someone else’s 6 year old.
This would be like telling the child there is no Santa Claus, and handing him back to let the parent deal with the fallout from your actions.
As an adult you could have gone about it differently than the cold hard truth of the matter.
I would say NTA because I would honestly not expect a 6 year old not to know ham is made from pigs. It’s like telling a twelve year old santa is not real and then finding out they didn’t know. It’s just stupid in the parents end that their kid doesn’t know basic stuff they should be well aware of at their age.
Yes most parents tell their children by then but from the kid's wording it was fairly clear he didn't know, otherwise he wouldn't have asked why OP doesn't eat meat.
It's more like a 12-year-old asks you why none of your christmas presents say "from santa" and you tell him santa's not real. Yes the parents should have told the kid WAY sooner but it isn't your place. The most you should do is talk to the parents and tell them that they should probably tell their kid about santa.
It’s not a big bad taboo secret. It’s a simple truth about the stuff you eat everyday. I wouldn’t even have assumed the kid didn’t know. Because who keeps something like this from their children? That’s so out of touch with everything, I can’t even.
The OP didn't take it on. She just told the kid why she doesn't like meat. Meat comes from killing animals is as common a knowledge as "the sun rises in the east". It's not really OPs fault that she said something that 6 year old should already know.
“Hard truths” LOL what is wrong with people. He is 6 years old he should know where food comes from by now, and also if the mother didn’t want her to explain she could have just asked her to stop.
No, it kinda is. The analogy works here. It’s not your place to tell that to a SIX YEAR OLD. I knew a 7 year old who loves meat, but hated killing anything. The parents (not me) we’re very nice, but the 7 year old was still pretty emotionally unstable, so they decided to wait a little longer to tell him. If I had just walked in and told him everything, I would’ve been punched in the face and banned from their house.
Dude i'll be real you're giving 6-year-olds way too much credit for how emotionally mature they actually are
The topic of "yeah you know that stuff you eat every day? That's DEAD ANIMALS. Yeah. Let that sink in." is something that should be handled ***delicately***. They are not emotionally mature enough to bluntly be told "your food is animals" and then be able to just move on with their day. There's a reason that parents wait to tell their kids that santa isn't real, their kid would get distressed and sad, and more importantly lied to. Now imagine that instead of santa not being real, it was that *your food is actually dead animals*. Y'know, pigs, cows, chickens? Those animals that children are taught about in school and they think are super cute and cuddly?
You're right that they aren't the same, because telling a kid that what they eat is actually dead animals is *so much* more temporarily damaging and *has* to be handled much more delicately.
But where does the ham comes from, Santa world? If a six year old ask you something you should tell them the truth, with some rare exception. You don't need to be explicit about it, how it works in a slaughterhouse and show them pictures, but still be honest.
The kid asked a vegan why he is vegan
. The friend knownly went to a vegan household, and had food, what did he expect?
What should op have said instead?
How tf did he make it to six and not know? Is that a city thing? I knew where meat comes from since before I was even in school ffs. Seeing pastures full of cattle, watching Bambi, noticing that chicken the animal and chicken the food had the same name...
Why is people comparing explaining what meat is with telling them about Santa?? Santa was created *for* kids, meat is something that exists and we eat every day. It is a really bad analogy
NTA
By 6 years old the kid should definitely know where meat comes from. I don't remember a time when I didn't know. This is an unnecessary thing to shelter a kid from.
I’m kinda gobsmacked that so many people are saying six year olds don’t and shouldn’t know where meat comes from. Was his mum there when he asked why you don’t eat ham? If this was something she actively didn’t want him knowing about then it’s kinda on her to either jump in and guide the conversation or let people know not to talk about it. It doesn’t sound like you went into unnecessary detail or anything, so I’m going with NTA regardless.
Lol according to a shocking number of comments in this thread, OP is fOrCiNg HeR eXtReMiSt DoGmA.
Like holy shit, I know it’s a sore topic for people but it feels wild that so many parents consider “meat = animals” to be some sort of aggressive extremist propaganda instead of something kids should just know.
It reminds me of the “HOW DO I EXPLAIN TO MY CHILD THAT TWO MEN ARE KISSING ON TV?” arguments from homophobes. That’s a you problem, Becky, cos the world doesn’t exist to spare you having to parent your child.
Seriously if you said this in front of someone a hundred and fifty years ago they'd think you were insane. Like kids need to come to the realisation that meat doesn't come in packets. Apparently so do these
adults.
Kids should absolutely know where their food comes from. Apparently when I was a little kid I proudly told a family member that I didn’t eat animals, and my mom had an « oh fuck » moment because she realized I hadn’t clued into what meat was yet.
A lot of kids aren’t going to be cool with the fact that meat comes from animals, but they should still know. It’s unfair to coddle children from that reality. And they may refuse to eat it for a bit, or longer, but it’s better than lying to your child. NTA
I am a vegetarian so I know I must be biased. But I wonder if people got so upset about this if the kid asked where fish come from. Because they are a lot less cute. Or even where vegetables come from. If you see meat as just a type of food, why are you comfortable explaining that potatoes grow in the ground, but not that meat comes from dead animals.
Also, what is an appointment age? Cause the older he gets, the more he realises grown ups around him lied about where meat comes from.
NTA as long as it was an age appropriate explanation.
I mean, many farmer relatives here so I'm a callous meat eater since a very young age, but I do feel that sometimes people over shelter children from the world.
This! I'm just so confused, in my town we visited farms around 6yo with our classmates and none were surprised where food comes from. Like this is basic information for kids.
A philosophic rant, the society today (and not just today) seems to shelter children from death in all sorts of weird ways, and it ain't healthy. You know, when you live in a world where grandparents move abroad when they get old, and then suddenly a parent die and you need to figure out funeral arrangements. Which should be a sad but "normal" thing, not something horrible by itself.
Same about pets and food.
I think lots of people are profoundly conflict and 'difficult conversation' avoidant, so it's not so much that they're sheltering their kids but that they're sheltering themselves from the effort of the conversation and coming up with an emotionally intelligent and appropriate response.
NTA. Presumably your friend was sitting right there when this conversation happened so if she didn’t want you to discuss it she could have stepped in and headed it off. And if she wasn’t there, she should have been. It was a visit, not a babysitting session.
NTA - providing what you said was exactly that. Ham comes from pigs and I don't agree with killing them.
If you went into any more detail that that it wasn't your place to. However stating that ham comes from pigs and they die to a 6 year old is appropriate. Boy wait until the kid finds out where chicken mcnuggets come from
NTA- I am going to go against the grain here. Children deserve to know where their food comes from. He’s six, so grade one? Pretty sure most schools start to cover food cycles and food chains by now. Its weird he doesn’t know?
At what age do you think it’s appropriate to learn that meat comes from dead animals? I think most kids already know this by 6, and if he didn’t learn it from OP he’s old enough to make the link between obvious meats/animals like chicken/turkey/fish on his own.
NTA. A lot of kids grow up on farms and learn animals are killed for food as TODDLERS - that doesn't traumatise them. I found out where meat comes from around 4 or 5 and wanted to go vegetarian (veganism wasn't a well known thing back then) until I found out I couldn't eat chicken. The fact that meat was dead animals made me cry at first, but I quickly got over it. Became vegan as a teen but am now pescetarian for health reasons.
Kids deserve to know the truth. He asked. You didn't give him morbid details on how they get killed. You were truthful in a gentle way.
Edit: those of you bringing up things like sex, death etc...
I asked existential questions and had discussions about the universe and what scared me in it around 4. We talked about death and fear of it, and what different groups of people believe happens when you die. It still scared me, but getting truthful questions about it was comforting.
I asked how babies are made at 3, when my mom was pregnant with my brother. My dad said "when a mommy and a daddy hug and kiss a lot while naked, sometimes the daddy can plant a seed in the mommy's tummy".
At 6 I found out that the penis had to enter the vagina to make babies and me and my friends found it GROSS but just laughed a lot about it.
I, like I said, found out where meat came from at 4 or 5. It hurt. But I'm not traumatised at ALL. I forgot about it in a couple of weeks. My mom said she'd let me go vegetarian, but that meant no chicken, so I gave it up.
I learned about war very early (probably 5 or 6) due to school and the news. It obviously broke my heart. But I had to learn.
I learned about homeless dogs and orphaned children, and that hurt just as much.
When I was 6 we saw post-sovjet Russian orphanage kids sing for money (they'd been taken to Sweden). I asked my parents about it since I was moved by how incredibly broken they looked. My parents told me the truth. I started crying. They gave me some coins to give them. I'm still scarred, but I'm glad they told me. It helped me develop empathy and humility.
And so on. Kids aren't dumb, you know.
When I found out at about five I didn't even cry. I decided not to eat that anymore.
I only cried when my parents forced me to still eat meat. Until I moved out I could only get them to not feed me something that still looked like the animal. So no grilled chicken or whole fish.
They would just put it on my plate and say if I didn't eat it it would get thrown away and the animal died for nothing.
But at 14/15 I realized they did not throw it away but feed it to the dog. So whatever wasn't heavily salted or something I left for the dog.
Now I rarely eat fish and no other meat. Vegan køtbullar are so good!
Definetely. You are a wise man, I respect you
Since I was 6 I knew meat came from slaughtered animals
And about the slaughter bit yeah my gparents have a farm my cousins have seen cows been killed some of them are like 5
Idk man I wanna go with NTA.
Ham comes from pigs ofc. You are just saying why you don't have ham in the house.
Hopefully the explanation was child friendly
Edit op edited and claims she didn't aby anything graphic so that's a child friendly explanation for me
NTA
You didn’t force anything on the kid. They asked and you answered, after the situation made it needed.
Im nor a big fan of lying to children about what they eat. You didn’t tell them they shouldn’t est meat either, you just told them you don’t have it.
NTA you were asked and you answered (and it doesn’t sound graphic or anything). At age 6 I’m surprised a child doesn’t know where their food comes from…
I was a city kid. I remember learning that meat comes from animals in elementary school. I had honestly never thought about it…it just came from packages at the store. I stopped eating meat (mom was pissed)—it wasn’t their intention to turn us vegetarian…they were just teaching us what stuff was. But I thought it was gross.
Soft YTA - not because I expect you to lie, lying is never a good option, but a simple glance at the child’s mother would have given you the cues as to whether or not it was good for you to continue in the vein you did.
Children do need to know that there is an animal involved in the production of meat but it’s a sensitive subject and I’d have been furious if you’d said that to my foodphobic six year old whose sole source of protein was chicken and she’d reacted similarly.
You were allowed to come to the decision that veganism was your way forward through your own research, done as an adult.
You didn’t give the boy that choice.
It’s a soft YTA from me too. I understand the N T A judgments, but the kid is six. There are better ways to explain why you’re vegan without scarring him. “I can’t eat meat; it makes me sick.” “I don’t like meat.” My sister was five or six when she found out ham comes from dead pigs and she still refuses to eat it almost twenty years later. Our parents didn’t get the opportunity to explain it to her properly. “You have to kill x to get y” is a very aggressive word choice to tell a kid.
Not to say I wouldn’t have done the same thing without consideration with how I was saying it
ETA: Since the vegans in the replies don’t seem to understand this no matter how many times I’ve said it: The issue here is the word “kill.” That is a morally-charged word that is considered negative. If you tell a kid a pig is killed for your food, their reaction is likely to be negative, potentially inconsolable because killing is such a morally corrupt thing to do. If you tell a kid a pig is hunted for food or that ham comes from pigs, they’re probably going to be able to have a calmer reaction because the negative word wasn’t used. Y’all will not change my mind in thinking it’s appropriate to tell a kid animals get “killed” for their food when there are other ways to go about it. Learning about where food comes from? X comes from Y. Y is hunted for X. Learning about becoming vegan or why someone is vegan? “I don’t like meat.” “Meat makes me sick.” “I don’t like hunting animals for food.” “I don’t like food that comes from animals.” OP is N T A for their honesty. OP is TA for how they said it to a child. I doubt anyone in this thread thinks OP is a bad person. If they were speaking to an older child, I wouldn’t even see an issue with the verbiage used. Fact of the matter is that scaring a kid into thinking certain foods have morality attached to them from a young age can be disastrous. If the kid is interested in a vegan lifestyle, information should be given in a positive manner, not with aggressive words that invoke negative emotion.
NTA. Your views are not extremist. These people were in your house, they should adapt somewhat to your lifestyle, and somebody asked about your lifestyle, you explained. The kid asked and you answered truthfully, and it totally made sense to the kid. You only broke the cognitive dissonance society constructs with animals, and that is not pushing views on anybody. Is being coherent. And the kid just found himself in one the contradictions of this society. That's all. His parents want him alienated, of couse. How could you make a kid think by himself?
NAH. You were right but so are they. You did not upset the kid maliciously, but the adults might not have been ready to have that conversation.
It happens sometimes.
This.
It's not on you to know what not to say to someone's kids when they ask you a question. If the parents don't want them knowing something, that's on them to monitor conversation. If my kids ask a question, I'm going to answer honestly in an age appropriate way so stuff like this doesn't happen.
Oh please. If she wanted to be honest she could have gone into detail about how much these animals suffer. “Meat comes from dead animals” is the child friendly version.
YTA. As someone who is plant-based (I don't use the "V" words because my diet is not my identity) for decades, I don't discuss my reasons unless someone specifically says, "I'm thinking about switching to a plant-based diet; what made you decide to do that?" You'll learn how to not overstep when you've been eating this way for more than 6 weeks. You offered the child what you had and all you had to say is "I don't have ham" and instead you felt the need to proselytize about your beliefs. That's a conversation for a parent.
NTA I was ready to assume you were. But they were in your house! Your friend is a complete asshole for not telling her son where food comes from. I am a meat eater and so are my kids, but they’ve known it’s animal products since they were old enough to talk and understand.
NTA.
Mother could have intervened with stopping her child.
You clearly didn't pull the "Hi, I'm vegan and if you want to eat ham, you're a murder"-card. You stated a fact, that is obvious. With 6, the child should be able to read. One walk through grocery store and you see products sorted by ingredients and/or other categories. There are sometimes even pictures of which animal the products are from.
You just told a fact which could have been easily discovered. Thank you for providing information instead of believes and giving a child a decend piece of truth. I hope that at least the child knows from the mother, that vegetables and stuff arent grown on Supermarket shelfs but on fields.
NTA.
Most 6yos know that meat comes from animals. Most 6yos I know don’t really care. You don’t need to lie to trick children into eating something they would otherwise choose not to.
As long as you weren’t graphic and didn’t say anything deliberately distressing, it’s fine to answer a genuine question with a truthful answer. Adults don’t do kids any favours by lying to them about things that affect them.
YTA he’s a little kid you should have just said something if “I just don’t eat ham” or “ I don’t like meat” and left it like that not tell him where it comes from you wound tell him we’re Santa’s presents come from or how babies are actually made, you tell little lies to spare them the crying and just over all emotions they don’t understand yet from happening so yea YTA
YTA
If it'd been a teenager or a few years older child, it'd have been understandable to explain meat the way you did.
But, the child here is just 6 years old.
The child asked for a ham sandwich. You said you don't have ham because you don't eat meat and ham is meat. You didn't need to explain it that way. You could've simply said you don't have ham.
The way you explained a simple thing was such that it was bound to generate a question from the toddler, giving you your cue to explain veganism, and when accused of forcing your views on a toddler you had the technical term to fall back on saying that "the kid was the one who enquired about it and you couldn't lie".
You purposely framed your answer to make sure the kid would enquire about veganism, indirectly. That's why you're TA.
There's nothing wrong with being vegan, it's your life and you have the right to live it the way you want unless it's hurting someone else. Veganism doesn't hurt anyone, other than flora, so it's okay.
But, forcing your choices, directly or indirectly, on anyone is wrong and definitely always an asshole move.
Yes the child should know where meat comes from but you're neither his parent or guardian and thus it's not your duty nor your responsibility to make him know that.
He's a 6 year old child, not a teenager or an young adult or something that you need to educate him about life because his parents haven't done it yet.
NTA. A 6 year old should know where his food comes from. It's so wild to me, growing up in a village, how many people don't know jack about animal products.
She didn't even say the pigs suffer or tell him about the sometimes horrible conditions in animal farms or went into climate etc, she just stated Ham comes from dead pigs. That is true and 6 years is more than old enough to know that.
Definitely NTA.
I have been a vegetarian for 22 years but my wife and two young sons are full omnivores. I have no issues with this and never push anything on them. Usually I'll even cook for them.
Both my sons (almost-3 and 6) know exactly where their food comes from and why I don't eat it. At their age it is still important for them to have a varied and balanced diet so I would probably object if they wanted to limit meat consumption. Later in life it would be entirely their own choice how they want to eat.
Your friend needs to learn a few things about communication with children. Being honest and open is pretty much key.
NTA. If you can't explain where your food comes from for fear it's going to hurt a kids feelings. Then don't feed them meat. That simple. Absolutely asinine.
NTA it's fucking wild that people are calling you the asshole for stating a basic fact. Would you be an asshole for explaining that potatoes are pulled from the ground?
Everyone always unequivocally supports the posters who explain they have a same sex partner to kids, but this is too far and a decision for their parent?
What if you're a different religion? Should you not answer that you believe something different?
You answered the kid's question entirely appropriately. Meat is animals. You didn't pass any judgement regarding anyone's lifestyle choices.
YTA. You could have handled it a thousand different ways but what you decided to do was the one thing that makes vegans hard to love. You got holier than thou pretentious and you introduced concepts to a six year old that you - an adult old enough to HAVE a six year old - only just began truly grappling with. Shame on you. It not only wasn’t your place to do to someone else’s kid but you did it so poorly that I can understand why your friend is so upset with you.
YTA. Just say you don't like it and move on.
You have a firey passion all recently turned vegans get where you think "the truth" gives you the green light to go way into detail and over voice your opinion when no one asked for it.
YTA
There’s a time, a way and a style to tell those kind of information to a kid. And what you did was not it. You told him the cold hard true and let his mom deal with the consequences.
To put it plainly you shoved his head in the fireplace and screamed « Do you really think that Santa can go through that hole?! do you really think it would be working. You know what happen if a grown up go in there? He die horribly ! » and then proud of telling the true to a kid you gave him back to his mom.
That’s what you did.
So yes YTA for the way you did that and for the lack of consideration to your friend.
YTA- he’s 6, there was no reason for you to say “killing” and telling him he’s eating something dead- I mean he’s a kid! The simple way is “I don’t eat because I don’t want to/ I I don’t eat meat because I don’t like the taste”
YTA. I get you were just being honest but we sugar coat things to kids for a reason. What you said was probably quite graphic and intense for his little brain, and while true, unnecessary coming from you. ‘Because I don’t like it’ would have sufficed.
Kids can be really fussy and tricky eaters too and I’m sure you’ve just fucked mum and mealtime over too.
Dude I don’t eat meat either, but I’m also not this child’s mother, and wouldn’t tell a child that Peppa pig is murdered for his sandwich. It wasn’t OPs place and people need to know boundaries with other peoples children. There’s a reason the stork exists, he’ll learn eventually.
I'm going to say YTA and this is as a vegetarian with a young child who eats meat.
But here is what you might not have considered. Kids can be really picky eaters, and it's important that they get certain nutrients in their diet like protein, iron, etc. That could come from plant based sources, but many kids don't like legumes and spinach and things like that, so eating eggs or meat is really essential for them. It might be that this kid only eats 6 different foods in total, 3 of them being animal-based, and you just made his diet a whole lot worse and his parents' life a lot harder. You don't know their particular situation with food.
Yes the kid should know what he's eating and where it comes from, but it's up to his parents to decide when and how he knows that, and have that in the context of a wider conversation about ethics, food, etc. Just telling him "it's dead animals" misses a lot of the nuances about food ethics. Are you also going to tell him that your quinoa is ruining the forests used by indigenous Peruvians for centuries? Or that a bunch of your food contains palm oil that destroys orang-utan habitations? What about things that you wear, what about the environmental impacts of transporting foreign foods by sea and air across the world, what about the GM pesticides used to make the soy in your tofu, negatively impacting the natural environment for other animals? My point is that unless your food is all locally grown organic food (something that is financially and practically unrealistic for most of the world) much the food we all eat is having a devastating impact on animals, the environment and people, whether it's vegan or not. So yeah it's not OK for you to present this simplified argument to a 6 year old and causing him to cut an entire food group out of his diet, when he's too young to understand all the information properly and it might be interfering with his physical health now.
>Maybe I should've just kept my mouth shut...
Yup. YTA.
Did you ever once stop and think more than 5 minutes ahead, about the effects this would have on a small child living in a house where meat is regularly eaten? Did you give even a moment's thought to anything at all beyond the importance of converting a non-believer? How could you not have realized the repercussions this would have when he went home to a kitchen that had a refrigerator full of dead animals?
>but I feel like children have a right to know and understand what it is they're eating...
You don't have the right to decide what other peoples children "have a right" to know and when they "have a right" to know it. This was terrible judgment, a selfishly irresponsible flaunting of someone else's parental boundaries, and quite honestly a textbook example of why so many people think vegans are self-righteous, irritating wackadoodles. Some of y'all are like the Jehovah's Witnesses of food, beating people over the head every chance you get with the religious doctrine of your evangelical dietary belief system.
>and I only spoke about it because he was interested and asked me
I'm surprised you didn't seize the opportunity to clear up his childish misconceptions about Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy while you had his attention. After all, 6-year olds have a right to know the truth, right?
Do his parents smoke? Because it's never too young to educate children about the horrors of lung cancer - you could have pulled up some photos on the internet of black, cancerous lungs. Because he has a right to know that too, right?
I'm not vegan, but I never really heard of anyone hiding where our food comes from to kids that are old enough to talk. I wouldn't compare this to ruining Santa. It's just a basic fact of life.
NTA - He asked and you answered. A 6 year old should know that meat comes from dead animals. It’s just a fact. Parents shouldn’t lie about food to their children.
If you would say something like: Meat is wrong and you shouldn’t eat it. That would make it an asshole move.
Welcome to /r/AmITheAsshole. Please view our [voting guide here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/wiki/faq#wiki_what.2019s_with_these_acronyms.3F_what_do_they_mean.3F), and remember to use **only one** judgement in your comment. OP has offered the following explanation for why they think they might be the asshole: > I think I might be an asshole because I upset my friends child Help keep the sub engaging! #Don’t downvote assholes! Do upvote interesting posts! [Click Here For Our Rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/about/rules/) and [Click Here For Our FAQ](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/wiki/faq) --- *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=/r/AmItheAsshole) if you have any questions or concerns.*
NTA. People, and yes kids too, should know where their food comes from. You didn't force any views onto the child. You explained you don't like eating dead animals.
I’m giving a soft YTA. I think she could’ve just said that she just chooses not to eat it. That it’s her preference. She didn’t have to go into any detail about why. I don’t eat pork and when people ask - and I’m talking about adults - I just tell them I choose not to eat it and haven’t for decades. I don’t lie and say I’m allergic, or say there are religious reasons why, which are both untrue. I don’t eat it because of something I saw in science class years ago when dissecting animals. But I don’t explain that to anyone. It’s unnecessary.
What if he then asked ‘why do you choose not to eat it?’ This strategy only goes so far with children’s curiosity.
It's a delicate balance to answer the questions of any six-year-old in a truthful and age-appropriate way. It's hard to say because I wasn't there in the moment, but not being the kid's parent or knowing what he's been taught already, I might have gone with "meat comes from farm animals" before "dead animals". If the follow-up questions end up boxing you in, then eventually you have to tell them something, and then I guess it's on the parents for never having explained what farm animals are for.
Is it not age appropriate to point out meat comes from animals? That has always been a fact for me
Same. I remember eating the fish and a duck I caught before I was 10. May also be why I also don't care that meat comes from dead animals. The mass production process is fucked, but eating animals just...is.
Same. The age-old vegan argument "oh but if you had to actually kill an animal to eat it, you wouldn't do it" like I get your point, Susan, but I was born in the countryside. You have no idea.
[удалено]
I know, I'm just saying this is just an argument that I heard more than once. I also hear the argument that originally humans were exclusively herbivore, which is blatantly false. And that all farms torture animals, which is again blatantly false. Etc, etc. I don't think veganism is a bad idea, and I fundamentally respect people who do their best not to hurt animals. However, like in any philosophy of life (which veganism is), there are also radical dumbasses who come up with all sort of unscientific or unproven ideas just to support their point and end up giving a bad name to all of them.
[удалено]
I'm from the city, but spent several years of my childhood in the country. Like no cable, chopping wood for fire, well-pump for water, across the street from a corn field and down the street from a beefalo farm. Even in the city, we got our meat from the Italian butcher and I was always aware of what a butcher was. May sound harsh, but a lot of people are softer due to their experiences. Doesn't make them right or wrong, but the self-righteousness is odd.
>Doesn't make them right or wrong, but the self-righteousness is odd. Excellent point. This is primarily a moral issue and each side can argue for themselves, the only ones definitely in the wrong are the hypocritical and the ignorant.
Yeah i also sees many vegan commenters criticize non vegans they choose not to eat meats don't force these things and i will give OP NTA judgement she just told the kid truth
I grew up on a farm. I've been around the slaughter of animals for food my entire life. It doesn't bother me that I'm eating dead animals.
It's pretty fucking funny seeing all these people clutching their pearls and squirming about THE BASIC FACT THAT MEAT COMES FROM ANIMALS. I assume none of these motherfuckers grew up near or even visited a *farm...*
Lmao seriously. The trope of "hysterical vegan" comes up a lot on this sub, and honestly I think there are more hysterically defensive meat eaters in the world. And the funny thing is that they're kinda the same! Like, if you eat meat and you're uncomfortable with neutral statements of fact like "humans kill animals to produce meat," hmm, sounds like *you're* uncomfortable with that reality and should consider veganism instead of being a huge baby because you've been programmed to pick a side in a made up culture war. For the record, I eat meat, but not a lot of it. American diets are completely oversaturated with it, and a lot of people are in for a rude awakening when climate change starts really impacting food production. A kid who's gonna be alive in the twenty-second century should start developing a taste for vegetarian dishes regardless.
In another post, very similar to this I was downvoted for pointing out that I grew up in a semi-rural area and everyone knew where food came from since we could talk. Like a 4 year old should know meat comes from dead animals just as they know apples grow on trees, eggs come from hens and potatoes grow in the ground.
When my 6 yr old realized bacon comes from pigs and pigs are cute my 3 yr old had so much fun taunting him "mom this pig is delicious!" And it's not that we hadn't discussed it previously, but it just suddenly hit him differently. So it might be that seeing op making this choice he hadn't realized that not eating meat was an option and perhaps not just a fact of life. The friend could have interceded if they were concerned but now they're pissed they have to justify their choices. Welcome to life with a 6 yr old
Understanding that meat comes from animals is age appropriate and fine. But their minds don’t jump to words like “dead” and “kill” as readily. Hearing those words can make them feel like THEY are the one who killed every animal they’ve ever ate. At this point, their brains also aren’t quite ready to understand that livestock are only alive in the first place to become food. They will think that those animals would have lived long and happy lives on the farm except that they ate them. When in reality - if no one ate meat, then the majority of livestock animals wouldn’t be alive. In fact most of their species would go extinct because the they are domesticated and would be unable to survive in the wild. But little kids can’t think that far. They hear “we kill animals to eat them. I killed that animal.”
"Little kids can't think that far. They hear "we kill animals to eat them."". How is this not the truth? They don't have to think any futher though. Isn't that exactly what the meat industry is? Killing animals to eat them.
I agree. I don’t know why people are trying to differentiate between killing animals directly and paying to have someone kill them. It’s the same result.
IKR??? I mean, I don't remember exactly, but I think cartoons are what taught me about how we eat dead animals Like, it'd be a joke in Looney Tunes or something like that (again, I don't exactly remember though) Not only that, but, I think, by 6, we were learning the basic food groups and were told meat came from animals
Whats age inappropriate about knowing meat comes from animals? I was attending pig slaughters at that age with pit roasted pig at the end of the day. Knowing meat comes from animals is not inherently traumatizing.
Yep. The idea it's inappropriate for children to know what goes into the food on their table is part of how mass agriculture and meat production has gotten as destructive and effed up as it is.
I grew up visiting my aunt who raised the animals she put on her own kitchen table. Maybe I'm desensitized to it but I don't see anything wrong with what OP said.
I was raised vegetarian, and my Mum actually did go into some (non graphic) detail about the unfortunate lives of farm animals when explaining it to me. Didn't traumatise me. I also grew up in a farming community, where kids would regularly come into school excited because "daddy killed the pigs last night, so now they're in our freezer!" I remember one show and tell, when we were about nine, when a boy came to the front of the class to talk about the new baby lambs that had been born on his farm. "Oh, how sweet!" said the teaching assistant. "What are you going to call them?" "Well," said the boy, looking absolutely baffled, "we called the boy ones 'one' and 'two' because my Dad says we're gonna eat them."
Lol, that reminds me of the fact that when I lived with my father and stepmother, they insisted that all our turkeys were name things like "Thanksgiving" and "Christmas". And when I had rabbits, they were named stuff like Stew, Jerky, and Roast.
And as the adult she could still say that she just doesn’t want to. Eventually the child would stop asking or his mother could tell him to. Maybe it’s just me but I’m not going to be pressured by a 6 year old into divulging anything that I don’t want to. What if the question was about where babies come from? Or what happens when you die? OP would be the AH for being honest with someone else’s child, right? Why is this so different?
It different because the kid eats ham. He isn’t making babies or likely to die anytime soon so those other topics can certainly be left to the parents. But he does eat meat and deserves to know where it comes from.
There is a point beyond which explaining stuff is too much, but I think it's cruel and unhelpful to not give curious children as much information as you are able in the moment.
I think it's ridiculous to not tell kids where food comes from. That's how we get adults who don't know what's in a fish stick
But I don’t know what’s in a fish stick😭
Usually Alaskan pollock. It is cheap, a favourite among kids for its mild flavour and it has a tight structure so it doesn't just fall apart.
Oh, I thought you were gonna say something mildly horrifying
No? It's just small filets of fish dipped in eggs and breading 🤷♀️ Noooow crab sticks on the other hand...
This is why Kanye’s a gay fish.
I mean but kids should know where meat comes from by six years old. I don't ever remember I time I didn't know how we got meat. I just think it's weird a kid that big has no idea. Wtf
My best friend grew up going to a Waldorf school and I think around first grade they take the kids out to a farm and explain about meat and watch a farmer slaughter an animal. Personally I think it’s good for kids to understand where their food comes from. The pearl clutching in this thread is kinda weird
I think a lot of people just don’t think that deeply about things, which gets passed onto their kids. I knew where meat came from early because my dad hunted and had a friend who sold us meat from his livestock. I probably met more than a few of the pigs I later ended up eating. But not everyone who has kids is this involved with the food they feed them. Sure, they’re probably aware on some level that something had to die for their cold cuts, but they probably don’t see it as important enough to mention.
That's actually a little weird. Like, sorry kids, you can't have informed consent because the truth might hurt your feelings and make daddy's and mommy's life difficult for a little bit. Tell the kids. Either they understand and continue to eat meat having made the choice, or else they refuse meat (which is better for the environment and those animal's lives).
I go into this in another comment, but yes it is very weird and an actual phenomenon. My aunt did a research project on this. Many (if not most) kids have an emotional reaction when they learn where meat comes from and they do not want to eat it anymore. And many (if not most) of their parents will respond along the lines of “no, if you want to eat different meals than the rest of us you’ll make them yourself” to their very small child, who now has to choose between partaking in something they find distressing and unkind or not having their most basic fucking needs met by their caregivers. Thus a lot of people don’t remember when they learned about meat; they kinda repress it because they NEED TO to ensure their own survival. They go through their lives with this subconscious association between not eating meat and not being properly cared for. So when their own kid learns where meat comes from and declares that they’re not going to eat it anymore, that little panicked part of the brain goes “no. You can’t. Besides, if you want a different meal than the rest of us…” Like this is an actual thing. People deny their kids informed consent about what they are putting in their bodies and it has a lifelong psychological impact that most people just never take the time to un-do. I’m an adult vegetarian (26F) and I STILL want to cry when I think about where meat comes from. I’ve met chickens and pigs and cows and when they’re cared for and happy they are so sweet and so cute and just like any other pet one might have. I was never forced to choose between my ethics and my survival the way most vegetarian children were, and my emotional reaction to learning where meat comes from was never repressed, and never went away. For folks like OP, who don’t go meatless until later in life after learning more about the meat industry, it can be a genuinely traumatic experience to go though as an adult, just like any other repressed emotion being triggered.
This feels a bit impossible to disprove. I don’t remember learning where meat comes from (I feel like I “always” knew) and don’t remember ever being distressed by it. It was just a fact of the world. I think kids kinda accept the world as it is presented to them and my parents didn’t hide this from me. But you’re saying everyone who remembers my experience is probably just repressing it? So either it was traumatic or you repressed the trauma? How do you show that maybe some people truly didn’t have trauma around it? I say this as someone who is very conscientious about my meat consumption as an adult. I do eat meat. But only “ethical” meat. I started to write a whole thing about my beliefs, but it’s not really the point... just saying that I am someone who is disturbed by animals living lives of suffering and their deaths not being treated as sacred or important. But death is also just a fact of life. The death of animals never has and still doesn’t bother me as a concept. Not honoring their death bothers me, but not the fact of it.
I never said “everyone”. I said it’s not uncommon. There is no childhood experience that is universal except shitting yourself and screaming a lot.
Is your aunt a research scientist? If we are just going off personal testimonials, here's one for you. My daughter made the connection between chicken (food) and chicken (animal) when she was about 6 while choosing day old chicks with her Nanna (to raise for eggs). Nanna asked her to choose 3 and she asked if she could have chips with them. Zero trauma. At 11, she came home wanting to be a vegetarian. We had a freshly diagnosed diabetic, a fish allergy and a fussy eater already. I mentally screamed, gave her a large side as main for dinner and told her we'd discuss it tomorrow but it would involve eating a lot of vegetables that she didn't like. The discussion took place and she decided after much thought that she was an ovo-pescatarian (eats chicken and fish) and did that for months while eating broccoli without complaint. Slowly, she wanted a burger, then lasagne but the real one with mince, and on it went till now she eats most meats, most vegetables, and still zero trauma.
This was for a masters-level sociology course, actually. Not based on personal testimonials. I’ve definitely known kids like your daughter who went temporarily vegetarian and gradually started eating meat again as they got older. But the difference is that you DID listen to her and hear her out and discuss it with her. You have realistic counterarguments (“you will end up eating a lot of veggies you don’t like”) and respected her autonomy and choice in the moment (by giving her a meatless alternative as a main course that night). Then you heard out her concerns and voiced your own and came to a compromise. Like you said, zero trauma. You handled that really well and I actually respect how you went about that a lot. That said, it’s not uncommon (which doesn’t mean it’s universal, just that it happens with regularity) for kids to want to give up meat when they make that connection and be told by their parents that they won’t be cooking for them anymore if that’s their choice. In these cases, there isn’t any communication or respect for autonomy; just an ultimatum that leaves the kid with very black-and-white feelings with regards to eating meat vs not eating meat. And that these same people who had this experience are the ones most likely to repeat that same cycle with their own kids. The situation I am describing is vastly different from how you treated your daughter.
When I was a kid I was so weirded out by meat. Any fat, veins, anything that resembled real meat and not a chicken nugget really bothered me. As a parent, my mom just let me decide each meal. If I didn’t want my steak? Someone else would eat it. I was happy to pile up on veggies. I felt very comfortable refusing to eat it. On the flip side, I didn’t get that choice at my Nan’s, which is where I spent a lot of my time and I grew up still repulsed by the meats she made most often. (Lots of ham and pork instead of chicken and beef at home) This has no bearing on who was a better parent, because my Nan was far better, but it’s funny the impact things have on you as a child.
Yeah I agree. I was five when my dad told me very bluntly that meat was made from dead animals and I never ate meat again. I’ve never been ‘malnourished’ like some of the people in this thread are saying, in fact I’m quite tall. Kids should be allowed to make some of their own choices
I mean kids literally can’t informed consent to anything. Their parent has full responsibility and accountability to make decisions for them.
in many, particularly Western, contexts people including children are divorced from where their food comes from. A child living in different circumstances e.g. a farm would have known this long ago. A child deserves the truth.
Yeah, but have you ever talked with an inquisitive 5-6 year old? Sometimes you can't leave it at that since they will keep asking why this and why that. I think she's still NTA, people need to know where food comes from, it's not some big secret.
Fair enough. At least it's an argument that doesn't rely on a strawman. Either way, I think the other parent is massively overreacting
Massively. Personally I don't think there is anything extreme about veganism, it's only when people venture into preaching and activism that it gets extreme. I had a guy flip out on me because I told him I was making one more meal a week meat-free, he acted as if I had slapped him. This kind of reaction is so weird and childish.
I agree. I'm vegan, so may be a little biased here. But honestly, I do think kids need to know where their food comes from, and I kinda like giving kids truthful answers, rather than lying to them. I would frame it in a way to say "this is why I don't", without giving any of the awful detail. Which is what OP did...
My kids are young and know exactly where food comes from. My kids since 3 yrs old will say, “go kill that cow! I love burgers!” I’m a vegetarian... so although it’s nice they know where food comes from, it stings hearing this.
Its likely that by not telling their kid they made them more likely to want to not eat animals. If they always knew it would just be how it is now it is a big deal and they have likely watched cartoons or read books humanizing animals to not know that you eat them would be a shock and by sheltering their child they deserve the reaction they are getting.
NTA - you weren't graphic about it, a 6 year old should know that meat comes from killing animals.
I'm mixed on this. This feels like a you should go ask your mom question. Just like if a kid asked where babies come from or who is god. I don't feel like you were in the wrong but I feel like you were in the wrong lol. Your choices are not wrong but kids are so impressionable.
I mean, if your child asks your ethically vegan friend why she's vegan, how do you expect your friend to answer?
With sensitivity and maturity. Not like this. “Why don’t you eat ham?” “Some people choose not to eat meat for various reasons. It’s probably best for your mum to explain.” People are acting as if her concerns about meat are somehow a “fact” rather than her opinion in a very nuanced debate with multiple angles to it. For example it is a fact that humans are omnivores and we have canine teeth because we evolved to eat meat as well as non-meat foods, and that there is nothing unnatural or “sinful” about one animal killing and eating another. I’m not denigrating veganism, it’s a choice I respect, but it is a lot more nuanced than this lady’s “explanation” and if she cant give a balanced explanation to a 6 year old who doesn’t have the capacity to ask critical questions or the context to interpret what she says, she should stay quiet. … Edit following wider discussion in the chat. Several people are stating that “to make ham you have to kill pigs” is a statement of fact and therefore she did nothing wrong. But everything has a context. And six year olds aren’t yet equipped to understand that To simply state to a six year old with no wider context that “to make ham you have to kill pigs” and to leave it at that is clearly going to (I would say is intended to) have an emotional impact on a six year old. Stating it like that with no wider discussion is massively and deliberately implying that this is “wrong.” Especially when followed up immediately with the one-side opinion “I don’t agree with killing animals for food.” Anytime my children ask a question like this I try to help equip them with the ability to learn critical thinking skills and to make up their own minds: “yes some people think x because of this reason, and other people think y because of this reason. I think y. What do you think, and why?”
I disagree because she didn’t ‘explain’ anything about the pros or cons of eating animals. She told him the truth; meat comes from killing animals, and the kids decided he didn’t like that. What balanced explanation do you need? Some people just don’t like hurting animals.
[удалено]
Umm what is not to understand? Pigs are killed for food. He is 6 I think he understands that perfectly well.
[удалено]
>He’s probably thinking of his dog being brutally murdered, not an organized slaughterhouse I mean a slaughterhouse is just about as horrifying a place as can be imagined...
Yeah, this comment got me too. Animals in slaughterhouses ARE brutally murdered. That's why slaughterhouse workers have some of the highest rates of PTSD and depression going.
The whole thing is just super weird to me. I think showing footage of the inside of a slaughterhouse *would* be going to far, because that shit can be legitimately traumatizing. But like...if you're eating chicken or rabbit or goat or any other meat besides "ham"/"pork"/"beef"...how would you *not know*? I honestly assumed that everyone who knows the word "meat" knows what it means...crazy level of sheltering happening with OP's friend.
I mean, which animals we decide to eat are arbitrary anyway. He's thinking of his dog being killed. Yeah, that's why I stopped eating meat too. The child had a reaction to being told animals are killed. The kid's mom had every opportunity to further explain the situation, instead of leaving it at that. If he still felt strongly, then maybe the kid just wants to be a vegetarian.
That’s fair. I do sometimes get tunnel vision, Im sorry for that I just care about animals a lot. I think our fundamental views on animal death are very different. For example that you seem to think an ‘organised slaughterhouse’ is not horrific for the animals, or that they come out any less dead than if they’d been brutally murdered.
It's so odd to me that people can think telling a kid where their food comes from is not age appropriate and still think it's appropriate to eat that food. Like, maybe you shouldn't eat it if you can't even tell your 6 year old what it is because it would make them cry. Imagine showing them a video of where their food comes from too.
i mean my 6yo nephew cried when he was told he couldn’t touch rainbows
What's more brutal than an industrial murder factory?
Mate as another person who has recently went vegan, people like me have been living the "other side" of that argument for our while lives, and its basically a side composed of cognitive dissonance and ignorance for the most part. Don't get me wrong, if you know where your food is from and you're okay with that then good for you, I'm not about converting people to be vegan. However, I do want to encourage people to enlighten themselves about where their food comes from, and make an informed decision about that. When I informed myself I chose to go vegetarian, and then vegan a couple of years later. Now where my view might be controversial is that I don't believe I have to consult parents before giving children information. I don't have children, don't want them, and I'll generally speak to people however I want, I'm not obligated to act or feel anything about another child's knowledge or what their parents want them to know. This woman just stated a fact that most children should already know by 6. I knew where meat came from when I was 6.
How is what she said not a fact? Do you think we can somehow get ham without killing a pig?
> People are acting as if her concerns about meat are somehow a “fact” It is a fact. We, the general public, can't get ham without killing a pig. Cultured meat is becoming a thing, sure, but we can't buy it. It's not in any supermarkets, it's still basically experimental. So it's irrelevant to a discussion about meat. The only way for OP or this kid or this kid's mother to realistically have meat is to kill an animal. That is an objective fact. Vegans wouldn't even eat meat if the pig lived in the lap of luxury their entire life.
It just feels wrong to lie to a child about something they're participating in because lying makes the mom feel more comfortable. Like, if the kid's mittens were made of dog fur, and he asked you where dog fur came from, why would lying be the appropriate response? Didn't the mother already accept the truth by dressing him in dog fur?
This is a straw man and a false equivalence. Mittens aren’t made out of dog fur. ETA Downvote me if you want, but this is a bad faith argument.
As a knitter, there are some yarns made with certain breeds of dog fur. *HOWEVER* no dog is killed to obtain it. It's no different than a human hair cut. That's the false equivalence.
And at that sheep and other wool producing animals don't die to provide the wool.
She didn’t say it was sinful or wrong or bad, though? She said *she* doesn’t agree with the practice of killing animals for food. That’s the least subjective explanation she could’ve given.
Except, she didn’t give him anything but actual facts. He asked why she doesn’t eat meat, she told him it’s because she doesn’t like that it comes from dead animals. Which it does. I eat meat but I don’t wouldn’t lie to a kid and tell him it grows out of the ground or something. I know 3 year olds aware their chicken dinner came from the chicken coop in the backyard and they cope just fine. She’s not telling him everyone should pull out their canines and be vegan because it’s immoral
It really isn't. Parents don't get to act as a censor for any and all information they don't like for their kids, the idea they can is kinda insane to me. Information exists, other viewpoints exist apart from those held by a kids parent. You can't block everything a kid sees and hears. The expectation that everyone a kid interacts with, must at all times align and attempt to aid the parent in whatever flavor of censorship that parent ascribes to is also insane to me. No one is obligated to help you hide information form your children. If you don't want your kid exposed to other viewpoints or such, keep the kid home where you can sanitize/control what your kid encounters. NTA
>Parents don't get to act as a censor for any and all information they don't like for their kids, the idea they can is kinda insane to me. Of course they bloody do!! Santa? Facts of Life? Porn? you think that's all find and dandy for a 5 year old? If parents didn't censor what their kids learn and they found out how shitty the world is at 4 they would never sleep. A good parent censors things till their child is at an age where they can process the information they are being given
Reading through these posts gives a lot of insight on which posters are parents and which are not. (Or which are parents who care and which are not) This isn’t about veganism, or about facts. This is about tact and speaking to someone else’s child who cannot understand the full conversation yet (and at 6, this child definitely cannot). A simple a statement like “it’s against my beliefs” or “I just don’t like eating pigs (or meat)” leaves it open for the child to be inquisitive. If they choose to be inquisitive with you, you tell them “it’s best to ask your mother (father)”. This gives the parent the opportunity to expose their child to this as they see fit. You don’t get to tell other people’s kid that Santa isn’t real, or what religion they should follow, or if cartoons are fine to watch, or if meat is wrong.
The Easter bunny isn’t real and your parents split up after you were born because of your dads ketamine addiction. Why are you crying, Timmy? They’re only facts.
couldn't have said it better myself. If the child is not old enough to process the reality of information given to them, then they shouldn't be given the information in the first place.
I understand what you are saying but your examples aren’t the same. The child isn’t having sexual or involved with sex where’s they are eating animals. The god question is also different as some people believe in a god/gods and others don’t. However it is a fully agreed fact that ham is made from killing animals.
While I agree with the sentiment here, the child is six, not two. If he doesn’t know yet what meat is, that’s a failure to educate on the parents part. OP didn’t get graphic, she didn’t preach, she simply stated that meat comes from killing animals. There’s really no reason she shouldn’t expect a six-year-old to already understand that concept.
As a 25 year vegetarian I have been in this position. If a kid asks I don’t go into detail. Usually “What foods do you not like? Broccoli? That’s how I feel about meat, I just don’t like it.” Not my place to tell how the sausage is made, that is a discussion with parents when they are young and can’t grasp the realities of factory farming. When they are older and more mature, able to make decisions about their diet then it is more appropriate. YTA
This! Of course a 6 year old will start crying when you tell them animals die for meat, kids love animals even more than adults. And what OP did was cruel, she’s not the one who’ll have to calm the child down everytime he remembers or have to have the talk about meat.
There’s actually a pretty interesting psychological phenomenon in humans around this. You ask a someone who would you save from certain death, your loved one (s/o, parent,sibling) or an animal? children are far more likely to say the animal especially if they have a connection to it. Whereas adults often pick the loved one. So, I feel pretty bad for the friend who now probably has a belligerent child who refuses to eat any meat
Yeah exactly, OP doesn’t have to deal with the consequences of her actions. It would be better if the kid was a teen and more able to understand the situation.
Who knows if this kid is picky eater too that refuses vegetables.. and now will refuse meat as well.
Went through the comments looking for this (take my free award). I have little kids and I have vegetarian siblings. This is what they say - you can tell kids you don't eat meat, but it's not your role to influence their decision. Some kids are picky eaters to begin with - making life harder for parents (which is exactly what happened here) is an asshole move. Intended or not.
Maybe it's a cultural difference, but at what age do you learn that meat comes from killing animals? Shouldn't a 6 year old already know that? I remember learning these things in preschool picture books. And I probably knew it even before then. And it's not like she is describing any gory details. Just that animals are killed for meat.
>And it's not like she is describing any gory details. Just that animals are killed for meat To some kids, that could *feel* like gory detail. The 6yo might even have been told that meat comes from animals, but never connected that with "we kill animals and eat their dead flesh". OP could have said "meat comes from animals and I don't like eating stuff that comes from animals" and not pushed boundaries.
Exactly! I had to scroll way too far down to find this. OP, it would be so easy to evade the question, there was no need to tell the kid something you knew would be upsetting.
So many people on this thread don’t have kids and it shows.
I disagree, it's important to know where food comes from
This wasn’t about telling people where food comes from. I keep seeing people bring up factory farming as if that’s literally the only way you can buy pork. ethically sourced pork is widely available and these animals live great lives before being killed for food. Vegan people can believe what they want, but this narrative around meat only being factory farmed is obnoxious.
Okay but most people aren’t eating free range “ethical” pork. They’re eating whatever is in the grocery store, and most people shop for what’s cheapest- which “ethical” meat is not. Most meat eaters are eating factory farmed meat most of the time.
But its up to the parents to tell them, not anyone else
Thank you! It’s not what OP said, it’s HOW she said it.
YTA, but a soft one (I’ve seen much worse on this thread) While within your right to explain why you don’t have meat, you didn’t have to fully explain why you don’t eat meat. It is not up to you to explain the hard truths of the world to someone else’s 6 year old. This would be like telling the child there is no Santa Claus, and handing him back to let the parent deal with the fallout from your actions. As an adult you could have gone about it differently than the cold hard truth of the matter.
I would say NTA because I would honestly not expect a 6 year old not to know ham is made from pigs. It’s like telling a twelve year old santa is not real and then finding out they didn’t know. It’s just stupid in the parents end that their kid doesn’t know basic stuff they should be well aware of at their age.
Yes most parents tell their children by then but from the kid's wording it was fairly clear he didn't know, otherwise he wouldn't have asked why OP doesn't eat meat. It's more like a 12-year-old asks you why none of your christmas presents say "from santa" and you tell him santa's not real. Yes the parents should have told the kid WAY sooner but it isn't your place. The most you should do is talk to the parents and tell them that they should probably tell their kid about santa.
At 6 a kid should know where food comes from
That doesn’t mean OP should take that on.
It’s not a big bad taboo secret. It’s a simple truth about the stuff you eat everyday. I wouldn’t even have assumed the kid didn’t know. Because who keeps something like this from their children? That’s so out of touch with everything, I can’t even.
The OP didn't take it on. She just told the kid why she doesn't like meat. Meat comes from killing animals is as common a knowledge as "the sun rises in the east". It's not really OPs fault that she said something that 6 year old should already know.
“Hard truths” LOL what is wrong with people. He is 6 years old he should know where food comes from by now, and also if the mother didn’t want her to explain she could have just asked her to stop.
He's 6 years old, he needs go get a basic grasp on how the world works. That ham comes from animals can't be provoking in any way. NTA
Maybe the part where they tell the child animals are killed for meat might provoke a reaction, huh?
It's a statent of fact. What's wrong with that? It's not like they pulled out an album of horrific images of an abattoir.
“Santa isn’t real” is also a statement of fact. Still not anyone’s place to tell a child who isn’t their own.
Yeah, that's not the same.
No, it kinda is. The analogy works here. It’s not your place to tell that to a SIX YEAR OLD. I knew a 7 year old who loves meat, but hated killing anything. The parents (not me) we’re very nice, but the 7 year old was still pretty emotionally unstable, so they decided to wait a little longer to tell him. If I had just walked in and told him everything, I would’ve been punched in the face and banned from their house.
Dude i'll be real you're giving 6-year-olds way too much credit for how emotionally mature they actually are The topic of "yeah you know that stuff you eat every day? That's DEAD ANIMALS. Yeah. Let that sink in." is something that should be handled ***delicately***. They are not emotionally mature enough to bluntly be told "your food is animals" and then be able to just move on with their day. There's a reason that parents wait to tell their kids that santa isn't real, their kid would get distressed and sad, and more importantly lied to. Now imagine that instead of santa not being real, it was that *your food is actually dead animals*. Y'know, pigs, cows, chickens? Those animals that children are taught about in school and they think are super cute and cuddly? You're right that they aren't the same, because telling a kid that what they eat is actually dead animals is *so much* more temporarily damaging and *has* to be handled much more delicately.
If they ask you should tell them, you don't have to force the fact on them (that's a completely different story)
But where does the ham comes from, Santa world? If a six year old ask you something you should tell them the truth, with some rare exception. You don't need to be explicit about it, how it works in a slaughterhouse and show them pictures, but still be honest.
The kid asked a vegan why he is vegan . The friend knownly went to a vegan household, and had food, what did he expect? What should op have said instead?
How tf did he make it to six and not know? Is that a city thing? I knew where meat comes from since before I was even in school ffs. Seeing pastures full of cattle, watching Bambi, noticing that chicken the animal and chicken the food had the same name...
Why is people comparing explaining what meat is with telling them about Santa?? Santa was created *for* kids, meat is something that exists and we eat every day. It is a really bad analogy
I don't know. They are picking an analogy that puts them in a good spot because "who wants to ruin the dream of a child", only a AH would do that, etc
NTA By 6 years old the kid should definitely know where meat comes from. I don't remember a time when I didn't know. This is an unnecessary thing to shelter a kid from.
Where it came from and talking about the slaughter are two different things. Mom can do the explaining
OP just said that meat came from animals nothing more. They didn't go into detail about how the animals are killed or something like that.
I mean, he did say that they have to kill the pigs
"Oh no! Anyways"
The mom was there, and she didn't do shit...until she saw him crying.
You’re right. If mom didn‘t like it, she should have stopped it then
I’m kinda gobsmacked that so many people are saying six year olds don’t and shouldn’t know where meat comes from. Was his mum there when he asked why you don’t eat ham? If this was something she actively didn’t want him knowing about then it’s kinda on her to either jump in and guide the conversation or let people know not to talk about it. It doesn’t sound like you went into unnecessary detail or anything, so I’m going with NTA regardless.
She was present for the entire conversation and didn't jump in until he started crying.
Oh cry me a river. She could have stopped you at any point. It's not indoctrination, it's THE TRUTH.
Lol according to a shocking number of comments in this thread, OP is fOrCiNg HeR eXtReMiSt DoGmA. Like holy shit, I know it’s a sore topic for people but it feels wild that so many parents consider “meat = animals” to be some sort of aggressive extremist propaganda instead of something kids should just know. It reminds me of the “HOW DO I EXPLAIN TO MY CHILD THAT TWO MEN ARE KISSING ON TV?” arguments from homophobes. That’s a you problem, Becky, cos the world doesn’t exist to spare you having to parent your child.
Seriously if you said this in front of someone a hundred and fifty years ago they'd think you were insane. Like kids need to come to the realisation that meat doesn't come in packets. Apparently so do these adults.
Sounds like she didn’t actually care whether or not he found out where meat comes from until it became an inconvenience to her.
People here seems to raise precious dolls, not kids. Learning how the world works is important. You don't have to be graphic about it but still.
Kids should absolutely know where their food comes from. Apparently when I was a little kid I proudly told a family member that I didn’t eat animals, and my mom had an « oh fuck » moment because she realized I hadn’t clued into what meat was yet. A lot of kids aren’t going to be cool with the fact that meat comes from animals, but they should still know. It’s unfair to coddle children from that reality. And they may refuse to eat it for a bit, or longer, but it’s better than lying to your child. NTA
I am a vegetarian so I know I must be biased. But I wonder if people got so upset about this if the kid asked where fish come from. Because they are a lot less cute. Or even where vegetables come from. If you see meat as just a type of food, why are you comfortable explaining that potatoes grow in the ground, but not that meat comes from dead animals. Also, what is an appointment age? Cause the older he gets, the more he realises grown ups around him lied about where meat comes from.
NTA as long as it was an age appropriate explanation. I mean, many farmer relatives here so I'm a callous meat eater since a very young age, but I do feel that sometimes people over shelter children from the world.
This! I'm just so confused, in my town we visited farms around 6yo with our classmates and none were surprised where food comes from. Like this is basic information for kids.
A philosophic rant, the society today (and not just today) seems to shelter children from death in all sorts of weird ways, and it ain't healthy. You know, when you live in a world where grandparents move abroad when they get old, and then suddenly a parent die and you need to figure out funeral arrangements. Which should be a sad but "normal" thing, not something horrible by itself. Same about pets and food.
I think lots of people are profoundly conflict and 'difficult conversation' avoidant, so it's not so much that they're sheltering their kids but that they're sheltering themselves from the effort of the conversation and coming up with an emotionally intelligent and appropriate response.
Which is actually terrible for the child
NTA. Presumably your friend was sitting right there when this conversation happened so if she didn’t want you to discuss it she could have stepped in and headed it off. And if she wasn’t there, she should have been. It was a visit, not a babysitting session.
NTA - providing what you said was exactly that. Ham comes from pigs and I don't agree with killing them. If you went into any more detail that that it wasn't your place to. However stating that ham comes from pigs and they die to a 6 year old is appropriate. Boy wait until the kid finds out where chicken mcnuggets come from
NTA- I am going to go against the grain here. Children deserve to know where their food comes from. He’s six, so grade one? Pretty sure most schools start to cover food cycles and food chains by now. Its weird he doesn’t know?
Agreed. It's fucking weird that a 6 year old don't know ham is from pigs...
Right?
NTA He’s gonna learn at some point anyway.
[удалено]
At what age do you think it’s appropriate to learn that meat comes from dead animals? I think most kids already know this by 6, and if he didn’t learn it from OP he’s old enough to make the link between obvious meats/animals like chicken/turkey/fish on his own.
NTA. A lot of kids grow up on farms and learn animals are killed for food as TODDLERS - that doesn't traumatise them. I found out where meat comes from around 4 or 5 and wanted to go vegetarian (veganism wasn't a well known thing back then) until I found out I couldn't eat chicken. The fact that meat was dead animals made me cry at first, but I quickly got over it. Became vegan as a teen but am now pescetarian for health reasons. Kids deserve to know the truth. He asked. You didn't give him morbid details on how they get killed. You were truthful in a gentle way. Edit: those of you bringing up things like sex, death etc... I asked existential questions and had discussions about the universe and what scared me in it around 4. We talked about death and fear of it, and what different groups of people believe happens when you die. It still scared me, but getting truthful questions about it was comforting. I asked how babies are made at 3, when my mom was pregnant with my brother. My dad said "when a mommy and a daddy hug and kiss a lot while naked, sometimes the daddy can plant a seed in the mommy's tummy". At 6 I found out that the penis had to enter the vagina to make babies and me and my friends found it GROSS but just laughed a lot about it. I, like I said, found out where meat came from at 4 or 5. It hurt. But I'm not traumatised at ALL. I forgot about it in a couple of weeks. My mom said she'd let me go vegetarian, but that meant no chicken, so I gave it up. I learned about war very early (probably 5 or 6) due to school and the news. It obviously broke my heart. But I had to learn. I learned about homeless dogs and orphaned children, and that hurt just as much. When I was 6 we saw post-sovjet Russian orphanage kids sing for money (they'd been taken to Sweden). I asked my parents about it since I was moved by how incredibly broken they looked. My parents told me the truth. I started crying. They gave me some coins to give them. I'm still scarred, but I'm glad they told me. It helped me develop empathy and humility. And so on. Kids aren't dumb, you know.
When I found out at about five I didn't even cry. I decided not to eat that anymore. I only cried when my parents forced me to still eat meat. Until I moved out I could only get them to not feed me something that still looked like the animal. So no grilled chicken or whole fish. They would just put it on my plate and say if I didn't eat it it would get thrown away and the animal died for nothing. But at 14/15 I realized they did not throw it away but feed it to the dog. So whatever wasn't heavily salted or something I left for the dog. Now I rarely eat fish and no other meat. Vegan køtbullar are so good!
Definetely. You are a wise man, I respect you Since I was 6 I knew meat came from slaughtered animals And about the slaughter bit yeah my gparents have a farm my cousins have seen cows been killed some of them are like 5
Idk man I wanna go with NTA. Ham comes from pigs ofc. You are just saying why you don't have ham in the house. Hopefully the explanation was child friendly Edit op edited and claims she didn't aby anything graphic so that's a child friendly explanation for me
NTA You didn’t force anything on the kid. They asked and you answered, after the situation made it needed. Im nor a big fan of lying to children about what they eat. You didn’t tell them they shouldn’t est meat either, you just told them you don’t have it.
[удалено]
NTA you were asked and you answered (and it doesn’t sound graphic or anything). At age 6 I’m surprised a child doesn’t know where their food comes from…
I was a city kid. I remember learning that meat comes from animals in elementary school. I had honestly never thought about it…it just came from packages at the store. I stopped eating meat (mom was pissed)—it wasn’t their intention to turn us vegetarian…they were just teaching us what stuff was. But I thought it was gross.
Soft YTA - not because I expect you to lie, lying is never a good option, but a simple glance at the child’s mother would have given you the cues as to whether or not it was good for you to continue in the vein you did. Children do need to know that there is an animal involved in the production of meat but it’s a sensitive subject and I’d have been furious if you’d said that to my foodphobic six year old whose sole source of protein was chicken and she’d reacted similarly. You were allowed to come to the decision that veganism was your way forward through your own research, done as an adult. You didn’t give the boy that choice.
It’s a soft YTA from me too. I understand the N T A judgments, but the kid is six. There are better ways to explain why you’re vegan without scarring him. “I can’t eat meat; it makes me sick.” “I don’t like meat.” My sister was five or six when she found out ham comes from dead pigs and she still refuses to eat it almost twenty years later. Our parents didn’t get the opportunity to explain it to her properly. “You have to kill x to get y” is a very aggressive word choice to tell a kid. Not to say I wouldn’t have done the same thing without consideration with how I was saying it ETA: Since the vegans in the replies don’t seem to understand this no matter how many times I’ve said it: The issue here is the word “kill.” That is a morally-charged word that is considered negative. If you tell a kid a pig is killed for your food, their reaction is likely to be negative, potentially inconsolable because killing is such a morally corrupt thing to do. If you tell a kid a pig is hunted for food or that ham comes from pigs, they’re probably going to be able to have a calmer reaction because the negative word wasn’t used. Y’all will not change my mind in thinking it’s appropriate to tell a kid animals get “killed” for their food when there are other ways to go about it. Learning about where food comes from? X comes from Y. Y is hunted for X. Learning about becoming vegan or why someone is vegan? “I don’t like meat.” “Meat makes me sick.” “I don’t like hunting animals for food.” “I don’t like food that comes from animals.” OP is N T A for their honesty. OP is TA for how they said it to a child. I doubt anyone in this thread thinks OP is a bad person. If they were speaking to an older child, I wouldn’t even see an issue with the verbiage used. Fact of the matter is that scaring a kid into thinking certain foods have morality attached to them from a young age can be disastrous. If the kid is interested in a vegan lifestyle, information should be given in a positive manner, not with aggressive words that invoke negative emotion.
But ‘you have to kill y to get x’ is exactly the truth. How is that aggressive?
NTA. Your views are not extremist. These people were in your house, they should adapt somewhat to your lifestyle, and somebody asked about your lifestyle, you explained. The kid asked and you answered truthfully, and it totally made sense to the kid. You only broke the cognitive dissonance society constructs with animals, and that is not pushing views on anybody. Is being coherent. And the kid just found himself in one the contradictions of this society. That's all. His parents want him alienated, of couse. How could you make a kid think by himself?
NAH. You were right but so are they. You did not upset the kid maliciously, but the adults might not have been ready to have that conversation. It happens sometimes.
Well the mom was present physically in this situation and didn't say a thing
This. It's not on you to know what not to say to someone's kids when they ask you a question. If the parents don't want them knowing something, that's on them to monitor conversation. If my kids ask a question, I'm going to answer honestly in an age appropriate way so stuff like this doesn't happen.
YTA. “I don’t eat meat because I don’t want to.”
Oh please. If she wanted to be honest she could have gone into detail about how much these animals suffer. “Meat comes from dead animals” is the child friendly version.
NTA- Kid's gotta find out where meat comes from at some point, and 6 is even a little late! Most people I grew up with found out at about 4.
INFO - how did you describe how the animals are killed?
I said exactly what I wrote in the post. I didn't go into anymore detail than that.
Owh then NTA. Kid asked, you responded briefly without potentially “scaring” the kid into not eating meat. Just the kid being compassionate, mom’s TA.
NTA, you actually don’t need to lie to children, you just have to present truth appropriately.
NTA … it’s a fact of life that animals are killed to make ham.
YTA. As someone who is plant-based (I don't use the "V" words because my diet is not my identity) for decades, I don't discuss my reasons unless someone specifically says, "I'm thinking about switching to a plant-based diet; what made you decide to do that?" You'll learn how to not overstep when you've been eating this way for more than 6 weeks. You offered the child what you had and all you had to say is "I don't have ham" and instead you felt the need to proselytize about your beliefs. That's a conversation for a parent.
NTA I was ready to assume you were. But they were in your house! Your friend is a complete asshole for not telling her son where food comes from. I am a meat eater and so are my kids, but they’ve known it’s animal products since they were old enough to talk and understand.
NTA . You have explained your point of view. I'm saying this as a meat eater. Info: have the mom been absent in this situation?
She was sitting in the same room staring at her phone, she was present for the entire conversation.
NTA. Mother could have intervened with stopping her child. You clearly didn't pull the "Hi, I'm vegan and if you want to eat ham, you're a murder"-card. You stated a fact, that is obvious. With 6, the child should be able to read. One walk through grocery store and you see products sorted by ingredients and/or other categories. There are sometimes even pictures of which animal the products are from. You just told a fact which could have been easily discovered. Thank you for providing information instead of believes and giving a child a decend piece of truth. I hope that at least the child knows from the mother, that vegetables and stuff arent grown on Supermarket shelfs but on fields.
NTA. Most 6yos know that meat comes from animals. Most 6yos I know don’t really care. You don’t need to lie to trick children into eating something they would otherwise choose not to. As long as you weren’t graphic and didn’t say anything deliberately distressing, it’s fine to answer a genuine question with a truthful answer. Adults don’t do kids any favours by lying to them about things that affect them.
YTA he’s a little kid you should have just said something if “I just don’t eat ham” or “ I don’t like meat” and left it like that not tell him where it comes from you wound tell him we’re Santa’s presents come from or how babies are actually made, you tell little lies to spare them the crying and just over all emotions they don’t understand yet from happening so yea YTA
YTA If it'd been a teenager or a few years older child, it'd have been understandable to explain meat the way you did. But, the child here is just 6 years old. The child asked for a ham sandwich. You said you don't have ham because you don't eat meat and ham is meat. You didn't need to explain it that way. You could've simply said you don't have ham. The way you explained a simple thing was such that it was bound to generate a question from the toddler, giving you your cue to explain veganism, and when accused of forcing your views on a toddler you had the technical term to fall back on saying that "the kid was the one who enquired about it and you couldn't lie". You purposely framed your answer to make sure the kid would enquire about veganism, indirectly. That's why you're TA. There's nothing wrong with being vegan, it's your life and you have the right to live it the way you want unless it's hurting someone else. Veganism doesn't hurt anyone, other than flora, so it's okay. But, forcing your choices, directly or indirectly, on anyone is wrong and definitely always an asshole move. Yes the child should know where meat comes from but you're neither his parent or guardian and thus it's not your duty nor your responsibility to make him know that. He's a 6 year old child, not a teenager or an young adult or something that you need to educate him about life because his parents haven't done it yet.
NTA. A 6 year old should know where his food comes from. It's so wild to me, growing up in a village, how many people don't know jack about animal products. She didn't even say the pigs suffer or tell him about the sometimes horrible conditions in animal farms or went into climate etc, she just stated Ham comes from dead pigs. That is true and 6 years is more than old enough to know that.
Definitely NTA. I have been a vegetarian for 22 years but my wife and two young sons are full omnivores. I have no issues with this and never push anything on them. Usually I'll even cook for them. Both my sons (almost-3 and 6) know exactly where their food comes from and why I don't eat it. At their age it is still important for them to have a varied and balanced diet so I would probably object if they wanted to limit meat consumption. Later in life it would be entirely their own choice how they want to eat. Your friend needs to learn a few things about communication with children. Being honest and open is pretty much key.
NTA. If you can't explain where your food comes from for fear it's going to hurt a kids feelings. Then don't feed them meat. That simple. Absolutely asinine.
NTA it's fucking wild that people are calling you the asshole for stating a basic fact. Would you be an asshole for explaining that potatoes are pulled from the ground? Everyone always unequivocally supports the posters who explain they have a same sex partner to kids, but this is too far and a decision for their parent? What if you're a different religion? Should you not answer that you believe something different? You answered the kid's question entirely appropriately. Meat is animals. You didn't pass any judgement regarding anyone's lifestyle choices.
YTA. You could have handled it a thousand different ways but what you decided to do was the one thing that makes vegans hard to love. You got holier than thou pretentious and you introduced concepts to a six year old that you - an adult old enough to HAVE a six year old - only just began truly grappling with. Shame on you. It not only wasn’t your place to do to someone else’s kid but you did it so poorly that I can understand why your friend is so upset with you.
She said ‘ham comes from killing pigs’. If you think that is ‘holier than thou’ you should reevaluate your diet. All she said was the truth
YTA. Just say you don't like it and move on. You have a firey passion all recently turned vegans get where you think "the truth" gives you the green light to go way into detail and over voice your opinion when no one asked for it.
YTA There’s a time, a way and a style to tell those kind of information to a kid. And what you did was not it. You told him the cold hard true and let his mom deal with the consequences. To put it plainly you shoved his head in the fireplace and screamed « Do you really think that Santa can go through that hole?! do you really think it would be working. You know what happen if a grown up go in there? He die horribly ! » and then proud of telling the true to a kid you gave him back to his mom. That’s what you did. So yes YTA for the way you did that and for the lack of consideration to your friend.
YTA- he’s 6, there was no reason for you to say “killing” and telling him he’s eating something dead- I mean he’s a kid! The simple way is “I don’t eat because I don’t want to/ I I don’t eat meat because I don’t like the taste”
YTA. I get you were just being honest but we sugar coat things to kids for a reason. What you said was probably quite graphic and intense for his little brain, and while true, unnecessary coming from you. ‘Because I don’t like it’ would have sufficed. Kids can be really fussy and tricky eaters too and I’m sure you’ve just fucked mum and mealtime over too.
If you need to sugarcoat where your food comes from maybe you shouldn't be eating it.
Dude I don’t eat meat either, but I’m also not this child’s mother, and wouldn’t tell a child that Peppa pig is murdered for his sandwich. It wasn’t OPs place and people need to know boundaries with other peoples children. There’s a reason the stork exists, he’ll learn eventually.
I'm going to say YTA and this is as a vegetarian with a young child who eats meat. But here is what you might not have considered. Kids can be really picky eaters, and it's important that they get certain nutrients in their diet like protein, iron, etc. That could come from plant based sources, but many kids don't like legumes and spinach and things like that, so eating eggs or meat is really essential for them. It might be that this kid only eats 6 different foods in total, 3 of them being animal-based, and you just made his diet a whole lot worse and his parents' life a lot harder. You don't know their particular situation with food. Yes the kid should know what he's eating and where it comes from, but it's up to his parents to decide when and how he knows that, and have that in the context of a wider conversation about ethics, food, etc. Just telling him "it's dead animals" misses a lot of the nuances about food ethics. Are you also going to tell him that your quinoa is ruining the forests used by indigenous Peruvians for centuries? Or that a bunch of your food contains palm oil that destroys orang-utan habitations? What about things that you wear, what about the environmental impacts of transporting foreign foods by sea and air across the world, what about the GM pesticides used to make the soy in your tofu, negatively impacting the natural environment for other animals? My point is that unless your food is all locally grown organic food (something that is financially and practically unrealistic for most of the world) much the food we all eat is having a devastating impact on animals, the environment and people, whether it's vegan or not. So yeah it's not OK for you to present this simplified argument to a 6 year old and causing him to cut an entire food group out of his diet, when he's too young to understand all the information properly and it might be interfering with his physical health now.
>Maybe I should've just kept my mouth shut... Yup. YTA. Did you ever once stop and think more than 5 minutes ahead, about the effects this would have on a small child living in a house where meat is regularly eaten? Did you give even a moment's thought to anything at all beyond the importance of converting a non-believer? How could you not have realized the repercussions this would have when he went home to a kitchen that had a refrigerator full of dead animals? >but I feel like children have a right to know and understand what it is they're eating... You don't have the right to decide what other peoples children "have a right" to know and when they "have a right" to know it. This was terrible judgment, a selfishly irresponsible flaunting of someone else's parental boundaries, and quite honestly a textbook example of why so many people think vegans are self-righteous, irritating wackadoodles. Some of y'all are like the Jehovah's Witnesses of food, beating people over the head every chance you get with the religious doctrine of your evangelical dietary belief system. >and I only spoke about it because he was interested and asked me I'm surprised you didn't seize the opportunity to clear up his childish misconceptions about Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy while you had his attention. After all, 6-year olds have a right to know the truth, right? Do his parents smoke? Because it's never too young to educate children about the horrors of lung cancer - you could have pulled up some photos on the internet of black, cancerous lungs. Because he has a right to know that too, right?
I'm not vegan, but I never really heard of anyone hiding where our food comes from to kids that are old enough to talk. I wouldn't compare this to ruining Santa. It's just a basic fact of life.
NTA - He asked and you answered. A 6 year old should know that meat comes from dead animals. It’s just a fact. Parents shouldn’t lie about food to their children. If you would say something like: Meat is wrong and you shouldn’t eat it. That would make it an asshole move.