Note to self: You're a monster.

First, you're not a monster!

Really not!

Second, how much have you talked about before? Have you had hamburgers? Does he know what they are?

I'd say just take whatever he already knows about and extrapolate.

Haven't really had this problem with sozlet... YET, anyway. She's fascinated by this kind of thing. (Remember the dead squirrel drawing?)

Tell me more about background, what he knows already in terms of animals we consume...

Oh boomer. I wish I had some idea.

When I was young we caught and ate fresh fish weekly. We would catch fish in a cast net, and to put them out of their misery, we had to break their necks. As much as I loved to fish and to eat fish, I never liked that part and never could bring myself to do it. Poor little Mo has just gotten a big surprise, that's all.

A guy at work told me that he and his wife call all meat that they eat by the animal that it came from so that kids get used to the idea. So bacon is pig, hamburger is cow, chicken is, well chicken, etc... Do you think that would help or make it worse?

Does Mo like to watch nature shows? Maybe seeing a lion make a kill would make it seem more acceptable? I don't know anything, I'm just grasping here.

<oooooohhhhhh><bookmark>

Life feeds on life.

I'm the granddaughter of a butcher. I was probably about six when I learned that the big pink things hanging in the back of my grandfathers store were the same things I loved to kiss on the nose out in the field. It was a trauma at first, but I got over it. The earlier children learn the truth the easier it is to accept. I assume you are willing to eat venison nowadays.

Mo doesn't eat much meat. He likes chicken and we call it "chicken".

He knows what a chicken is.

If he didn't eat chicken we'd be stuck with peanut butter and not much else.

Maybe pasta.

And bread!

Maybe salmon (he knows it's a fish).

He goes through fruit and vegetable stages but other times it is an ordeal.

He doesn't even like french fries.

He, like me and Mr. B, is an animal lover.

Of course you're not a monster.

And I'm not eating anything that looks like a dead bug, either.

We used to eat rabbit when I was growing up (still do) and
venison is one of my favorite meats.

As long as my daughter was in the 5/6 year old category
she ate everything, now she claims to be a part time vegetarian She feels sorry for the little chicks and the calves and
the lamb chops, but when she has the meat prepared on her
plate, she'll eat it readily (that's where the part time veggie comes in).

My advise would be, boomer: Do as I do - cook alone!!

As most know, I care for my neice and nephew while my sister and her hubby are at work (I DON'T work for them!!!!). My neice, 6.5 years, is very senstive. And, where I want to temper that, my sister seems to coddle it. The girl has an aversion to eating animals though she loves balogna, bacon and proscuito. I am vegitarian, mostly, but this aversion didn't come from me!

My stance is that we should have been letting her know that meat is from animals and which animals they're from. But noooo..... I offered her turkey slices today and she wrinkled her nose. Then she asked for ham. I told her that I didn't think there was any pig in the fridge. She laughed. She's getting over it.

Hmmmm...

My immediate advice is not to press it. You had crab, maybe won't have crab again for a bit.

I like the nature video idea -- animals eat other animals, we're animals.

I need to get to bed, will think about this more.

Definitely agree with littlek and Green Witch that in general early (and it's still early) is better for this info... that was one parenting discussion E.G. won (I thought he was being too brutally honest too early) and I think he was right.

Of course. Fried, sliced pig bellies and chicken embryos for breakfast.

I think lots of kids go through stages where one type of food or another is too gross to eat. A neighborhood boy wouldn't eat root vegetables because they grew in dirt. Another wouldn't eat fish because they had a fish tank and she wasn't taking any chances. Mo might never want to eat crab or it may someday be number one on the food hit parade. Either way, I think the trauma will be of very short duration.

Oh, and you're certainly not a monster.

No, she's just drawn that way.

You might mention that crabs eat dead people when they have a chance.

Aside from that Fact of Life, you just have to start long explanations.

Ah, the joys of parenting.

My monster label wore off fairly quickly and we were able to remain friends.

We've never been secretive about what food is but I've never had to actually dissasemble it in front of him either. I think it must have been the fact that the crabs still looked like they could wake up and crawl away that did him in.

He's had a real fascination with eggs lately, wanting to know if he hatched from an egg, wanting to know why birds aren't in the eggs we use to cook with, etc.

The egg issue is more complicated than the crab issue but we're making steady progress.

We really have become far removed from our food, haven't we?

Indeed.


I can recall my utter horror as a child when I realised what some of the food I ate was.....making the leap from food, to lovely animals.



It will take time.

I remember the udder horror I felt as a child when I found out where milk came from.

Hey! Maybe smashing crabs didn't really make me a monster!

He was sick.

He got up this morning and told me he heard a "wood saw" in his ear, yanked on his ear and promptly threw up all over me.

We just spent three hours at the doctor doing a million dismal things, coming home with a bag full of medicine.

He's checked out as a-okay for Disneyland, though, as long as he doesn't have any more "wood saws".

I think the crab murderer tantrum was probably exacerbated by having a saw in his head.



But yeah, the leap from food to animals is still painful for me and I'm not even that big of a meat eater.

Tender-hearted Mo, however, brings animal care to new levels with his love of slugs and all things slimey. I found one mummified slug collection stashed behind some books on the shelf. He had been working on it for a while, it appeared.

There could be other collections.

Thank heaven for bad vision.

By-the-by, mummified slugs are almost as interesting as living slugs, if you didn't already know that.

That makes a lot of sense!!

When weird behavior things pop up out of nowhere, the possibility that she's coming down with something is one of the first things I think of these days.

Especially distress-type behavior things.

One of the most reliable signs is if she cries at the drop of a hat.

Glad no kibosh on your trip.

We're not leaving for another 10 days and Dr. felt like he would have enough time to get well by then.

Dr. says he has a bit of asthma!

Asmatha!?

He's so hale and hearty, never winded, so energetic, so physical, so...... busy.

It seems that asthma can be triggered by illness more than from activity.

He hasn't been really sick in so long that I had really forgotten all the horrible respritory distress and hospitalizations and utter bullshit from when he was very little. He was constantly sick before he moved in here.

I ran into my old therapist in the medical offices. I haven't had to see her for several years but I could tell that she recognized me, if not my story.

After looking at me for a few minutes she said "So. You never bolted with him to Mexico. Good."

To which I replied "Not yet anyway!"

<snork>

I'll probably get a call asking me to come in for a re-evaluation.