So, as you might have surmised from the title of this blog, I and my family are vegetarians. We are coming up on out tenth anniversary of being meatless (although the process began more like 12-13+ years ago with my Dear Husband’s personal dislike of seafood). Our oldest child is ten and she never had meat, neither did her brother who is six.
Raising veggie kids has been interesting, with good things like Dear Daughter finding out that a couple of the kids in her grade/classes are Seventh Day Adventist and therefore also veggie kids (for the most part) and her favorite teacher being one as well (it seemed to provide a bonding moment for them, which was great). It has also giving us a some less fun moments, like the time I took Dear Son (3yrs. old) to the grocery store and he asked what that funny smell was. “Fish,” I answered. His face lit up and he asked, “Can we go see them?” And then I had to squash his innocence and explain that they were dead fish and that some people ate them. . . .
Flash forward three years to last night when we are reading a book about sharks which mentions that some people hunt sharks (and are occasionally hunted right back if they mistake an unconscious shark for a dead one). Dear Son asked why anyone would do that. “Some people eat sharks as food,” I responded.
So it was very reassuring for me personally considering that, earlier in the school year, Dear Son, who had been feeling peer pressure from his new kindergarten classmates because he brought weird stuff to eat for lunch, when he remarked, “Some people are crazy,” and he was making a face.
