Little kid freaked out on me

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Man, I had a helluva weekend. In addition to hearing this bombshell let me tell you what a child pulled on me.

On Friday my Grandson Jay had this event at school (he’s in 1st grade) where kids brought one of their grandparents with them. Classes were abbreviated to 20 minutes each (it was a half day). So you got to see their desk and what they did in each class, etc…

My daughter-in-law told me that he is particularly proud that his grandpa is a policeman, and wanted to know if I could wear my uniform. I can’t do that, but I did wear a long sleeved polo shirt with my departments logo on the corner chest.

Kids that couldn’t have a grandparent there were teamed up with kids that did. A little boy named Liam was teamed up with us. Liam is not in Jays homeroom but they are still in the same grade.

Liam was a delightful little boy and it was a pleasure to to have him with us.
Until…

At lunchtime we ate in the gymnasium which doubles as a lunchroom with pull out tables. Liam was eating bologna sandwich when he asked, in a playful tone “Hey, we get milk from the cows udder, eggs from under the chicken. How do we get the meat from them?”

Jay, being 7 years old, says “Maybe it comes out of their butts”, and laughed.

Liam laughed too but then said “But how do they really get the meat?”

Jay has seen my son field dress and butcher deer, so he knew to say “They cut it off the body!”

“Doesn’t that hurt them?”

“No, they are dead.” Jay replied.

Liam looked up at me and asked “Is that for real? Are they dead?”

I raised 3 kids and they all had that 1 weird friend. I should have known better. I should have detected what I was walking into. But honestly, this entire exchange was only about 15 seconds long. I should have told him that this was something to ask his teacher about.

Instead I said “That’s right. The cow or pig is killed and then the meat is taken off. They don’t feel anything”.

:smack: D’oh!

Liam got very quite for about a minute and then started bawling! :eek: Oh god it was a scene. Here I’m sitting with a police logo on my shirt and a kid I’ve never met before that day crying like he was on fire.

Then a teacher who was working as an aide in the lunch room came over and patted him on the back.

“Why Liam, what ever is the matter?”

[sobbing]“Jason Beitz gramps said we kill animals for the food!”

“Yes, Liam, that is true.”

"But why? Why do they have to die! [now stomping feet and crying] I don’t want them to die! I don’t want them to die!"

Once again, I’m sitting there with a police logo shirt and a child screaming and yelling and stomping “I don’t want them to die!”. Everybody was looking at us. Why couldn’t the Earth have just opened up and swallowed me at that point?

So the teacher escorted him away to what she said was a quiet place where Liam could relax and get calm.

I asked jay if Liam does things like that often and he said he didn’t really know Liam as he’s not in his homeroom.

Then, about 10 minutes later, just as the lunch period was ending, some other teacher came up to me and said *“Liam has emotional issues. He has these episodes every so often out of the blue over very minute’ things”. *

Yeah? Well thanks for telling me that before you teamed him up with my grandson and I. :mad:

The rest of the time was problem (and Liam) free. I have no idea what became of him Perhaps the school has a rubber room.

Do most 7 year olds really not know where meat comes from?

2

I don’t know about most, but obviously some don’t. I think for some people it’s not something they think much about and wouldn’t think to explain it to a small child like that. For others, they are trying to protect and preserve that innocence or they just feel uncomfortable talking about it with kids. I suspect Liam’s parent(s) fall into the latter category of protection and discomfort. Heck, I don’t think I’ve ever had the “where does food come from” talk with my son. Never gave it any thought, but I also don’t live in a large city where he is completely isolated from farms and ranches. Our highschool has a dairy next door to it. (yeah that smells really great in the late spring/early fall)

3

…and where he could play with his old dog on the farm! (Sorry, I’ll escort myself out.)

4

Has little Liam never eaten chicken before? I guess between nuggets and boneless-skinless chicken breast, it’s possible he’s never eaten food off of a bone before, but, jeesh.

5

Jeez, I’d prefer not to be around when the poor kid finds out some people kill animals just for sport.

Gotta admit I’m a bit of a Liam myself. I completely lost my shit the first time I found a dead bird on the sidewalk.

6

I find myself saying “I didn’t know that I would have to explain that to you” to my children many times. Things that we think are obvious or are common knowledge are neither to some children. A few days ago my 14-year-old daughter wanted to try some tea she had been given. The tea bag was in a paper pouch. While I was getting the kettle ready I told her that the tea bag is in the paper pouch so she needed to tear open the pouch. She tore it right down the middle, destroying both pouch and tea bag. “When we open bags we tear them along the edge, not through the middle. I didn’t know that I would have to explain that to you.”

Liam never wondered where meat came from before. It’s not the kind of thing you teach a kid. They just find out eventually. In my experience, the concept bothers nearly 100% of them at first.

7

I was around that age when I first caught a fish. I was so upset when I realized that the family planned to eat it for dinner that my grandmother had to make me some scrambled eggs instead.

8

Unborn chickens! Auggh!

9

I ran into something similar once with my little girl, at bedtime, when she was about 3 or 4.

I was singing “She’ll Be Comin’ Around the Mountain”, doing all the extra verses. Then I reached the one about, “And we’ll kill the old red rooster when she comes…”.

The little Torqueling sat up. “Why do they kill the rooster?”

I said, “Well, that’s the next part. ‘And we’ll all have chicken and dumplings when she comes…’”

“But the rooster’s not chicken like you eat.”

“Yeah, he’s kind of a chicken.”

“Well, he’s a chicken. But not chicken like you eat.”

“Um…” Didn’t really know where to go from there. I basically left it alone and went through the song, and things worked themselves out eventually.

I guess that makes me a chicken. But not chicken like you eat.

10

I suspect that most modern, suburban kids don’t know where ANY of their food comes from-- bread, tortillas, cereal, vegetables… let alone the shock of finding out that we kill animals for food. How WOULD they find this out when all of their food comes out of cans, bottle, boxes, and bags??

11

I was once travelling with my 6-year-old niece and her 10- and 12-year-old cousins. We passed a field of cows, and younger niece said, “Oh, how pretty . . . . they’re not going to kill them are they?”

Her cousins immediately began laughing and screaming, “Of course they are. We’re hungry! Let’s go to McDonald’s.”

It was not my favorite moment, but at least I wasn’t the bad guy.

12

He didn’t handle it well, but it’s not just Liam who realizes it’s wrong to kill.

13

When I was a little kid, a farmer used to come around with a truck full of live chickens. My mom and I would go out, pick a chicken, and the farmer would cut off its head and removed its feathers. Then we’d take it inside, where my job was to remove the innards. Lots of fun. Really. So I don’t remember ever NOT knowing where meat came from.

14

And someday, Liam may realize that good people can disagree about what’s right or wrong.

15

"Liam, perhaps you should ask your mom. She can explain it better than I can.

So what’s your favorite game?"

16

I found myself in that situation years ago when I was babysitting. I had made the kids chicken strips. Being a vegetarian, I wasn’t having any myself. The 5 year old asked “what’s chicken?”. I don’t believe in pushing any views (religious/political/food choices) onto kids so I decided to just answer matter-of-factly and replied “well it’s chicken, like the animal”.

…silence…

“what do you mean?”

“Well a butcher takes a chicken, kills it and then some people eat it.”

…silence…looks at plate…

“this is a killed chicken?”

“yes”

“do people eat any other animals?”

“yes, hamburger is from cows and bacon is from pigs”

Then her little face went all red and the tears started falling. I told her that some people eat animals and some people don’t and that it’s her choice to pick what she wants to eat. Many, many years later we are facebook friends and I know she eats meat and I’m still a vegetarian.

17

I grew up in the suburbs, but by the time I was seven I knew where meat came from and it didn’t bother me a bit. When we had turkey for Thanksgiving or chicken dinner on Sunday, I knew we were eating a bird and I learned that hamburgers came from a cow and bacon from a pig. I accepted that animals had to be killed to give us meat and didn’t think twice about eating it.

18

I remember the time my dad took me to a rodeo, I would have been about 6. I remember the cowboys roping the calves around the legs and then throwing them onto their side while they looked terrified. I Liam’d out pretty hard.

(Sorry about your experience, pk)

19

i realize youre just joking, but i always feel compelled to point out that eggs arent unborn chickens (or anything else)! theyre the nutritional material the developing embryo consumes. . . its food! the blastodisc (or unfertilized ovum) is the size of a pin point and accounts for almost 0% of the material of the chicken egg.

it is, always was, and always will be just food!

mc

20

Unless you buy farm-fresh, that is. Some farms sell fertilized eggs so if they didn’t get put in the refrigerator soon enough, you’ll be eating an embryo as well. A super tiny one, but a chicken embryo just the same.