Child's Play + Food Rules

One day, Max and I were talking about the impact eating one meatless meal a week can make. He quoted a mind blowing statistic that I don't remember, but it was nonetheless, mind blowing. Henry caught wind of this conversation and was beside himself. You see, Henry loves meat. He comes by it genetically, something Doug is very proud of.

Never one to miss the opportunity to teach my children something, I dove in. I began by explaining to Henry that it isn't bad to eat meat. He agreed, of course, and shared how delicious it is. I went on to (briefly) say that we don't really need to eat lots of meat everyday, it's good to eat lots of vegetables......blah, blah, blah. At some point, humane treatment livestock came up. With this, I scored. Humane is a "Martha word". Check here if you are past PBS Kids age but suffice it to say, he understood. Thank you. Channel 11.

I am a visual learner and find it to be the best way to share knowledge with my kids. Lincoln Logs. Henry loves Lincoln Logs.

The first example in the top left, is my factory farm. Lots of steer, no place to go. The second, a nice corral (work with me) with a gate that opens into all the surrounding pasture (er...carpet). These lucky bovine could move around and not be so crowded. They could run and still go back to a safe place at night. I asked Henry, where he would rather live. He got it and was really excited about understanding it.

Later on, he asked me to remind him the next day about the cows so he could share what he learned at school. This, he decided, would be helpful to his classmates "especially if they really like meat".


So here's the question. If a 6 year old gets it and is willing to share, shouldn't we all?