I feel like such a jerk...

[GoddessOfGuinness]

Tonight I was watching a show on PBS about a group of people who left their 21st century lifestyles to play Montana homesteaders ala the 1880s. My almost-6-year-old was watching it with me.

The "homesteaders" planned to have a harvest fair at the end of their pioneer playtime. In order to feed the fairgoers, one family decided to slaughter the pig that their young son had grown fond of. The boy was clearly upset about it, and I couldn't blame him. It seemed an awfully harsh thing to do to a kid when eating a pig wasn't truly a necessity.

They showed the boy's father aiming a shotgun at the pig's head; and my little boy got really upset, and asked, "Why do they hate pigs?" I started explaining to him that in the 1880s, if you didn't eat the animals you raised as food, you'd starve; but then the camera panned on the boy's face as the gun went off.

My son was crushed. It took a half hour to get him to stop crying and calm down. Why the hell didn't I see that coming, and change the channel?

Dopey dopey Mom! :(

[HEyHEY]

1. Hey! They ripped off "Pioneer Quest" from Canada

Anyway....not a jerk, you just weren't expecting that. He'll get over it in a month or two ;-)

[Dookus]

2. Stop!

Don't beat yourself up. Your explanation was correct, and your son learned something important, albeit painful.

Yer not a bad mommy.

[GoddessOfGuinness]

5. Maybe now he'll eat his veggies...

He's seen "Babe" dozens of times; but I guess he never made the connection that the food we eat was once a live animal.

I guess I should be glad he hasn't been desensitized....

[Rowdyboy]

6. Dookus is right

You did good. Perhaps this will lead your kid to rethink some ideas he's already formed. Exposing him to that sort of show is excellant parenting. You're doing a fine job, just don't second guess youself so much...

[WilliamPitt]

3. Kill all pigs! Kill all pigs!

Oh...wait...wrong decade.

I'm sorry he's upset. Shield your kids from all bad things, however, and you'll have raised a kid who doesn't believe in bad things. That's a bad way to meet the world.

Callouses are good.

[everythingsxen]

4. I agree 100% Will (N/T)

[GoddessOfGuinness]

7. I know...but it seems like

it shouldn't feel good giving him the calluses.

[Dookus]

9. of course it shouldn't feel good...

it's a painful part of parenting, but a necessary one.

Interesting digression: The hardened skin over a wound is a "callus". "Callous" is the adjective form referring to personality or sensibility. OK, not interesting. But I'm a word junkie.

on edit: and Will Pitt should know better :P

[GoddessOfGuinness]

14. I didn't realize that...

Thanks for the spelling lesson!

[GirlinContempt]

10. No no, PIGS good!

Four legs good! Two legs bad!

[Rabrrrrrr]

8. Maybe it's because I grew up on farms and hunting,

But I think it's ESSENTIAL for children - and all other people - to know where meat comes from, and to experience and see first-hand the cycle of life and death.

Sheltering kids from the "nastiness" of death - I can't accept that. Sheltering them from videos of torture and war violence and gang vilence, yes, but when it comes to purely natural things - animals eating animals, whtehr lions killings or hyenas eating the leftovers or eagles stealing fish, or humans hunting or raising livestock - people, all people, have to know where it comes from, and to realize that, yes, the taking of a life is a serious and sacred and important moment, even if it's a pig.

Especailly if a person is a meat eater, since life now is so sanitized and you can get meat wrapped cleanly in saran wrap and styrofoam and never have to know or realize what it means it to butcher the animal.

And, not to threadjack, but what really pisses me off is people who eat meat who are anti-hunting. Screw that. Hunting is tens times more humane than factory meaet farms.

[jobycom]

11. I don't think it was just about life and death

It sounds like her son's shock was partly due to watching a parent kill an animal the kid had grown to love.

Sounds like YOU weren't the bad parent, Guinness.

[Rabrrrrrr]

13. Speaking as a farmer/hunter kid,

I've killed few animals, and my family have killed few animals, that we hadn't grown to love. Many a cousin of mine has killed an animal they raised and showed at 4H. Never easy, but that's part of life. And I love the idea of killing an animal one knows and loves, and thus making the kill swift and sure and honoring the memory and gift of that animal when eating it, than the alternative - nameless factory meat that comes cleanly and nicely wrapped with no blood smears, no animal noises in death throes, no feathers and/or fur flying around...

This could be my farmer-elitist mode, but I think it's true.

[Eureka]

17. I'm with you Rabrrrr

I grow my own beef/chickens/other and I'm constantly surprised by the number of people who baulk at home killed food but will gladly gorge on something out of a styrofoam container in a supermarket.

I think if you're happy to eat it, you should be happy to prepare it for eating and have the courage of your convictions.

[GoddessOfGuinness]

19. I think the kid in the show

developed an unusual closeness to the animals because he was suddenly deprived of TV, video games, and the kinds of toys and entertainment typical kids nowadays have.

While he may have known early on that animals would be slaughtered for food, I doubt he was prepared to fully accept the fact.

[Rabrrrrrr]

21. And I don't mean to disparage his feelings at all -

I'm glad that he has them. It means he's a decent, sensitive human being, and it makes me feel good knowing that he found the killing to be horrible. Killing should never be something that makes one feel good or be happy about.

So I don't want you to think I don't want him to have feelings about killing - on the contrary, I honor him for how he felt.

I'm just saying it's an incredible opportunity for learning, and a very, very important lesson to be learned.

[jobycom]

24. No, we raised animals, too, and this is different

I didn't grow up on a farm, but we raised some animals, and I've eaten animals I had come to love. I know where meat comes from, and have "cleaned" my share. Since then, I've become vegetarian.

I'm not advocating vegetarianism, and I agree with you that people who eat meat but are against hunting, or who don't face where it comes from, are deluded, and that's a form of weakness. And I understand that you always grow an attachment to animals you raise. But there are better ways to teach some little city kid about the source of meat than blowing away an animal he loves for his parents' entertainment, for some pretentious game they were playing. That's not an animal that had to die for food, that's an animal that died for fun.

My kids are meat eaters, because their mother is, and I try to emphasize to them that they are eating animals they think are cute. I've let them watch animals being killed, or skinned or cleaned, so they will get it. I don't tell them what to think, though. If they are repulsed, I let that repulsion become a part of who they are, without giving them a serious lecture that they have to squash that repulsion. They get to see meat being created, and they get to make up their own minds as to whether they want to be a part of that. So far, they do. They know there is an alternative. I instruct when I can, but avoid preaching either way.

But that's a far cry from introducing it to them by going out back and blowing the head off our dog. That's just sick, and would be terrible parenting. They could have taught their kid about meat and animals without desensitizing him to love. Who knows what has been destroyed in him?

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

25. DINGDINGDINGDING we have a winnah! (nt)

[GoddessOfGuinness]

12. It's true that they need to understand it...

I guess it just seemed a harsh lesson in this instance because the boy who'd helped raise the pig thought of it as a pet.

And I agree with you on the hunting issue. The other day, we drove by a turkey "house" in the country. I couldn't believe how jam-packed it was with birds! What a cruel short life they have...

[Mick Knox]

15. nothing years of therapy and medications wont fix

so dont worry! nt

[Fenris]

16. Your son received a valuable history lesson (sort of)

Federal education will drill into his head all of these misguided, romantic notions of Western history. When I was younger, we were forced to endure the mind-numbing writings of Laura Engels Wilder, the woman who brought the world Little House on the Prairie. We were taught about the Indians, briefly, and about how the Anglos brought civilization to the West through the Homesteaders.

The reality is of course that life was nasty, brutish, and short for those who attempted to colonize the West. Drought, bankruptcy, foreclosures, dust storms, and plagues of grasshoppers were just some of the hardships American Homesteaders faced. Typically, the Homesteader barely made enough money to cover the expenses of the next or previous year, and it was very rare that he or she turned a profit. In fact, most of the money made from farming was made by giant corporate farms that expanded their operations by buying troubled neighboring farms.

In the West, killing that pig would have been a family's direct sustenance. Livestock were never killed unless it was absolutely necessary, or there was a surplus. So you are right in criticizing the program for showing the pig getting killed. When it is not a necessity, it is gratuitous. And it's misleading. However, I think that displaying the harshness of life on the frontier is positive, as it forms images of the West that may be (thankfully) inconsistant with the mythology.

[GoddessOfGuinness]

20. As I watched, I couldn't help thinking

the skills these people used were ones we could have to master if some kook with a nuke gets trigger happy.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

18. You can't really shield your kids from bad experiences or

shocking incidents. It's the support you give them when they occur that counts. Sounds like he'll work it through...you don't know though...decades later some benign thing from your past can be the biggest incident in your present...just help him to process what he saw and talk about it if he brings it up.

[GoddessOfGuinness]

22. That's a good point...

My dad was impatient with me when I first understood that the steak on my plate was the flesh of a cow. Hugs would have been more effective than "That's life...You'd better get used to it."

[Dookus]

23. Speaking of pigs...

A traveling salesman is walking a route in a rural area. He comes upon a house and notices a pig with a wooden leg rooting around in the front of one house. This piques his curiosity, so he goes up to the house and finds the owner working outside.

"Excuse me sir... I couldn't help but notice you have a pig with a wooden leg..."

"Oh! THAT pig! Goldarn, we love that pig. Lordy jeezus, just two years ago, mah son was up in the loft in the barn and a fire done broke out. That darn pig climbed up the ladder and DRAGGED my boy outta that barn. Yessiree, we love that pig."

"That's quite a story. But why does he have a wooden..."

"Oh sweet gosh-amighty, we love that pig. Last year, mah wife was was down by the crick gatherin' crawdads and a dang-blasted flash flood came washin' down the crick, grabbed my wife and started draggin' her away. That pig, mind you - he's a PIG!- ran down there and done jumped in the water, grabbed my wife, dragged her back home. Saved her life, he did."

"Wow... but I still don't understand. Why does he have a wooden leg?"

"Golly gee whillikers, that pig. Don't know what we'd do without him. Just last month mah daughter was out in the field when a tornado just blew up. We was all a-rushin' down to the basement and plum forgot all about her. But not that pig, no sir. He went OUT to the field and DRAGGED her back to the house."

"Incredible. But please, why does he have a wooden leg?

The farmer pauses, looking blank-eyed at the salesman. "Are you CRAZY, fellah? A pig like THAT ya don't eat all at ONCE!"