Radical Unschooling and being vegetarian.
Yvonne Laborda
Hello,
I am Yvonne a Spanish mum living in Scotland for a while. There is a Radical Unschooling Spanish Facebook grup in which there has been some "hot" discussion on being vegetarian and wanting or trying to be Radical, as well.
I need some advice. We are unschoolers and I write and talk about unschooling in Spanish. Sandra knows me a little. We have done some videos together and I translated...
My question is how can a vegetarian, animalist mum move towards Radical Unschooling if she has strong beliefs about killing and eating animals. Our kids have never eaten fish or meat as we don't have any at home. They don't even want to try it and have never asked so. If they wanted to try i would help them...(They have no interest at all) as what I have told them: my personal reasons explaning why I gave up meat more than 20 years ago. They have been influenced by me as I can't be who I am not... I know that. In that grup no one could not really help me with this idea on how to deal with this. Are there any vegetarian families who are radical as well in this list? I can't be radical myself so how could our children be. Another thing is that we eat organic most of the time and avoid sugar and dairy so we don't offer those foods either. They do eat some at birthday parties or friends houses. We have lots of friends who are not vegetarian and eat all sorts of food.
Thank you.
Yvonne LabordaJuliet Kemp
=== > My question is how can a vegetarian, animalist mum move towards Radical
My nearly-3yo hasn't had any meat yet and hasn't seemed particularly
interested when other people have had it (eg restaurants) but nor have I
offered.
My own compromise is what you say above: if Leon expressed an interest,
I would help him try it out. Which could mean a bunch of things: cooking
it here (I would really struggle with that; my partner might be happy to
do it), going to a restaurant, going to a friend's house, buying
something that doesn't need cooking like ham, something else I haven't
thought of yet...
Personally I don't think that I need to deliberately introduce him to
meat/fish; other people eat it in front of him, it's in the supermarket
when we go shopping, it's in films and books. I will tell him, if he
asks, why I don't eat it, and that other people make different choices.
If he wants to try it I would do my best to facilitate that cheerfully
and certainly not to criticise or shame him about it.
Juliet
> Unschooling if she has strong beliefs about killing and eating animals. OurI'm vegan; my partner isn't, but we don't cook/have meat in the house.
> kids have never eaten fish or meat as we don't have any at home. They don't
> even want to try it and have never asked so. If they wanted to try i would
> help them...(They have no interest at all) as what I have told them: my
> personal reasons explaning why I gave up meat more than 20 years ago. They
> have been influenced by me as I can't be who I am not... I know that. ===
My nearly-3yo hasn't had any meat yet and hasn't seemed particularly
interested when other people have had it (eg restaurants) but nor have I
offered.
My own compromise is what you say above: if Leon expressed an interest,
I would help him try it out. Which could mean a bunch of things: cooking
it here (I would really struggle with that; my partner might be happy to
do it), going to a restaurant, going to a friend's house, buying
something that doesn't need cooking like ham, something else I haven't
thought of yet...
Personally I don't think that I need to deliberately introduce him to
meat/fish; other people eat it in front of him, it's in the supermarket
when we go shopping, it's in films and books. I will tell him, if he
asks, why I don't eat it, and that other people make different choices.
If he wants to try it I would do my best to facilitate that cheerfully
and certainly not to criticise or shame him about it.
Juliet
Sandra Dodd
-=- They don't even want to try it and have never asked so. If they wanted to try i would help them...(They have no interest at all)-=-
I don't think the mom needs to "help them" so much as to cook meat in her house. If the child is interested in having what another family is having, he could eat over there at another house.
If a family's religion prohibits caffein, a parent doesn't need to help a child get some coffee or coca-cola. If a family's religions prohibits pork, unschoolers don't need to help a child try some. Alcohol is easier, because it's not legal for them to encourage or enable a child to have it (generally speaking—it wouldn't be just because a child in a non-drinking family "wanted to try it").
Pam Sorooshian doesn't have alcohol in her home, for religions reasons. She didn't tell her children she would disown them if they ever touched alcohol. She said they couldn't bring it to her house.
If someone's religion or "strongly held belief" (for a category of non-negotiable whatever) keeps unschooling from working for some reason, that person should adapt or use whatever parts of unschooling she wants (if any). If unschooling can't be a family's primary focus, there's no law against that, but for discussions of my own, I wouldn't want them advising others if what they were saying was that compromised unschooling, mostly unschooling, was as good as relaxed, whole unschooling.
I don't see a requirement to provide everything in the whole wide world, but to accept that a child is separate and will continue to learn and make choices even outside the parents' home.
Sandra
I don't think the mom needs to "help them" so much as to cook meat in her house. If the child is interested in having what another family is having, he could eat over there at another house.
If a family's religion prohibits caffein, a parent doesn't need to help a child get some coffee or coca-cola. If a family's religions prohibits pork, unschoolers don't need to help a child try some. Alcohol is easier, because it's not legal for them to encourage or enable a child to have it (generally speaking—it wouldn't be just because a child in a non-drinking family "wanted to try it").
Pam Sorooshian doesn't have alcohol in her home, for religions reasons. She didn't tell her children she would disown them if they ever touched alcohol. She said they couldn't bring it to her house.
If someone's religion or "strongly held belief" (for a category of non-negotiable whatever) keeps unschooling from working for some reason, that person should adapt or use whatever parts of unschooling she wants (if any). If unschooling can't be a family's primary focus, there's no law against that, but for discussions of my own, I wouldn't want them advising others if what they were saying was that compromised unschooling, mostly unschooling, was as good as relaxed, whole unschooling.
I don't see a requirement to provide everything in the whole wide world, but to accept that a child is separate and will continue to learn and make choices even outside the parents' home.
Sandra
Sandra Dodd
-=-Personally I don't think that I need to deliberately introduce him to
meat/fish; other people eat it in front of him, it's in the supermarket
when we go shopping, it's in films and books.-=-
Right!
I think it would hurt unschooling if a parent so focussed on veganism or vegetarianism as a sort of political stance or religion and TAUGHT a child that it was the only right, good moral thing to be and do, and that other people were cruel sinners ingesting poison, that they didn't care about the planet, that they were sadistic war-mongering idiots (or any subset of that, or any larger version of that).
Scaring young children, politicizing young children, causing them to feel that their neighbors and relatives and a horde of strangers are to be despised and feared.... THAT will harm unschooling by making their world small and horrifying.
http://sandradodd.com/negativity
Sandra
meat/fish; other people eat it in front of him, it's in the supermarket
when we go shopping, it's in films and books.-=-
Right!
I think it would hurt unschooling if a parent so focussed on veganism or vegetarianism as a sort of political stance or religion and TAUGHT a child that it was the only right, good moral thing to be and do, and that other people were cruel sinners ingesting poison, that they didn't care about the planet, that they were sadistic war-mongering idiots (or any subset of that, or any larger version of that).
Scaring young children, politicizing young children, causing them to feel that their neighbors and relatives and a horde of strangers are to be despised and feared.... THAT will harm unschooling by making their world small and horrifying.
http://sandradodd.com/negativity
Sandra
Sandra Dodd
-=-I don't think the mom needs to "help them" so much as to cook meat in her house. -=-
ACK! Potentially ambiguous.
Cooking meat is going too far, I mean.
ACK! Potentially ambiguous.
Cooking meat is going too far, I mean.
CASS KOTRBA
What about this part?
I can see how asking a vegetarian to cook meat themselves in their own home would be going too far. Can someone help me differentiate between a vegetarian's experience with meat and someone who has strong feelings about "healthy" food and "junk" food and what their kids should be eating. I guess that's the main thing - the parent pushing their opinion onto the children.
I used to have a lot of opinions about food and some foods were definitely judged as being superior to others. I never told my kids that they couldn't eat foods that didn't fall into my "special" category but I did not keep "non-special" foods in the house. If they asked for something I would provide it (reluctantly & with opinions, I'm sure) but I did try to control their exposure to those things. When we became unschoolers I started releasing my judgement and providing much more exposure and opportunities to eat the foods that were previously "not healthy", probably viewed as "forbidden" by my kids. They had a large amount of enthusiasm for these new foods and a sense of relief that I no longer was judgemental of their love for them. That period of controlling and judging food was damaging for them. I don't think that's what the original poster was indicating but I am trying to clarify my thinking here about what I was doing and the part quoted above.
sukaynalabboun@...
We have been meat eaters, vegetarian, and or vegan at several different points....We also have a religious overlap with dietary restrictions on meat and alcohol. In our home, religion is not enforced. As Sandra mentioned, we (parents and religious kids) insist our home be kept according to religious standards-similar to what she described for the Sorooshians. This winter, two kids were craving rotisserie chicken with garlic (local specialty in the mediterranean), one abstained. We have bought take-out chicken (at their request, and also from religiously OK places, organic free range etc etc). Now they said they had enough, and the ones who did not want it were not bothered. We discussed how to meet everyones needs, and not to offend (is it ok to eat it at home, or is it better to eat at the restaurant? Is there some other thing the non meat eaters want from the menu, a "treat")?
I think it is the respectful communication involved in trying, as much as possible, to meet everyones needs in the most peaceful way. For us it really was not much of an issue, and people were considerate of others...but I think it was more the respect and willingness to accomodate one another that made it a non issue.