Vegetarian Bully

“They are raising him to be a tyrant!” my voice was raised and I stood up and paced a little. Ron giggled over the phone, amused at how agitated I was over a short piece on This American Life. The prologue told the story of a family with two young children, the 7-year-old a vegetarian and the 5-year-old very much not. 

It was billed as a kind of cute story i think. A little quirky. Not too serious. 

Only I took it…I take it…very seriously. 

It isn’t the vegetarian piece. As much as i embrace an omnivore’s lifestyle I embrace an ideology of “you like I love it” (as long as I’m not cooking!). i live in the bay, home of specialized dietary restrictions. More than your pescatarian, vegetarian, vegan, we add gluten free, organic only, paleo, freegan, and the “ans” continue. Eat or don’t eat.

No, my issue isn’t that a child has become passionate about being a vegetarian. My issue is that he is intent on making everyone around him vegetarian. 

Rather than take his passion for his choice as an opportunity to discuss other people’s (namely, his little brother’s) choices, the parents instead urge and cajole the youngest child to acquiesce. And when that proves difficult, they simply lie. 

All of a sudden his desire to be a vegetarian has morphed into making the entire family vegetarian. Suddenly, his way of looking at the world becomes the way of looking at the world. Other opinions and ideas be damned. 

And it could all be harmless. Maybe a phase this 7-year-old is in and by the time he is 9 or 13, he’ll no longer care what other people sate themselves with – or at least no longer try to control them.

But therein lies the rub. The lesson he is learning is that he should get to control other people’s actions; that he can. 

My sister often says, referencing children’s behavior, “If it isn’t cute at 22 it isn’t cute at 2.” Listening to this child haggle with his little brother over the length and payment for a temporary bout of vegetarianism may seem harmless enough, might even border on cute. But at 22 that same behavior is just bullying and no one likes a bully, vegetarian or otherwise.