By Guest Blogger on August 10, 2009

Educating Lil’ Miss Muffet: Empowering Children By Telling the Truth

Happy Meatless Monday! Today, Ruby Roth, author of That’s Why We Don’t Eat Animals, joins us to talk about educating youth about animal rights issues. Be the fifth person to tweet @CrazySexyLife with a link to this blog and win a copy of Ruby’s book!

As you can imagine, That’s Why We Don’t Eat Animals was a tough sell in the children’s book publishing world (I’ll be planting seeds for the rest of my life to replace the forest of trees that are my rejection letters). Every editor feared the subject was too subversive, too extreme. The ambivalence I encountered seemed to center around a prescribed notion of children–that smallness equals weakness and frailty. “No, no, no,” the publishers insisted, “this book is the spider beside her, who frightened Miss Muffet away!”

Well, toot toot (that’s my own horn)! I’ve read the book to hundreds of kids, and I’ve experienced, in fact, the exact opposite. Children are not only curious about serious topics like climate change, animal rights, endangered species, and veganism, but receptive and responsive. Often during readings, I see their little wheels churning…then….pop goes the weasel! Up shoots a hand and out comes an insightful exclamation related to their lives (a 4th grade girl likened factory farms to what she had just learned in class about slavery!). Kids are so smart and so discerning and function from a much more instinctual, heart-centered place than we adults do. When they find that they can help solve a problem, be it the mistreatment of animals or pollution, simply through their choices, action is not a question but a conclusion. They’re down to go green. And this is a powerful group! The education of elementary school children was a major factor in the success of Los Angeles’ recycling programs. Kids went home and essentially radicalized their parents. Now L.A. has one of the highest participation rates in the nation (1).

As we round the corner of conservation and head towards adaptation, our kids are confronting the extensive impact our choices have had on the planet. To survive healthfully, they’re going to have to choose more consciously as they grow up–from recycling to spending to the way they eat. But they can’t make choices if they don’t know there are any. So how do we talk to kids about the world’s Cruella deVils? About the doings of the Wicked Witches and Boogeymen? The quickest way out of any predicament is to simply tell the truth. And kids like the truth! They appreciate feeling like they are being let in on a secret that’s been kept from them (“Not many kids know this, sweetiepie, but here’s the deal…”).

Just the other day, I was talking to a friend about how one particular university laboratory was purchasing monkeys directly from Nepal for use in medical research tests. My 4-year-old was listening and suddenly interrupted, “Ruru, what you talking about?” I stuttered and was about to scoop her up, change the subject to Kung Fu Panda, and avoid a potentially scary conversation when I caught myself. Are you serious? I scolded myself, You wrote That’s Why We Don’t Eat Animals! This is an opportunity to teach and empower! So the conversation went like this:

Me: I’m talking about how some companies take animals out of the jungle and put them in cages and test shampoo and medicine on them. And that hurts the animals.

Akira: And they can never ever get out of their cages?

Me: Right. What do you think about that?

Akira: I don’t like when animals are in cages because I love monkeys and I am a monkey because I am the year of the monkey.

Me: That was an awesome year. And I don’t like when animals are in cages either. So I make sure not to buy things from companies that use animals. I only buy things that are vegan. See this bunny logo on the toothpaste? That means this company does not use animals. Next time we’re at the store, can you help me find the products with the bunny logo?

Akira: I want to do that right now.

I was happy I told Aki the truth. In order to empower our kids to choose responsibly, it’s vital that they understand their connection to animals and the environment and that they experience their choices rippling out into the world. Our next stop at Nature Mart will be a new, more conscious experience for Akira. I say in my book that each day, we have the power to change our lives. This is a very important concept for any of us to absorb—and one to emphasize when you’re telling a kid the truth: we do not have to fear things that we have the power to change. Had anyone shown Miss Muffet the light, she might have chucked the curds and whey for apples and almond butter. She might have recognized that there was a choice. And she might have loved spiders.

Ruby Roth was teaching art at an elementary school when the children’s interest in veganism inspired her to write That’s Why We Don’t Eat Animals: A Book About Vegans, Vegetarians, and All Living Things, the first children’s book to address the emotional lives of animals, factory farming, the environment, and endangered species. More info at www.WeDontEatAnimals.com.

(1) City of Los Angeles Department of Public Works, Sanitation; Waste & Recycling News, March 2, 2009 edition; updated June 11, 2009.

 

 

   
 

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