by Heather Burns-DeMelo
I often wonder how old my son will
have to get before his peers notice he's a vegetarian. He's in
kindergarten, and so far, no one's the wiser that his "turkey sandwich"
is made from spelt and soy-beans and his "hot dogs" are SmartDogs. It
was no big deal last year when I could afford to send him to Waldorf,
but this year we headed to, gulp, public schools.
Even so, I keep thinking that with a little luck (and global warming + overpopulation = not enough land for raising animals) being vegetarian will become the norm and he won't have to cope with being seen as different (doesn't every family have a bug relocation program?) Well, the Baltimore school system is one of the first to introduce Meatless Mondays, where they'll serve 80,000 kids up an all veggie menu.
And they're not stopping there. From The Green Fork, "BCPS has teemed up with local farmers and distributors to provide students fresh, locally raised fruits, vegetables and milk. They’ve also introduced Great Kids Farm, a 33-acre teaching farm, home to chickens, goats and a variety of fruits and vegetables. Educators on the farm teach kids and adults how to produce home-grown fresh food, even in an urban setting."
I'm staying the course and letting the tides turn - and if they don't, he can go to therapy like nearly everyone else.
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