Lonely kiddo!

[Christa]

I am working on the problem, but my poor 4 yr old is becoming really sensitive to the fact that she is the only vegetarian child that we know (other than her sister :) ). I called her preschool & apparently she is the only child out of the 150 kids there that is vegetarian! She simply does not understand why her friends don't understand that animals have feelings & we shouldn't kill them.

She told me that she wants to throw a party at our house & invite all of her friends & teach them about how animals have feelings & how they should all be vegetarian. I don't think that the parents would appreciate this much!

I am going to put up some notices on the bulletin boards of our local health food store & food co-op to see if we can find her some vegi friends & have a few other things in the works, but I feel so bad for the poor kid. Hopefully we'll meet someone soon - I know that there are vegetarians in Fort Collins!

[Erin Pavlina]

I hope you guys can find some veg families living near you.

See if there's a Vegetarian Society in your area.

Also, having the friends over for a snack-fest might be fun. You could do like a little cooking demonstration like making fruit smoothies for all the kids and letting them pick their fruits, or baking cookies with everyone and let them take home some cookies (and the recipe!) to their parents.

Good luck to you!

[Christa]

Thanks, Erin. I made some pretty nifty looking flyers :) on Publisher this morning & we are going to go hang them up later today. We also have this really neat farm animal sanctuary about 40 mins away that I contacted. Everyone there is vegan & the lady who runs it thinks that she may be able to locate us some families w/ veg kids who are members of the sanctuary. I told her to feel free to give my # to any of them. We'll see what we come up with.

I think that my neighbor, who is a good friend & has children that are friends of my kids', is pretty sensitive to vegetarianism. Her kids don't eat a lot of meat, but her in-laws are cattle ranchers. I told Angelina (my 4 y/o) that the neighbor's daughter may be a vegetarian when she gets older b/c she doesn't like meat much. That made Angelina feel a bit better & she has been talking about what a good friend this little girl is :).

[Lesley Dove]

Congratulations on raising such a caring daughter. My two older kids are 10 (son) and 7 (daughter) and while they are quite happy to be vegans and they know that animals are killed and cruelly treated for meat, dairy, eggs, etc, they are still not really that much into campaigning on it among their friends in school. I sometimes wish they were more that way because when I had more time before I had the children, I was such an animal rights activist myself and intend to be doing a lot more of that again once they are a bit older. My youngest daughter is too young to be aware of the issues as she is only 17 months old. They have their own personalities and may not be the campaigning type. Their dad while also a very keen ethical vegan has never been as much of an activist as I used to be. We have a vegan families group in London and meet about 4 times a year and I have a veggie friend we see a little more often living nearby with a boy and girl similar age to mine. Her daughter and mine are friends but her daughter seems not very aware of being veggie, and I was also proud of my daughter telling her daughter that it was not nice to deliberately stamp on and kill insects when she was stamping on some ants on a path! My daughter is afraid of spiders but won't kill them, she just calls on me or my husband to remove them if she sees one!

Lesley

[Christa]

Thanks. I can't say that Angelina is that sensitive to spiders :)!

We haven't gotten any responses to our flyers yet, but I am going to try to hang them up at a few more places. 2 of the local health food stores wouldn't let me hang them up, one did & the food co-op did. I haven't heard from anyone from the Wilderness Ranch Sanctuary yet, either, but I am hopeful that we'll find someone soon.

[Christa]

I have contacted the Vegetarian Society of CO, & they do have a FTC branch, however I haven't been able to get the local coordinator to call me back! I have called him a few times with no response. Maybe I'll try again.

I have noticed that a few of the tabs from my flyer at Wild Oats have been taken, but I haven't gotten any calls yet. I'm just getting bold & approaching moms at Vitamin Cottage & Wild Oats who are buying soy cheese or other vegi looking stuff & asking if they are vegetarian. So far I have come across a few people with dairy allergies and one vegi family, but they only have one child - a baby who is a month old. I'm sure that I'll find someone eventually!