When Emily was 8 and Eve was 5, Emily said one day, while we were eating tea,
“Eve uses words that even I don’t know.”
And Eve replied, “Yes, like tonsillitis.”
Emily said, “No, I mean real words, not made up ones.”
My husband and I smiled at each other and assured Emily that tonsillitis was a real word.
“Yes, it’s a dinosaur.” Eve agreed.
Once when we were on holiday, Eve was only a baby and Emily must have been about 4 years old, we were in a public toilets, washing our hands, when another lady came in.
Emily said to her, with genuine interest, “Are you a vegetarian?”
The lady replied, “No, I’m afraid not.”
Emily thought for a moment and then said, “Nanny ate fish once but she didn’t mean it.”
My children were brought up vegetarian from birth but when they were very young I didn’t make a fuss about gelatine in sweets that were given to them by other people. Â However, one day when they were choosing some sweets at the corner shop after school, I decided to explain to them what gelatine was after they’d both chosen sweets containing it. Â Emily, who was 7 years old then, immediately returned the sweets to the shelf and chose some without gelatine.
I turned to Eve, who was only 4, and asked her “Do you want to change yours or are you not old enough to understand?”
She looked thoughtfully at her sweets and then at me and said,
“I don’t think I’m old enough to understand.”
Thus she made the difficult decision to quit gelatine another day 😉
From ‘Vote for Love’ – a collection of children’s sayings compiled by Nanette Newman
Violet's Vegan Comics 