Every once in a while I try to carefully explain to my children that we are carnivores. They refuse to believe me.

Last month, Jer sat on the counter while I cut up and cooked chicken tenderloins. He said, “They should call it something else. Because chicken sounds like chicken. They rhyme.”

I asked him to explain and he told me that a chicken is a bird, so we shouldn’t call food chicken because that sounds like chicken. I told him that they’re the same thing. He refused to believe me. The more I tried to convince him, the more angry he became. “Mom, there’s chicken and there’s chi-cken! They’re not the same! We don’t eat animals!” I told him that we eat cows too. That hamburger comes from cows. He laughed and said that he knows only milk comes from cows and eggs come from chickens.

Last week, we asked the kids if they wanted chicken nuggets. That caused them both to ramble on about how chicken sounds like chicken and we should call it something else.

Trying to put this ongoing confusion to an end, I told them that people kill chickens, pull off their feathers, cook them and eat them! [Joel seemed a little shocked by my approach.] They argued and gave a nervous laugh. They thought I must be teasing them or telling some sick joke.

Apparently, Sarah has finally figured it out. She just saw a Hardees chicken sandwich commercial. When it was over she said, “Mommy, chickens don’t want us to eat them.”