Free Advice for Parents: It's Never Too Early for the "Don't Eat People" Lecture

At choir practice last night, I shared a stupid child's joke about why cannibals don't eat clowns. They taste funny. Our choir director opined that the joke would be good for her eight year old daughter except that she wouldn't know what a cannibal was. I could hardly believe my ears. This woman who in every other respect seems an ideal parent has not yet taught her child not to eat other human beings. I am probably going to give her child a wide berth until she is properly instructed.

In order to excite an appropriate degree of revulsion for the idea of eating other people, it is a good idea to start indoctrinating children in antianthropophagism from the earliest age. Start immediately and keep reinforcing the message until you are certain that your child is not cannibalistic. Another reason to start early is to forestall the possibility that your child will eat someone and acquire a taste for human flesh. Once they have partaken of the long pig, it is hard to wean them from it. And there may be nothing more embarassing than confronting the parents of another child whom your child has eaten.

When you talk to your children about cannibalism, there are a number of approaches you can take. The good old fashioned "God will smite you" works in many cases. For those of a more rationalistic bent, the dangers of kuru from eating dead relatives' brains can be a good starting point. I favor telling children that eating people is not wrong per se, but that killing other people for food is immoral except in emergencies. I tell them when it might be appropriate to eat their neighbor in a survival situation and how to prepare the best cuts. That way, they aren't burdened with an irrational revulsion that would interfere with their surviving an extreme situation.

I bet the government has a free pamphlet "Talking to Your Child About Cannibalism" that you can order form Pueblo, Colorado. Have that talk now before it's too late.