to think that if you tell someone that your child is vegetarian...

[Tollund]

that they should respect this and not then try to feed them meat?!

At a birthday party with DS1 who is four and a parent there offered my DS a sausage. DS took one (as he didn't know is it was veggie or not) and I politely said to the man "thank you, but he's vegetarian."

He said "yes, I know, they told me that. But I thought I'd see if he wanted one, and he took one, so let him have it."

I ignored him and told DS not to eat it.

THe man then started on at me about how I should let him make his own choices and to let him eat it which I refused to be drawn into, politely telling him no and then walking away.

He then went up to the mother of the child whose party it was (about 10 feet away from me) and starts banging on about me not letting him eat meat!

I think this man was monumentally ignorant - why does he think he is in a position to make food choices for my four year old child? What if DS was Jewish? Or had allergies? I'm now loathe to let my DS anywhere near this man's child or to go to parties where this man might be - IABU? (I don't think I'm BU in terms of making dietary decisions for my son at this time in his life, but whether am BU in wanting to keep my DS very far away from that tool!)

*club not cluc!

Now you are just showing off, Halos!

sausages have to ask are you deliberately ignorant and inflammatory or does it just come naturally, if your once vegan diet left you deficient in certain vitamins
then i would have to say you didnt research you diet very well to make sure it was balanced did you. knowing at least one lovely militant veggie and others not so,(one who ate chicken, go figure). their diets are balance, healthy and just as much a life style choice as not letting your child eat wheat products or have fruit shoots. when your child is old enough to make their own decisions then if they want to eat meat that is up to them but the primary care giver get to make that decision till they are at a certain age. i am surprised that people here think its inappropriate for parents to make that choice on behalf of their children.

Bother

Haha! Typos don't bother me, it just made me laugh, I have pictures of a cross vet in my head! :)

Love Hearts are vegan!

I was bought up a meat eater. I had no choice. My parents made the choice for me.

When I was an adult I chose to be a veggie.

I suppose that is very different from parents bringing up their children to be veggie until they are adults and chose to eat meat?

YANBU. You the parent/s decide what your child eats, not some random stranger at a party .

And of course you control your child's diet, what kind of a moron doesn't?

YANBU. Was he mentally unstable?

For anyone who has said 'Humans are meant to eat meat' or words to that effect, you must surely realise that it is not necessary, millions live very healthy lives without it, and that in the Western world we eat far too much of it. There is nothing healthy about a sausage; red meat and processed pork in particular is now being blamed for a lot of cancers of the digestive tract.

It is very unreasonable for someone unconnected with a child at a party to try to dictate what the child should eat. That is the parent's job.

Why not let the child try a cigarette? He might like it!

yanbu

The man's an arse. He has a few chips and a couple fo sausage rolls on each shoulder.

YANBU! What a stupid, ignorant twat!

Your child. Your choice. To bring up a child to not eat meat for ethical reasons is admirable imo.

I would have told the dumb fuck where to stick his sausage!

I had a friend whose OH told me off for not giving my DS1 toy guns to play with because 'he will have to get used to them sometime'

Twat.

poor kid

will grow up pale and humourless, like the rest of em

YANBU to be annoyed with this twat, but you would be unreasonable to make a bigger deal of it than it actually is.

There are loads of times when as parents we have to make judgement calls about what is right for our kids and ignore the views of others. This is one of those times. He is only being as annoying as the grandparents who start dropping hints about baby rice at 2m, or the friends who did/didn't do controlled crying and think the alternative is evil. So your response was fine I think. But trying to avoid this man and his children (what have they done) would be over the top. It may never come up again and if it does you just have to do the stuck record trick which works for all other unwanted opinions 'Thank you for sharing your opinion, however we have thought about this and as responsible parents we have decided we do not want our child to eat meat.' Repeat to fade.

arrggh - so you are supposed to familiarise him with guns as they will form a crucial part of his life? Are you living in some kind of gangland/post apocalyptic terminator style wasteland? What are people ON?

HeadfirstForHalos I can't join the "veggie in '93 cluc", I went veggie in 1991!

We'll make an exception for you

I wouldn't blame you for avoiding him. It must have been really embarrassing having him talk about you like that!

YANBU

He may have been mentally unstable, he was prior to this doing push ups with several children on his back and showing off like a twat.

he sounds like a barrel of laughs

So he's a show off, a bit thick, narrowminded, likes huniliating people and er . . . yes avoid him.

You should have taken the oppurtunity while he was doing push ups with several children on his back, to stick the sausage up his..........nose.

I am a lifelong vegetarian. I do not eat fish, chicken, non free range eggs or any other animal product.

HOWEVER, I do not impose these beliefs on my children.

They know I am vegetarian, and they know why, but only one of them has made the decision to be vegetarian.
And that is perfectly fine by me.

I think it must be a personal decision.
And OP, while the guy at the party was undoubtedly a jerk, i believe you should allow your son to make his own decision about what to eat.