To think vegetarian mums are selfish?

[lisabd345]

There's a woman on my Facebook who has a son 6 years old.
She's a vegetarian and she's made sure her son is too.
She's just posted that her son is suffering from iron deficiency and GP has said it's probably due to his diet and the fact he doesn't eat meat....and the GP has gave him medication to take every day and he is crying about it ..so she's asking what to feed him to bring iron levels up.
Aibu to think he should make a decision when he's older if he wants to be vegetarian and not have it forced upon him?

Neweternal You’re not in the best position to notify others they have an unhealthy attitude towards food. You’re using hysterical unsubstantiated nonsense to come to your own decisions

Newternal your graph is inaccurate. you need to study people that are vegetarian and eat well. There are malnourished meat eaters in Bangladesh and there are healthy vegetarians in certain Indian communities following Ayurveda principles.

By the way I'm not the OP, don't know where they have gone, I got confused re an earlier post. Ok be vegan if you want, but I personally wouldn't inflict my fad diets on my child. Woman fought for choices in feminism, children should have choices too, it's not for overbearing lefties to take a child's choice of diet away. Seriously what age can your child decide it doesn't want to be a vegan? How come children can decide to change or have the choice to change gender at 7 but it has to remain vegan til 16?

Neweternal Your responses are super judgemental, based on really embarrassing myths that have long been debunked and clearly not inline with expert nutrition specialists ( Dieteticians ). Why on Earth you care is beyond me, but hiding behind ‘kids should get a choice’ is very odd for any parent to say when we are all very well aware that we make choices for our children from the moment they are born. The default position is no longer ‘omnivore’, particularly now that so many health or nutrition professionals have made it really clear that both vegetarian and vegan diets are safe and may be more beneficial. This has nothing to do with transgenderism so just stop embarrassing yourself.

@pennydrew You haven't answer what age can your little darlings decide they want to eat meat? This is a method of control not giving them a choice.

Besides isn't they're an age a child can decide on medical procedures without parental consent? 10? It should be the same for restrictive diets.

There not they're !

Neweternal all parents make dietary choices for their children, along with religious choices and more besides. What age parents decide their children can decide is up to each family. But again, you’re acting like the default position should be omnivorous diets that include animal foods. I’ve shown you plenty of advice from actual professionals that show that needn’t be. So again, all parents make dietary choices inline with the way they personally eat- and cook. Why are you not asking at what age a child should be able to choose either way? That’s the question. My parents, farmers, allowed me to decide to be vegetarian at 13/14 and supported it fully. I ate their way until then, like most children. What concept are you finding difficult to grasp here?

I noted that you didn’t respond to my earlier posts from the American Dietetic Association, which include citations. I didn’t think you’d be able to deal with that factual, scientific information.

Neweternal, don’t think you’re talking to me, but I would let my seven year old eat meat if she wanted to - she doesn’t, as she doesn’t want to eat animals, but she might when she is older and I wouldn’t stop her. (She currently has absolutely no desire to go vegan, although is quite happy to steal my soya chocolate puddings...)
I don’t let my 2 year old eat meat (and he has eyed up the sausage rolls at toddlers on occasion) as he hasn’t a clue what it is.

Children gain more control over their medical choices at 16. In terms of diet, it’s really going to come down to 1 whether the child is eating the same as parents 2 if they’re old enough to cook for themselves 3 what their parents are willing to buy ( vegan parents wouldn’t buy animal foods ).
My DD has teenage friends over 16 whose parents won’t support their veganism at home, they eat vegan at school and outside the home.

Well yabu for the goady title. This particular vegetarian mum is selfish if she isn't ensuring her child gets enough iron from his diet. I'm a vegetarian and a mum, (dh omni) dds choose. Both myself and dd2 (who is 95%) veggie have the highest iron levels, Dd1 I supplement as she is a very fussy eater (does eat meat including red) but has additional needs and so I do what I can and she has improved massively in the last year. Dh eats more red meat than any of us and has the lowest iron (however he's a grown man provided with a balanced diet and it's not up to me to force him). Also I know many vegetarian couples who have vegetarian children so surely Dads should be responsible for ensuring the diet is healthy too?

Aibu to think he should make a decision when he's older if he wants to be vegetarian and not have it forced upon him?

How is bringing your DC up as vegetarians with vegetarian parents any different from bringing up meat eating DC with meat eating parents? Parents make decisions about what their children do/eat etc all the time- that's one of the jobs of a parent, to make decisions that they think are in the child's best interests until they are old enough to make their own decisions.

Surely the point is that it is unreasonable for a parent to give their child a diet which is not nutritionally appropriate, and to do something about it if there is a problem? The source of the nutrients is surely just a choice.

If anyone would like to post some scientific evidence, with real supportable sources, to show that vegetarian diets are incapable of being as healthy as an omnivorous diet I'll be interested to read it but in my 30 years as a veggie no one has been able to produce it for me yet.

Genuinely interested. Is almost the whole of India bad parents too? Seventh Day Adventist’s, are they all selfish as well? Plenty of populations are plant based. If the weight of evidence clearly shows no trend in terms of health disadvantages, why is this even a conversation?

I think if you don't want to cook meat or use animal products at home that's fine but if your child wants to eat meat out of the house....why not?

I hate all these labels anyway. Flexitarian, pescatarian lacto vegetarian blah blah blah.

You know what else makes me uncomfortable? These parents who don't let their kids eat mars bars on toast for lunch and dinner. AIBU to think children should be able to choose what they without having their parents' beliefs forced on them?

Wtf is a lacto vegetarian?

One whose breastfeeding?🤔 no idea!

Lacto vegetarians don't eat eggs apparently.

I like my ovos.

Besides isn't they're an age a child can decide on medical procedures without parental consent? 10? It should be the same for restrictive diets.

There is no definitive age. The individual child is assessed to determine whether they are ‘gillick competent’. For some children, this competence comes at a younger age than it does for others.

There’s no reason why vegan parents can’t apply a similar common-sense approach to their own children to assess when they are old enough to make choices about their own diet.

My goddaughter would survive exclusively on ice cream and chips if she had her way. Her mother overrides her preferences in the interests of what’s best for her - much like any other non-negligent parent. Stop pretending this is a phenomenon unique to vegan and vegetarian parents.

See I find this very interesting. In my house one parent (me) is a meat eater and the other (DH) was a veggie. DH wanted to be a vegetarian from 9 but wasn’t allowed to be until he was 16. There were cost/time/availability issues in his family and the country he lived in (lots of children, only one parent home most of the time, little veggie convenience food available) but he still resented not having control over his diet so he has approached his children’s diet much more from the angle of wanting to give his children choice and listen to what they want rather than imposing his choice on them.

We’ve deliberately gone the other way and given our children a great variety of things to eat but also given them freedom to exclude and include as they wish. As a result my eldest is pretty much veggie now whilst the two younger ones are omnivores. We eat a lot of veggie food anyway and can make things non-veggie with small adjustments that don’t budget bust so it works for us.

I know plenty of families where vegetarianism is a decision of both parent and child and they very happily live that lifestyle. But I do agree with the OP that in some circumstances there becomes an unacceptable level of control where a parent is forcing their child to live by values they don’t share.

I think most of the sensible vegetarian parents I know accept that even if they are brought up entirely vegetarian, by the time they hit their teens there are going to be occasions outside the home where they may eat a few chicken wings or a burger off a barbecue and they realise this is a normal part of growing up and forming your own values rather than just being a little identikit of your parents. Frequently those children try then leave alone.

The foolish ones continue trying to dictate their teenagers lives in minutae even when they’re not with them, and that seems to be the best way of sending them headlong into an adult life stuffed with Big Macs, KFC family buckets and meat feast pizzas.

Although I respect the right of parents to choose diets that suit their families, I think trying to impose it on a child who is actively saying it’s not what they want is foolish and futile.

I have to say, having suffered from anaemia myself I would be saying to the mother in the OP’s case that she really needed to get it together and sort out his died so he was getting the right nutrients, and if she couldn’t manage it from veggie food she’d need to start considering whether a sick, tired unhappy child was worth it. Did she think her child would look back and agree that feeling so awful was worth it for someone else’s principles? I felt so awful when I had anaemia I never would haven forgiven someone who prevented me from having something that would make me feel better without that disgusting brown medicine.

Geraldine170 Just to point out, that anaemia is not just about diet and in fact rarely is ( except pregnant mothers ). So we have to be careful of assuming.

@pennydrew Actually children can make medical choices at around 10-12 they can go in the pill, refuse injections etc. They are also at the age of criminal responsibility. Therefore as far as the law goes at the age of making their on decisions. So any vegan parents here? Are you controlling in other aspects of their life such as play station, iPad , what their hobbies are? Are you child lead or lead by your own interests for holidays and free time? Religious reasons are different but even then as a catholic you get confirmed at 9 or 10 as you're suppose to be old enough to choose your faith.

I’m not sure that’s correct, particularly not in children. A quick google gives multiple sources stating outside of menstruating and pregnant women nutrional deficiency is the biggest cause.

Neweternal You’re seriously fixated on this and now being extremely rude about other peoples parenting. I feel sorry for you really. You’ve obviously got a truly bizarre and unnecessary problem with vegans and since you’ve been corrected with credible evidence on your previous incorrect ( and ludicrous ) claims regarding health, you’re now childishly making it about children’s choices and whether or not they should choose their food. Most parents decide what they buy and what they cook in their own home, children should be taught to respect their parents rules. Mine is. As children get older, their parents decide the appropriate age for them to make choices in different areas of their life. All the parents I know make those decisions based on what suits their child, good parents with respectful relationships tend to work things out with their kids without too much issue.

Now this OP has clearly left a provocative post and never come back, on an entirely different subject: vegetarianism and iron deficiency. Perhaps the both of you should just really mind your own business and spend time on your own children and focus on being the best parents you can be, rather than how you can become that annoying busybody who creates problems for other people for kicks. Leave the vegetarian mum alone.