Bringing up my child vegetarian, more of a WWYD??

[girlafraid]

Would love opinions on this, another thread had me up in the night thinking about this!

DH and i have both been vegetarians for many years and (naturally to my mind) have not given DS meat to eat, he eats what we eat

We eat a balanced diet, plenty of protein and i like to think I am a fair cook

I have always been of the mind that DS can choose to eat meat himself as soon as he able to express a preference but I'm not going to cook it for him now IFYSWIM.

I've been wondering though, when does this start? Do I agree to him having meat at nursery? Or let him fill his boots at parties if he wants? Looking for some opinions, especially if you have been through this yourself

DH and I are not opposed to eating meat per se but don't feel it is healthy or environmentally responsible to eat as much meat as most westerners do. TBH I think the optimum diet would be to eat meat perhaps once a week or every other week, but I never get round to doing it!

I don't really like the idea of sending him to a party with a lunch box and don't want him to feel left out, though DH doesn't think that is so important

Thanks for reading if you got through this

OOohhh theressomethingabout - never knew the right word for what I was, a pescetarian (eats fish)...

I was a proper vege for many years, upto and including the birth of my first child. But did raise her on a mixed diet (including meat) as I didn't trust my knowledge of vegetarianism to extend to providing an adequate diet, thought she would make her own choice eventually and wasn't motivated enough to find out about baby cooking.

Have tried to encourage DD - 13 - to join me, but she is a real meaty, although does tend to pinch and eat veggie stuff when it's available. Also thought that being honest about farming and the meat industry would encourage her......but so far she has made her own decisons and rightly so IMO.

I think it's fine either way - had I known/found out more about being a veggie, I would probably have not cooked meat for her at home and then let her try stuff outside of the house (her family are all total carnivores).

Good Luck - there are NO wrong choices, just choices IYSWIM

I am vegetarian and DP doesn't eat meat but does eat fish. I only ever cook veggie food at home, but at nursery DS and DD eat fish (mainly because the veggie options are often quorn which I thought was a bit too processed/salty for them when they were very little).

Twofalls - I hope it wasn't me you saw trying to snatch a sausage out of my DD's hand at a party (actually DD isn't old enough so it wouldn't have been me!). One of the first times DS (now 3) chose his food from a buffet at a party he went straight for the sausages. I gently steered him away from them but then the child whose party it was offered him a sausage and put it on his plate. This was when I realised I can't control what he eats outside of the home. And refusing to let him eat a sausage at a party when he sees all his friends eating them will make it into a big deal and probably make him want one more.

He's always asking where food comes from lately (but he won't believe me that yogurt doesn't grow on yogurt trees!). I would be interested in how other people (veggie or not) explain to a 3 year old where meat comes from. When DS asked where ham comes from our conversation went like this:

DS: I don't eat ham do I? What is ham made out of?
Me: No we don't eat ham. It comes from pigs and some people don't like the idea of eating animals.
DS: Like Peppa Pig? Will she be made into ham?
Me: No I don't think Peppa Pig will, but pigs which live on farms are killed to make ham.
DS: Oh OK.

I thought I had just given the facts in a fairly simple way, but I relayed the conversation to a meat eating friend who thought I'd explained it really horrifically and might have upset DS. What do you think?

I am the child of vegetarian parents and my brothers and I were brought up as vegetarian. When we were young we didn't eat meat, fish or eggs but did have milk. Quite unusually my grandmother was vegetarian when she was younger and kept my mother veggie until about 4.

On the health side of things I really think that if you cook good food that there are no health limitations...my brothers are 6,1 and 6,4 and have a fair amount of muscle on them.

We were kept as vegetarian and when I went to parties I would ask the mothers or children what was vegetarian because it was important to me to be vegetarian even when I was 6 (didn't go to parties before then). There were other kids with packed lunches at school and some people with alergies so didn't feel particularly strange (well not about that anyway). But I think to be honest that I only really made my own choice about it, or had enough perspective when I was over 19. And I decided to carry on because a, I hate hurting anything at an emotional level and more importantly I do not like modern farming practices. However never having eaten any meat I don't actually see meat as food and have no interest in it.

My middle brother did have a sausage given to him when he was 4 at a party and my mother was quite upset about it....but the other upshot was that he was ill for three days. So if you do bring them up as vegetarian crappy sausages occasionally at a party may not be a good idea. I think he does meat occasionally but not very much. My youngest brother also chose to be vegetarian and is probably more hard line than me.

In conclusion I am glad I was brought up vegetarian. Although my parents were not too fussed by eggs in cakes and gelatine in jelly at parties. Made parties more relaxed.

I married a vegetarian and am going to bring my 2 month old up as a vegetarian...I don't have any qualms about it at all.

Sorry for going on so.....

I would go with staying veggie at home and asking nursery to provide veggie food and then letting parties slide.

IWGOT - this is how I have always explained where meat comes from to all 5 of my kids. i don't think that it is horrific. Where else would you say beef comes from if not from a cow?

my boys always thought that it was kind of cool - they all talked about "flesh" when they were young and kind of related it to their own bodies, you know the sort of "am I made out of meat, then, because I have FLESH?" questions with gleeful little boy smirks on their faces. DD was always a little bit more tender, but she knows exactly where her chicken and things come from, not least because my brother keeps chooks and we live in prime ayrshire cattle territory.

I always buy outdoor reared meat and make sure that the children know about the kind of conditions many animals are kept in, hoping that this will sway them, but it never does.

Either you're a vegetarian or you're not imho. I see no logic in being a vegetarian at home and eating meat elsewhere, a "vegetarian who eats chicken" - these are not vegetarians! Clearly for some this approach comes complete with all manner of decisions to make and angst.

Having decided over 30 years ago that to eat meat was cruel that was it for me. There were and are no half measures. My children have been vegetarian since birth and have known from an early age what happens to the fluffy lambs in the field and what those gummy, gelatine based sweets are made of. As a result they don't eat them. No stress, the only arguments come not from my DDs (12 and 14) but adults who disagree with my way of bringing my (non supplement fed!) children up , not from my DDs themselves. All I can say is that total vegetarianism works for me and mine.

Surely by taking your approach you're making life far more complicated than it needs to? Certainly if there's a message to be heard about ethical/organic farming it will be lost on 99% of children when they can eat the gummy sweets at the party but not at home?

stressedHEmum - I didn't think it was horrific, but my friend thought I shouldn't have been mentioning killing and death of animals to a three-year-old, and said it was biased towards making him choose vegetarianism. I can't think of another way to describe where meat comes from without saying that an animal is killed though. That was how my mum told me (she is a meat eater) and that was what made me not want to eat it.

Sorry, slightly away from original post.

I totally agree with Kat. DS will be vegetarian until he can make an informed decision and he's years off that yet. I don't think that he notices that he has "different" food to everyone else yet but when he does we'll talk about why we don't want to eat animals.

He has vegetarian food at nursery which is generally fine but they tend to use a lot of Quorn (i.e. if everyone else has chicken curry, the veggies have Quorn chunk curry), which I'm not too happy about but he's only at nursery 3 days a week so I let it go.

I imagine that I'll be going to parties with him until he's at an age to tell people himself that he doesn't eat meat.

I'm with Riven.
DP and me are vegetarian and children have been bought up according to our beliefs. It has never been a problem for them, as I was never bothered if they didn't have a balanced veggie option when out, eg sometimes they would only have chips or baked beans. Having said that I did find it annoying when commercial establishments faiked to cater for us (think kids parties at McD's) but I would never expect other families to cook specially.
DCs are now aged 14-21 and all vegetarian and perfectly healthy! they have never wanted to eat meat, they seem to see it as a bit revolting (ethical issues aside)- just as most people in the UK wouldn't eat locusts or dogs!
Only problems have been with 'hidden' meat, like gelatine in sweets, some people just don't get that, and school used to give out sweets as rewards sometimes.
Only meat eating incident has passed into legend, when dts (aged about 3) snuck into the room where a party tea had been laid out , climbed on the table and snaffled the sausages! Poor Mum was mortified, but we all thought it very funny, not a problem at all.

DS has always known where meat comes from and which animal which meat is from. I think it is important that he understands that we are eating another living thing and that is actually quite a big deal. He knows that the lambs he sees on Nanny's farm are the same ones that turn up in the roast. No problems whatsoever.

By the time he goes to a party without you he will be fully equipped to choose meat free items. My nephew, aged five, has =never eaten meat but has a varied diet.

My children are mostly vegetarian. They are 1 and 3. I am a veggie, DH isn't, but as I am involved in 99% of what they eat, they 99% don't eat meat.

I have no real objections to them eating meat (I'm not thrilled, but I get that it's not the end of the world and their father sometimes gives them meat, poultry or fish) but I do have very real and firmly held objections to them eating the kind of meat you get at nursery and children's parties. Those little sausages? Blehh! And pork pies and arse end chemical battery antibiotic yuck nuggets. No. Even dh prefers to say that the children are vegetarian at parties, and they pass on the processed crap.

Processed meat crap is so much more offensive to my mind than skittles and crisps.

I'm with Valhalla. I'm veggie and DD will be veggie. DH is a meat eater but eats mainly veggie because I cook. I think it may be a bit different depending on whether you're a health veggie or an ethical veggie. I can see that a health veggie might be able to relax the 'rules' occasionally in respect of their LOs but for an ethical veggie, the thought of their LO putting corpse in their mouth is pretty revolting. I have no issues about DD feeling like the odd one out. I'm hoping she wil grow up to be proud of being veggie and the 'difference' will be something that makes her special not odd.

The thing is, though, I don't think that we have the right to place our morality on our children. Just as I would not force my children to accept my religious beliefs, I wouldn't force my vegetarianism on them either.

I made a conscious decision when I was about 14 to become a vegetarian and have been one ever since. I don't eat gummy sweets or jelly or marshmallows or any of those other things, but nor do I really eat quorn or whatever because I feel no need for a meat substitute. BUT, I don't expect my kids to follow unquestioningly in my footsteps. My kids don't find it confusing or difficult, they have known from a very young age, why I don't eat animal products, why I boycott fur and leather. They also know why I campaign for things like CND, Friends of the Earth and others. But they are free to make up their own minds. I know many people won't agree with this stance, but it is the approach I take to everything. And I always feel that by trying to exert a lot of control or by making things contraband, we just make them seem more attractive and mystical to children.

But we all give them our morality, until they can form their own. Thats what parenting is. you are just picking and choosing what areas you are imposing and which not.
You don't say to a 2-3 year old " do you think you should be hitting your brother? I don't, but you search your conscience and see how you feel about it". No, you say, we don't hit, hitting isn't nice, like you say be kind to people and don't steal or lie or any number of things from big to small matters.
What they eat is just an extention of the same thing.

This is a very interesting thread for me, as my DSS is vegetarian - or rather, the child of a vegetarian (to use some of the terminology from here) with similar views to Vallhala.

DH and I are not vegetarian, but have always respected the views of DSS's mother. We were perfectly willing to feed DSS a vegetarian diet, but she refused to believe we could/would do it 'properly' so for the first 3 or 4 years of contact she sent a pack-up when he came to stay with us.

She also takes sweets out of party bags, and the cake - in fact her rule is that unless she KNOWS food is vegetarian (ie can see the packaging) then DSS doesn't eat it. So no party buffet at all.

Thankfully the court ruled that as we were happy to give DSS a vegetarian diet the pack-ups should stop and things much happier now.

I do wonder, out of interest, whether people who tell their DC's the 'truth' about fluffy baa lambs etc also tell them what would happen to lambs etc if everyone was a veggie?

"Surely by taking your approach you're making life far more complicated than it needs to? Certainly if there's a message to be heard about ethical/organic farming it will be lost on 99% of children when they can eat the gummy sweets at the party but not at home?"

Agree with Vallhala on this - my two are veggie and they don't eat meat at parties etc because, well, then they wouldn't be vegetarians.

But it does depend on your reasons for choosing a veggie diet. If it's for ethical reasons then it's not logical to "break the rules" at parties. But if it's a purely a health thing then I can see it might feel different.

BTW parties are easy for veggies: cheese sandwiches, crisps, ice cream, cake etc fine.

DD knew from about 3yo that jelly and haribos were out of bounds. I can't swear that she has absolutely never eaten these things but she has always avoided sausages and ham sandwiches etc.

Stressedmum
eating meat is just as much a moral and ethical choice as not eating it though. Just as atheism / religion is. Being totally neutral about everything until DC can choose for themselves is admirable but pretty much impossible. I made a choice for DS that the right thing is to avoid meat, his father thinks the right thing is for him to eat fish, so that's what we do. Neither position is the 'default', nor is eating meat, they are all value judgements that we, as parents, make.

Genuine question: why exactly are some people pescetarians?

This is interesting because I am thinking of becoming veggie for health and for environmental reasons. We only eat organic meat now, probably 3/4 times a week and have explained to the children that this is ethically reared meat and the difference between this, and intensively produced meat.

They both take an interest and ds(9)also would like to become veggie. Dd (11) will eat anything that's put in front of her and spends a lot of time with my folks who don't eat meat but do eat fish so I know she won't complain.

If they decide to become veggie then it will be up to them what they choose at parties etc. as they are a bit older.

I have friends who's kids were brought up veggie and I used to make the whole party veggie if they were coming... sosmix for sausage rolls etc (incidentally, no-one else ever noticed there was no meat!)

Does anyone know a really good cookbook to get me started?

Sorry... got off the point somewhat....

When children are very small, we make value judgements for them but with, hopefully, the aim of giving them the tools to make their own judgements later on. When my children were little and hit each other I would always ask them if they would like it if someone hit them. Obviously, they wouldn't. Sure, I said that hitting isn't nice, it hurts and it isn't something that we do, but that on it's own doesn't give them the tools to make decisions for themselves. I still take this approach to things; would you like it if youe brother played Courtney Pine at 200 decibels, so that you can't hear Hannah Montana? Would you like it if your sister scribbled all over your favourite story? that sort of thing. I find that it puts a bit of a different light on things.

As for vegetarianism, I still think that it should be a personal choice. Being a veggie isn't a default setting for humanity, it isn't what our bodies were designed for. It is an active choice based on your personal understanding of the issues involved. Eating meat is also a choice based on your understanding of the issues involved. For example, I have no problem with my family eating rose veal, because what would happen to the male dairy calves otherwise? But I would never deal with white veal at all. A small child can't make these kind of decisions for himself, but he should be given experience and information from all camps to allow him to make an informed decision for himself, when he is able.

As an aside, yes, I do tell my kids what would happen to all the little animals if no one ate meat. I have explained it in detail to my 3 youngest and my 2 elder boys are quite capable of working it out for themselves. I also make the effort to ensure that all our meat is ethically reared and all our dairy products are organic, while explaining to my children why and showing them the difference between intensive farming and more extensive/organic methods. This gives all my kids the tools to make informed decisons for themselves

Personally, I don't believe that parenting is about passing on our morality. I believe it is about equiping our children to form their own and giving them the tools to live successfully within society.

Gerontius - good question. I've never eaten fish myself so am vegetarian. However, with my now 2 year old DD, we had done some research about the benefits of fish oil on brain development and so felt it would be a good idea for her to eat it. My daughter loves fish. If she chooses to not eat fish or to eat meat when she's older, that's her call.

Gerontius-
Ethically, not a lot of point! My DS is pescatarian (though fish in a blue moon) because DH wouldn't agree to going the whole hog so I compromised. Fish isn't as abhorrent to me as meat, maybe because the rest of my family all eat it.

Health wise, fish is V good for you, (not that you can't get that good stuff elsewhere) but it's an easy and healthy source of protein and good fats for small people.

Stressed, we are singing from the same hymn sheet, both being veggie, but I'd disagree that we are necessarily designed to eat meat. Humans manage absolutely fine without ever eating meat, so we are omnivores, meaning we can naturally survive on a meat based, occasional meat, or meat free diet. Clever

Depends on what your views are as to what would happen if certain animals weren't bred to be stunned with a not always efficient captive bolt gun and then killed or had their throats slit and eaten by humans. The view held by many, perhaps most 'ethical' vegetarians is that there would be less commercial interest in these animals, less animal husbandry and thus less of these animals in existance.

We'd still see them, just not as many. After all, we don't eat foxes or elephants but they haven't died out.

I can live with that. My DC have known all this since they were very small, just as they have known that those who eat port, beef, etc, are eating the bloodied bodyparts of dead animals.