what to do about family...

iVillage Member
Registered: 05-01-2003
what to do about family...
2
Tue, 08-30-2005 - 7:06am

OK, here's something thats been on my mind as of late. obvisouly me and DH are vegans, and we'd like to raise our DD that way too. however, my family is going to be a stumbling block for us i think.

now DH and i have talked about letting ana try meat if she wants to...we see nothing wrong with that, and eventually if she decides to not be vegan or vegetarian after she's out of our care, thats fine with us (its her life afterall).

but i'm kind of worried that my mother will try and force her to eat meat and animal products when i'm not around. she's already confided in me what a big mistake it would be to raise ana vegan, she thinks its unhealthy. ten again, she also thinks its OK to smoke around babies...so there ya go. i have a hard enough time trying to keep her from smoking around ana, i don't even know what i'm going to do about food.

anyone else here have to go through this? any suggestions? since i have talked to the doctor about raising ana vegan i think i have some pretty good starting arguments agianst my mom...but i know it won't change her mind one bit anyway...

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-30-2005
Tue, 08-30-2005 - 9:56am

It's a non-issue w/ us. We made darned sure that everyone knew ahead of time that our child WOULD be a vegetarian. As a teen/adult he is welcome to come to his own decisions w/ his own money and in his own home. But, while he lives with us he's a vegetarian. He will NOT eat meat at others' homes. If it is found out that he has- then he will no longer have unsupervised visits w/ said family!

We do not let him "try" meat as, at 2 1/2, he has NO idea what is entailed in the entire "process" of animal-to-table. Once he can wrap himself around that, take part in it, accept that- he's welcome to eat meat outside of our home. But, I'm certainly not going to "numb" him to the "meat industry" by allowing his "tastebuds" to be the first deciding factor!

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-11-2005
Tue, 08-30-2005 - 5:59pm
I have that issue with Lily's dad's family.

Image hosted by Photobucket.com