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If your goal is to be a 100 percent vegan family, rejoice on those days when you and your child’s diet hit 100 percent vegan. The days when he’s at 90 percent, be thankful he’s still eating healthier and more compassionately than most. When it’s a 75 percent day, you may want to look for ways to avoid those particular BPO-inducing situations next time. The most important element is staying on your family’s path, being enthusiastic about where it leads, and becoming more compassionate to every living being, including yourself and your child.

Of course, every family has to set their own outer limits of what they can and cannot accept. That’s where the mission statement and the talking points come in handy. Continue to seek and find a positive balance for yourself, your child, and your family so vegan eating is a gift, rather than a chore. You define your own success.

The Least You Need to Know

◆ Being a vegan family doesn’t have to mean becoming neurotic about food. Stay positive, flexible, and forgiving with your child’s food choices.

◆ Go to the BPO—best possible option—when in a situation where 100 percent vegan choices aren’t available.

◆ Create a vegan family mission statement to help everyone discuss, agree upon, and clarify your individual brand of veganism.

◆ If your family or your child leaves veganism behind for a time, it’s never too late to get back on track.

Chapter 3

Dealing With Real-World Dilemmas

In This Chapter

◆ Problems with picky eaters

◆ Sticky family and friend situations

◆ Nonvegan authority figures: doctors, childcare providers, and teachers

Beyond home sweet home, there’s a big, burly, carnivorous world you and your children must operate within every day. A lot of myths about veganism float around our society largely unchecked (see Chapter 4 for more info on that). It’s important to know how to talk to other people in your child’s life about her diet, especially when these people may not know much about veganism. Some will be curious, others worried, while others may unfortunately be downright hostile.

In this chapter, we give you tips for how you and your child can talk confidently about vegan eating with everyone from non-vegan extended family to new neighbors. Learn how to open the lines of communication with daycare providers, teachers, and doctors—especially doctors. Because the nonvegan physician/vegan parent relationship can be touchy (depending on how informed your doctor is about vegan diets), we offer a doctor-approved prescription that will help prevent any misunderstandings between you and your child’s physician.

Social situations can present dilemmas for vegan parents and kids as well, but after reading this chapter, you and your child will have what it takes to handle them gracefully. But first, let’s tackle the trickiest issue of all for vegan parents, one that’s closer to home … in fact, in your home: the picky eater.

The Picky Eater

Even if your child is on board in theory, if she falls into the picky eater category, it may be a challenge to be sure she eats the variety of foods she needs for both proper calorie intake and all essential nutrients (whether she’s vegan or omnivorous). In this section, we offer help for turning your picky eater into the next Discovery Channel roving exotic food taster. Okay, maybe you can’t coax her into becoming quite that adventurous, but this information will provide maximum nutrient benefit from minimum adaptations to her diet, which is sometimes your best bet with picky kids.

If you’re raising a picky eater, being a vegan family (and a patient parent) becomes exponentially more difficult. It may be a toddler going through an “eat as little as I can possibly get away with” phase. Or a first-grader who has decided that all food she eats must be warm—not hot, and definitely not cold—nor will she even consider eating anything that has crusts, peels, or seeds. Your picky eater may be a tween who “doesn’t like eating dinner anymore” and eats peanut butter and jelly for breakfast