The Complete Idiot's Guide to Vegan Eating for Kids - M.s.j., Dana Villamagna [19]
With a positive relationship established, if your child ever encounters a health issue related or unrelated to nutrition, you’ll be ready to address it with her physician without fear that being vegan will “come out.” (See Chapter 9 for what to do if you do run into the unlikely event that your child develops a diet-related health problem.)
Parent Trap
If you’ve taken all these steps, but after a few visits, you still don’t feel this particular doctor accepts your choice to be a vegan family, it’s time to find a new doctor.
When you find the right doctor and you handle the subject of your child’s vegan diet with openness and a partnering approach, not only will the physician likely be supportive of her diet, he may even ask you questions about childhood nutrition in the future!
Daycare and School Rules
The easiest way to find a veg-friendly daycare is through referrals from other vegan families. Or hire a child-care provider who is vegan or vegetarian herself. A daycare provider or center that accommodates children with food allergies will also likely respect a vegan child’s special restrictions.
You may have to spell out exactly what being vegan means to the provider: no meat, no eggs, no dairy. Believe it or not, some people still think chicken isn’t meat. Or that liquid egg substitute isn’t really eggs. Be sure to bring in vegan snacks or a special dessert for your child’s care providers every now and again to show that you value their work and you appreciate that they respect your requests.
Finding a vegan-friendly child-care provider is very similar to finding a daycare that’s supportive of breast-feeding. So if you’ve breast-fed and established a good child-care provider at that stage, you’re probably already with a respectful provider who will support your vegan choice for your new eater. If not, you’ve already gone through a similar process once and know you’re looking for …
Trust: Do you feel you can trust this person/organization to follow your instructions? Intuition plays in here.
That’s So Vegan
For an excellent step-by-step resource on how to choose a quality child-care provider, go to www.babycenter.com/0_how-to-find-good-daycare_5924.bc. Add your own questions about whether they’ll adhere to your child’s special dietary needs.
Open communication: Does the child-care provider send notes home daily to let parents know what the child ate, how much she slept and went to the bathroom (depending on age), and any significant happenings of the day? Or do you get time at pickup for a verbal re-cap, at least? Do you have the opportunity to write down instructions for them and ways to know they have been followed?
Open access:Can you drop in at any time to see how things are going for your child? This is critically important. If you show up unannounced, are you greeted with enthusiasm or like you’re intruding? If you show up one day and your child is drinking a carton of milk and eating cheese sticks, after you’ve been clear she doesn’t eat dairy, you can be quite certain that you need to re-assert your expectations or find another daycare.
When she’s out of daycare and into school, you’ll want to talk to her teacher about food in the classroom at the beginning of the school year. Because of the prevalence of childhood food allergies and religious pluralism, most schools are used to accommodating food restriction requests. Be sure to ask if there’s an established policy on accommodating food restrictions if you get any resistance from the classroom teacher.
Depending on where you live and how the school is operated, your requests may be different. It’s common for classrooms in some parts of the nation to pass around milk to children in lower grades