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In This Chapter

◆ What “vegan” means to you

◆ Talking points for tough stuff

◆ Be a family on a mission

◆ If at first you don’t succeed, try again

At first glance, the idea of feeding vegan kids seems straightforward: don’t give them any food or drinks made from or by animals. Period.

Then we enter the real world.

Case in point: imagine yourself at a gathering of parents and toddlers where the host has assembled a lovely—but mostly nonvegan—snack table. You are standing near the table talking to a vegan friend and her 3-year-old son. In the midst of your conversation, the little guy steps toward the snack table, paws a carrot stick, and is about to dip it into some obviously nonvegan cheesy dip. Mom lunges at her son, grabbing the erroneously dipped carrot out of his hand, and practically shouts, “Don’t eat that!” startling him and everyone else nearby.

This, unfortunately, is a true story—and not the ideal way to handle your child’s food faux pas. In this chapter, we take a look at some situations vegans find themselves in and offer some help dealing with them.

What’s Vegan Enough?

In an interview on Salon.com, Jeffrey Masson, author of The Face on Your Plate: The Truth About Food,describes himself as “veganish” because he occasionally slips up when he’s not at home and “accidentally eats, say, a cookie prepared with milk.” The article continues: “This vegan’s not the sort of purist who would make a scene in public by spitting out an offending morsel.”

In an ideal world, most vegan parents would rather their kids eat vegan 100 percent of the time. And in our poll of more than 60 vegan families, about 40 percent said they actually do meet that goal. Another 28 percent of respondents’ kids eat vegan more than 90 percent of the time. And for another 20 percent, more than 75 percent of their diet is reportedly vegan in a typical week.

Whatever ideal we set for ourselves and for our children, we can help them be healthy, provide compassionate food choices, and still not become neurotic about food. Vegan or omnivorous, stressful food environments can contribute to eating disorders in families, which is never desirable. Raising vegan kids does not require yelling, grabbing, or stress.

Making the Best of the Situation

Raising vegan children in a world that remains largely carnivorous is still a challenge, if not quite as hostile as it once was. When it comes to kids and their constantly changing stages, tastes, moods, and mistakes, veganism need not be seen as an all-or-nothing, win-or-lose proposition. There’s room for error, for taking two steps forward and one step back, for making the best possible choice from the options at hand. In our family, we call this the BPO—the best possible option.

Vegan Vocab

When you have to make a less-than-perfect food decision for your child because of social circumstance, time pressure, or lack of preferred veg choice, you may have to go with the BPO, the best possible option. No guilt or shame here. Then reassess what you could do next time to be better prepared with a vegan option.

Especially at first, aim for patterns, not perfection. Look at the grand scheme of your child’s overall diet. Don’t analyze every morsel he puts in his mouth. The kinder you can be with yourself and your child, the more likely you both will continue to progress and enjoy the vegan way of life.

Consider this example: you and your 4-year-old child are playing in the park with relatively new friends. You’re both invited to come back to the friend’s house for a casual lunch. Your child has already eaten the vegan snack bag you packed (see Chapter 15). Snack bag consumed, when he’s ready for lunch, you don’t have an alternative on hand. Upon arrival, the friend’s mom offers the kids ham sandwiches, cheese cubes, soda crackers, and grapes on a tray with chocolate milk. You thank the mom, decline the sandwich, offer the grapes and crackers to your child, and ask for water or juice instead of milk. If your child snags a piece of cheese, you may or may not suggest he put it down,