A mother reflects on her son's decision to become a vegetarian at a young age and the challenges and compromises they faced as a family.
When I looked into the eyes of a young boy sincerely trying to use what little autonomy he had in the world, I didn’t have it in me to say, 'Too bad, kid. You get what you get.' A few months ago at a truck stop on a summer family road trip, my 14-year-old son announced that, after five years of being vegetarian, he would start eating meat again.Doesn't this make your life easier?” he asked. “I thought you would be happy.” I thought I would have been, too.
As an omnivore, I had dreaded cooking two dinners every night after he declared himself a vegetarian. At the time, he was 9 years old. I chalked his decision up to the chaos we all felt at the beginning of a global pandemic — the sense that the ground beneath our feet was crumbling. I figured the first time he smelled bacon sizzling in the oven, his conviction would dissolve. But that is not what happened. Instead, he sniffed the air and rather piously declared that he loved animals too much to eat them. While I’m happy to serve as our family cook, feeding a 9-year-old vegetarian wasn’t in the job description. I suppose I could have played the “as long as you live under my roof” card, which many parents do. But when I looked into the eyes of a young boy sincerely trying to use what little autonomy he had in the world, I didn’t have it in me to say, “Too bad, kid. You get what you get.” He clearly wasn’t going vegetarian to exert control or to make dinnertime hell for me, my husband and our daughter. I’d seen kids pull such stunts before, but this was different. He wanted to live according to his values. I admired that. And although he could make himself a quesadilla, scrambled eggs or pasta, if he was going to eat anything besides pale foods, it would be up to me to cook it. At first, my shopping list included lots of tofu and plant-based, meat-like product
Vegetarianism Parenting Family Dinner Values Compromise
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