Practically 9 year old expressing wanting to be vegetarian but barely eats already- how to sway?
![[Post New]](/jforum/templates/default/images/icon_minipost_new.gif){kind=icon}
Anonymous
|
Some good ideas here about education, making lists etc. Protein really isn't too big of an issue. A good multi vitamin will help with any B12 issues. It may help you to think of the week rather than the day in terms of nutrients/balance. I caution against over obsessing/discussing it though and I think viewing it weekly may help with that.
However, it sounds like you need to rule out an eating disorder before going down the vegetarian path. We've known kids as young as grade 2 develope eating disorders. Both our kids decided within 6 months of each other to become vegetarians around the same age and a bit older than your daughter. DS is a picky eater - probably some sensory issues there. He also never really liked meat prior to becoming veg. He's hit puberty and is still a jagged eater but is ravenous at times. He is doing great - growing tall and very muscular. Does drink gallons of milk. We still work on encouraging a healthy diet because it's an ongoing learning process for them. |
Anonymous
I have an 8 year old and 2 other children. I didn't say she had an ED. I stated that there are issues to be wary of here. |
Anonymous
So you caution against over-obsessing and then say the OP has to rule out an eating disorder before she lets her child become vegetarian. Ironic. |
Anonymous
This isn't my post (original poster who discussed ED). It's someone else. I have to say that you are the one obessing and pathologizing, (and getting nasty) at this point. I made one point. That's all. OP could read my post, reject it, and go on her way if it had no application to her life. You came back with how many posts? Two? Three? Accusing me of pathologizing, obsessing about ED...whatever. I'm sorry that this hurt a nerve. But my post was simply a post. That's all. |
Anonymous
|
NP here -- my first thought was also some budding disordered eating. When OP wrote about foods her DD won't eat I immediately thought of control issues. Being a vegetarian (and I am one myself, so I don't think its inherently bad) is way to exercise more control. At the very least, this is a kid who is highly focused on food and that can be a red flag. I'm not saying OP's DD has an eating disorder, just that this is something she should be mindful of for the future.
If I were OP I would take this to the pediatrician. Its likely that the pediatrician will either say its a bad idea at this point or that there have to be some very specific guidelines. In which case OP can lay down the law as coming from the doctor and make it less of a power struggle thing. It will also get OP's DD on the doctor's radar screen if there are future issues. |
Anonymous
Okay, point taken and I'm sorry if I offended you. How's this? If the OP's daughter really "barely registers" on height and weight charts, she should already be talking to her pediatrician. If she suspects disordered eating, she should talk to her pediatrician. If she wants advice on how to implement a healthy vegetarian diet, she might want to talk to an RD. Those might be better avenues than DCUM if she's interested in professional advice. |
Anonymous
| And if you want to see some real pathologizing, check out the "over-reacting son" thread! |
Anonymous
NP here. OP said her DD is "barely on the charts for height & weight". That doesn't necessarily mean she is underweight. She may be completely height/weight proportional & just short for her age. Being on the very low end of the charts doesn't automatically make a child underweight, just like being on the very high end on the charts doesn't necessarily make a child overweight. For instance, a child who is 99th percentile for height & 80th for weight, for instance,is likely closer to being "underweight" than a child who is in the 2nd percentile for height & the 1st percentile for weight (I say "likely" only because, due to variations in build, amount of muscle mass, genetics, etc., "ideal" healthy weights obviously vary, even among those the same height, gender & age). I've also know a ton of kids that age who don't like fruits or vegetables, particularly the latter. I'm not saying that OP's DD doesn't have an eating disorder, just that, as someone who has had a very close family member who developed anorexia at an early age (she's now, thankfully,fully recovered) & who works with kids with various emotional issues, including some with eating disorders, I don't see any glaring red flags in OP's post indicating a likely eating disorder. OP,I agree with the PP that suggested consulting your DD's pediatrician about this.He or she should be able to address any concerns you may have about your DD possibly becoming a vegetarian &/or about her eating habits in general & can, if necessary or appropriate, provide a recommendation for a registered dietician you,your DD, your DH &/or anyone else who will be preparing/supervising a lot of your DD's meals can meet with. FWIW,I decided to become a vegetarian shortly before turning 9 for animal rights reasons, too.My stepmother (who raised me & is basically my mother) is a pediatrician & wasn't terribly concerned; she actually kind of saw it coming because I loved animals, was aware of where meat came from (I'd already started refusing to eat veal a year earlier) & was, perhaps due to having a human rights lawyer for a father, always kind of a "born activist",so to speak. She & my father nonetheless spoke to my own pediatrician about this, just to be sure, & he was okay with it, as well, as long as we (my dad,stepmother & I) met with a registered dietician for a consult on meeting growing kids' nuitritional needs on a vegetarian diet.We met with the RD once, she went over some possible areas of concern (vitamin B12 was the main one), recomended a book to my parents about raising vegetarian kids (I don't remember the name of it but, given this was the mid-90s,there are likely more up-to-date books out there now anyway &, these days,you can surely find a ton of information, recipes,etc. online) & a book with several nutritious vegetarian recipes that whole family would likely enjoy & sent us on our way. Almost 20 years later, I am still a vegetarian. Other than a brief spell of anemia in college, which my doctor said may it may not have been related to my vegetarianism (a lot of carnivores develop anemia, too) & was easily fixed with iron pills & adding extra some fortified cereal & spinach to my diet, I've never had any issues related to my eating habits.I was always, & still am, quite underweight according to the charts but have always eaten plenty. Discounting the couple of months before my anemia was corrected & maybe a bad cold or stomach bug or 2 a year, I've also always been very energetic & very healthy.My weight continued along the same trajectory it had been on practically since birth once I became a vegetarian, I got my period right around the age I the doctor's predicted I would based on when my biological mother, two grandmothers & older sister started their's, etc. I'm just a naturally skinny person due to a high metabolism & genetics; my scrawny body has nothing to do with my being a vegetarian.I know vegetarians of all shapes & sizes & a vegetarian diet often contains as many, if not more, calories, as a nonvegetarian one. As long as your DD is willing to eat dairy products & eggs,beans,meat substitutes (I'd recommend Quorn products as they taste pretty good & are soy free; studies have shown that too much soy in one's diet can lead to thyroid issues & possibly an increase risk of breast & other cancers), etc, getting her necessary nutrients in shouldn't be much harder on a vegetarian diet than it was when she ate meat.A vegan diet, IMO, would be cause for concern, both from a nutrient standpoint & a coloric one.While it certainly can be done in a healthy manner,veganism is much more limiting than ovo-lacto vegetarianism & it would be much harder to get enough of everything a growing child, in particular, needs in, especially if she's picky.It would also likely require trips to specialty grocery stores & a larger food budget.If your DD wants to eliminate all animal products, IMO, I'd tell her she needs to wait on that & , if she still feels that way when she reaches a certain age (15 or 16 maybe?), you'll re-evaluate veganism as a possibility then. In terms of eating out, I rarely, if ever,have an issue finding vegetarian options on various menus.The fact that my "rule" from the beginning was that I won't eat anything with "a brain & feelings" was helpful in this regard because it means, that while many types of seafood are still out, things like shrimp & scallops are okay with me, which often increases my number of options at restaurants (especially during my family's annual trip to Cape Cod!). A couple of friends of mine who don't eat any seafood are still able to find something to eat on almost any menu but there options are definitely more limited (& your DD not liking most vegetables would further limit this) Perhaps you could see if your DD would be willing to adopt a similar criteria for what she eats so there will be more options available to her -- & to you,your DH &/or whomever does the grocery shopping meal/planning in your family! In my own family growing up, the whole family usually ate something meatless 2-3 nights a week ,which wasn't much of a change from before I became a vegetarian.The 2-3 nights a week the rest of the family was eating meat (we generally ate out about 1 or 2 nights a week, which accounts for the missing day(s)  ), I would eat the non-meat portions of the meal (potatoes or brown rice, vegetables,etc) & something easy to prepare would be substituted in for my meat/protein. So if the family was having chicken cutlets, I' d have a vegetarian chicken cutlets/party, if they were having tacos with ground turkey, I'd have black beans in place of the turkey, etc. It generally didn't add much time to the meal prep.Sometimes if dinner was already running late & it wasn't my turn to help with dinner,my dad or stepmother would call me into the kitchen a few minutes early anyway to heat up my veggie burger or whatever while they & whatever sibling it's turn it was to help finished with everything else, which,even then, I felt was perfectly fair, as it was my choice to become a vegetarian.This way,my vegetarianism didn't dictate the family menu nor did it prevent me from joining in on eating family dinners or allow me too much control over my food choices than is appropriate for a child.
Not eating enough fruit & vegetables is not a good thing, of course, but I don't see how eating meat helps in this area. If she has a couple of kinds of fruit she likes (or at least tolerates), we have her have one of those with her breakfast every morning so your sure she's getting at least some fruit in every day.If you pack her a lunch &/or snack for school, send a piece in oat least one of those, as well. Offer her one of the fruits she likes as a snack after school/on the weekends when possible. In order to export to expand the number of fruits she eats, you could serve different fruits as dessert after dinner a few times a week. Tell her she doesn't have to eat all of it, just try it.Over time, she may very well discover, through repeated exposure, that she likes some fruits she didn't care for in the past (I, for instance, always hated bananas as a kid--I think it was largely a texture thing--but decided I now liked them around 13 & have eaten them all the time ever since). I'd use a similar tactic with vegetables:make a rule that she must eat at least one, good-sized bite of whichever vegetable is served with dinner every night. Try to serve the ones she does like fairly often for now.If you &/or your other family members like different ones than she does, that needs to be taken into consideration,too, of course, but, depending on how large your family is & how picky the other members are, I'd try to serve the vegetables she likes at least 2-3 times a week & just have her try at least a (good-sized) bite of the other vegetables the other nights. There are a lot of "hidden vegetables" in a lot of vegetarian products, too, so that might help, from a nutrition standpoint, until she expands her palate. Vegetables are often an acquired taste that one "grows into".Two of my cousins, for instance,HATED all vegetables as kids & would only eat the one bite required of them (& they did that very reluctantly).My aunt & uncle had to find all kinds of ways to "sneak" vegetables into their diets (smoothies make with V8 splash, casseroles & breads with vegetables in them so ground up as to be unnoticeable, soups,etc). They both started eating more vegetables--willingly!--sometime in late middle school/early high school.At 33 &28,the older one still isn't a huge fan of some vegetables but does eat at least one of the 3-4 he likes everyday & the younger one actually loves almost all vegetables now, generally eats them with both lunch & dinner (&sometimes even for snacks) & will even often choose an entree salad or grilled portobello mushroom over a burger or a side of steamed vegetables over French fries at a restaurant. So there is some hope for your DD on that front, OP! |
Anonymous
| OP you would be out of your mind to allow this. |
Anonymous
OP this was my son 5 years ago (age 7). His weight plummeted. Now at age 12 he's at 2%ile BMI for his age and has no appetite. It is a dangerous situation and has become entrenched. If I could go back in time I would have tried harder to make him eat meat. |
Anonymous
|
Say no, don't let her become a vegetarian.
Tell her she can decide when she goes to college, that way, she will already be at her full growth. |
Anonymous
|
I don't see anything wrong with respecting your daughter's decision and allowing her to try it out. Some people just don't like meat and maybe she would actually eat more if there were more varieties of food that she liked.
FWIW, I for some strange reason decided to become a vegetarian when I was a kid. I didn't like the taste of meat. Luckily, my family accepted it (while not actually believing I would actually stay veg), and my parents made delicious vegetarian meals for me. I was also a small, skinny kid but I was given other sources of protein from milk, cheese, nuts and a variety of lentils and beans. |
Anonymous
| OP here- thank you for the multiple replies. DD's an animal lover- she cries if she sees animals in shelters etc, she has read and really knows a lot about animals - she says she wants to work with animals. DD is very emotional about animals. What triggered this is I said we were having lamb- that set it off. She refused to eat - we have had lamb every so often as a treat and she enjoyed it before. She is off the charts on low weight and height- she can wear clothes 2 years younger than her actual age. She has been picky as a baby due to her reflux, but overall, we have worked with her and she does so much better now but still= we have a lot of form factors issues and new foods/limited foods. We no longer eat kid foods (chicken fingers, fish sticks, pizza) for dinner- more like pasta carbonara, chicken pad thai, quiche - but everything has it's place (spinach ok only in quiche or with eggs, no bean sprouts, can't show peppers or onions, doesn't like (the sight of) tomatoes so we hide them) and so on.. She won't eat cold cut sanwiches, picks at grilled cheese- it's a constant struggle. We don't give her big snacks hoping she'll eat more but her stomach is just tiny at this point. She ate a burger tonight- she wouldn't eat chicken (we ate out tonight). I'm dreading the emotional connection going forward. thank you for all posts, I am reading them and digesting it all. |
Anonymous
|
OP, I have been a vegetarian almost continuously since 16 (except when pregnant). I did it for animal reasons, and because I just lost a taste for meat, but I also had body image issues and disordered eating. So I can attest to the link b/w restricting food categories and eating disorders. But I don't think you should fight her on this. You don't want food to be a battleground, and even if it is strange to you, vegetarianism is not at all uncommon, as others have said.
My teenage son decided to go vegan a couple years ago abruptly after finding the PETA website (don't let your daughter discover this!). I eventually convinced him to reincorporate eggs and dairy, but it is hard to justify given how those animals are treated. Unfortunately he doesn't like fruit and is indifferent to veggies, too, so he is a junk food vegetarian. Except for the veggie dinners I make (pasta, veggie burgers, stir fries with tofu, quiche, veggie chili--there are lots of good options), he lives on pizza, mozzarella sticks, ice cream and cookies, potato chips, bagels and croissants, etc. This is probably not helpful to you except to encourage you to help your daughter develop a repertory of healthy meal and snack go-tos while she is still young. |
Anonymous
| You can make a deal with her that if she doesn't eat a meal she drinks Pediasure instead. |