Trying not to influence your childs veggie decision (by veggie parents)

Meet the veggies, meet the veggies...they grow here in my nursery!

We are both vegetarian, Readitdaddy is allergic to meat and I just plain don't like it after going through that fussy teenage stage. We both eat fish so not true 'veggies'.

When I fell pregnant we both decided that our child would be brought up as a meat eater and they can make up their own mind as they get older as to what they would like to be, I didn't expect that to happen at the age of 5 though.

Princess C has up to now always enjoyed dinner at her grandparents and happily eaten what ever has been put in front of her. At home we used to buy sausage rolls or ham for sandwiches. But over time she has slowly gone off one item after another. First sausage rolls, then chicken, then ham and now its a struggle to get her to eat any meat, telling us that she is vegetarian. This is the girl who until a few months ago would eat chorizo and peperoni, anything with a bit of flavour to it.

She also won't eat meat substitutes like quorn or tofu either telling us that its chicken. Give her veggie sausages and shes worried its meat and so is a bit wary even of those.

She is mostly a good little eater, we haven't had too much trouble there thankfully but this decision has stumped us as we weren't expecting it to happen so early. Now we are left wondering where to go with her decision. do we try to offer meat to her where we can or accept that she is now a veggie too and only offer her that option?

Daddy's take on it

We've seen some amazing examples of kids going off the rails with food and we always strove to ensure that Princess C would be exposed to lots of interesting food. Quite often I'm the one who prepares meals so with a fussy eater (mummy) and now a fussy would-be vegetarian (Princess C) my work just got that much harder. What worries me also is that we're going to find the going even tougher when she goes back to school - particularly if we opt back in to school dinners (as the only sandwich filling she'll now eat is tuna, and you can't just eat tuna every single day can you?)

There are a ton of interesting food options available to vegetarians but when you get home at night and literally have about 10 minutes to get something together before bedtime, it's no fun at all. Mummy bloggers who convince you that it's all so easy to do all your baking and making at weekends, freezing everything ahead so you can just pop it in the microwave and serve up interesting meals just have no idea what the average weekend is like when both parents work a full working week, and have to cram in all the other chores into a weekend.

So no doubt, I'll be trawling recipe pages and suggestions for quick stuff, and by the look of things, we're going to be in serious hot water if we try to visit other countries that think 'vegetarianism' is some new fad that will never quite catch on.