So it Begins...

Last night was the first night of Early Childhood Family Education (ECFE). It's a thing we do on Monday nights. Basically it's a way for Anna to interact with a whole bunch of kids, since she doesn't go to daycare. It's nice for us too, since the parents separate from the kids and talk about parenting.

For the first night of class the parents stayed with their kid(s) the whole time, just to get them used to the idea of being there in hopes that when we separate next week it won't turn into a meltdown.

At the end of playtime all the kids sit around a big table and have snacks and a sippy cup of water. My wife and I let all the teachers know ahead of time that Anna doesn't eat non-vegan things and they were all really cool about it. Basically what it came down to is she can have the Cheerios. That's about it. The Goldfish have cheese in them. The Bunny Grahams have honey in them. So Cheerios it is.

Anna loves Cheerios. In fact, I once used Cheerios as a vehicle for peas since she wouldn't eat the peas on their own. I called them Pearios.


Needless to say, they are one of her favorite things to eat. So we didn't think giving her just the Cheerios would be a problem and for the most part it wasn't. But she did look over at what the other kids were eating and we could tell she was wondering why she wasn't eating that. I mean, the Goldfish were the colored kind. Bright colors like purple and red and orange. How long will boring old brown Cheerios be able to contend with that?

Anna ate her Cheerios while my wife and I hovered and held our breath in hopes that she wouldn't demand the cute bunny and fish snacks. There was a point where the kid to her left was chowing down and somehow half of a Goldfish ended up close to Anna. I saw her eyeing it, but I didn't want to intervene. I guess I wanted to let her decide to not pick it up, instead of me deciding for her.

I do this quite a bit at home. She will stand in front of a plant and look at it and I know that she's contemplating pulling off a leaf or grabbing the stem and pulling the whole plant off the table. But I just let her stand there and let her work it out on her own and I only intervene if she actually grabs the plant. This hardly ever happens.

But she did pick up the half-goldfish and before I could get to her hands she had it in her mouth. End of the world? No. Do I regret not preemptively acting? Kinda. But I need to come to terms with the fact that these things will happen. In fact, they're going to happen quite often in Anna's early years, before she knows to ask if something is vegan before she eats it (and yes, things like this might happen even after she knows how to ask and even after we tell her that we don't eat non-vegan foods).

So what is a vegan parent to do? Sure, I need to come to terms with the fact that these things will happen, but that doesn't mean that I should just sit back and make no attempt to decrease the likelihood of these occurrences. I went shopping at Target after ECFE and as far as I can tell all of the Goldfish varieties have cheese in them. So bringing vegan Goldfish to class is out of the question. Also, I looked for Bunny Grahams without honey, and the kind that didn't have honey in them did have milk in them (except for the chocolate ones, and I don't think the teachers or parents would be too excited about giving kids chocolate at 7 at night). So I'm on the lookout for vegan bite-sized treats. If you have any ideas let me know.

Another option is to ask the teachers to keep a closer eye on Anna. We trust them to take care of our kids for an hour, why not trust them to monitor what goes in their mouths? I may have a one-to-one chat with the main teacher next Monday and ask her to just be more aware of the situation and to make a reasonable effort to keep the non-vegan foods out of my daughter's mouth.

The most extreme option would be to take Anna out of the class. This option is not on the table. I won't sacrifice my child's socialization for vegan purity. The best we can do is explain to her at every turn what we do and do not eat and why (age-appropriately, of course).

So it begins. The first in what I'm sure will be a long line of non-vegan things that end up in Anna's stomach.

Actually, now that I think of it, my wife told me that Anna ate a whole Goldfish a couple weeks ago at a play-date.

Dammit.