jorganic

As a parent with weird food tastes, I know that you need to be REALLY careful when feeding a "different" diet to your kids. This is not because different diets are wrong or whatnot, just that sometimes what may be a healthy amount of something for you, is not so for the child (because children need different things at different times), and if your doctor is unaware of said diet, then he will not know what warning factors to look for in a malnurished child. However if you make your doctor aware of the diet you use, and watch to make sure your child is getting the right amounts of minerals and vitamins and nutrients, you will be fine. You just need to be aware of what children need at what times (for instance: infants go through several growth spurts which you can predict pretty spot on. During these times the child may need more or less of various things. As long as they are receiving those, you are usually ok)

The hardest part of raising kids with a "different" lifestyle or eating style or what have you, is explaining to them in a way that seems fair and that they understand why they(we) do things differently then other families. This gets more and more hard as children reach school age and are exposed more to other kids then their own families each day. For instance, my mother never gave us refined sugar, which worked fine at age four when we didnt know any better, but was irksome by age eight when we had tasted twinkies, and knew most of the other children got them in their lunches every day. Also in my house, the children do not watch television, however they can watch movies or dvds or what have you. But this leaves them somewhat at a loss when it comes to saturday morning cartoons and what is currently cool.

For reference: I have two very good friends who were raised fully vegetarian and one vegan who to this day still hold strictly to it (no deviations ever). As for me, I am mostly so, but refuse to give up fish. And due to my health, I doubt I could ever go vegan. My doctor already has hysterics knowing how "bad" I eat at this point.

re: being careful. I forgot to point out that any parent should be aware of this. Its just that during growth spurts, in older children, they often need alot more protein and you may need to restructure your diet to include this. This can be easier in a "normal" meat inclusive diet since meat can contain alot of protein.