4 Tips On How To Transition Kids To A Vegan Lifestyle || CopperRed Photography
On January 1st 2020 we decided to flip from a full dairy, meat and egg diet to fully vegan along with our 6yr old, 3yr old and 10 month old. A year on and we are more determined to continue with this lifestyle than ever and loving it. Here is how we helped our kiddo’s transition over with ease.
1. Talk about your ‘why’ as a family
There are many reasons that people choose to transition to a vegan lifestyle but more often than not something struck a cord with you and fuelled you with a passion to do so. For us it was educating ourselves on the environmental damage caused by the farming of animals and their food. The more we learnt we found ourselves challenged by the animal welfare aspect too.
We chose to have age appropriate conversations with our kids as to why we were moving away from eating animal based products and believe this was crucial. We approached these conversations casually over the dinner table rather than a dramatic family meeting or big sit down in order to minimize the severity of the change. Talking with our kids casually allowed them to ask the questions they had and kept it very low key.
2. Don’t make a big thing out of the food switches
I feel this may be the most important aspect of transitioning young kids to the vegan lifestyle. Try to switch out food items without even telling them you’ve done so. We found that the bigger the deal we made out of the item change the more they didn’t want to try it or they approached it with greater hesitation and already convinced they wouldn’t like it. We switched out the cows milk to soy milk and never mentioned it, we just put their cereal in front of them that morning made with the soy milk and they thought we’d used a special chocolate milk, they loved it.
3. Try lots of recipes
Over the last year we have tried countless recipes, some were hits and some were flops. My tip is to just keep trying. Google opens the door to a world of options that are truly endless so if you have a family favourite that you’re struggling to get right just keep going. For us it took a long time to find a Mac n Cheese recipe that was a hit, I must’ve tried 6 or 7 before we landed on the one that’s practically inhaled at the dinner table.
4. Buy replicas for packed lunch boxes
The school packed lunch was a big deal for us. During our first year we had one kid in Grade 1 and the other was starting JK in the September and so we had to discover how to send them off with an enjoyable packed lunch. Thank goodness the development of plant based products is soaring and our local store is adding more items on the weekly.
My goal was to try not to change out their lunches as much as possible. I didn’t want our oldest going to school one day with cheese sandwiches, a yoghurt tube and cake bar and then we switch to vegan and he’s taking some strange chick pea salad. He’s a kid, and he enjoys his usual lunch so I found the plant based products that were as close as possible. We managed to find plant based cheese slices, dairy free yogurt (we have to tub it, yet to find tubes), and I make vegan muffins that are school friendly so there’s still the occasional treat inside there too.
Remember that so much that you don’t think of is already vegan and so the changes are so few. Fruit, bread, jam, and seeds were all school lunch items before we transitioned.
If I could hand you the best tips I wish I’d had going into the change it would be to not make it into a bigger deal than it is, find the vegan food alternatives to what they already enjoy and try to have general, everyday conversations with your kids that match their level of understanding. You’ll be surprised how easy kids accept change.
Good luck on this journey with your family. Please come and follow me over on Instagram for more tips and behind the scenes.
Caroline x