Mom sneakily eats meat in front her son; 'Is it wrong to trick him like this?' AITA?

"AITA for trying to sneakily eat meat in front of my son?"

I'm 40 (F). My husband is a vegetarian and I am not. He was vegetarian when we met and I have always respected it and he has always not been bothered by me eating meat. At home I have always eaten vegetarian since we cohabited, out of convenience for eating together.

When we had a child (now 4) we decided to raise him vegetarian. It is a strong belief of my husband, a neutral thing for me. I wanted to respect his beliefs. I do the cooking and cook vegetarian food for our son.

My son is v. smart and began to pick up whether I was vegetarian or not from 2 and a half onwards - this was developmentally earlier than I was expecting. Arguably, I didn't deal with it the best way initially.

I told my son I would go vegetarian after he said things like "I want you to be vegetarian and kind to animals, mummy".

This reasoning of his came from me - I have always tried to enhance my husband's views in my son by explaining were raising hom vegetarian as it's important to be kind to animals.

He conceptually understands death, from living in the countryside and knows that you eat dead animals if having meat. This is where this comment of his came from.

However, after telling my son I was vegetarian I still ate meat when not around him. Now to the AITA bit... I have, on occasion, snuck some meat into my order when eating out with him.

For example, having a sosauges sandwich and saying it was veggie sausages. I know it's wrong to lie to kids, but I thought of it as a white lie. I kicked the can down the road to deal with all this when he's older.

Today I ordered a ham and cheese sandwich and the waitress announced it on delivery. My son picked up on this and, not upset too much, but told me I'd done bad behaviour.

My husband was there and has told me he's furious at me. Not because of not being vegetarian, but because I lied to our son and then tried to sneak a bit of meat at lunch time.

I feel this whole thing has been tricky to navigate and I've never even had a thank you for recognition from my husband that I have tried. AITA?

Let's see what readers had to say:

ground writes:

The biggest problem here is when your kid starts school and gets the shit bullied out of him and/or getting into trouble with teachers (and being disliked by other parents) for trying to tell all the other kids they're bad for eating meat.

Raising him veggie is your choice, fine. Doing it by telling him it's bad to eat meat was absolutely the wrong thing to do. Lying to him made it worse.

You guys need to focus on undoing the damage and changing his mindset so that he understands different people can have different diets and that's okay.

And your husband is probably going to have to come to terms with the fact that once your kid has a healthy attitude about what people can eat, he's going to want to try meat at some point. ESH (except the kid).

lakasee writes:

NTA and honestly teaching him that you “are doing something bad” by eating meat is really unhealthy.

I hope your husband and you did research into the types of proteins that need to be substituted with vegetarian children. You can put them in severely malnourished state if you are aren’t being careful to make sure they are getting what they need.

This is why vegetarianism and veganism in children is such a controversial subject among pediatricians.

Either way, brainwashing him that someone is doing something bad by eating meat is not the way to go. Just be honest and say you like meat and choose to eat it.

faggjtyu writes:

YTA. You are going to confuse your kid, at the very least. He heard his parent, who teaches him what is right and wrong, say one thing and do another.

You don't actually believe what you are teaching him, and he could easily pick up on that. And instead of teaching him that different people exist, you are trying to trick him. This is not a healthy way to go about any of this.

inwp3d5o4 writes:

NTA. Although your “white lie”, had the obvious potential to have the exact consequences that it did, and you have to undo the ill effects that you have been pushing down the road for years now, it was done with pure intentions.

rockology writes:

YTA, less for the actual act, and more for not actually be truthful with your son about your own beliefs. You aren't actually vegetarian. You're just vegetarian at home for convenience. Your son can make toddler requests like "be kind to animals" all he wants. The appropriate answer there is that you believe it is ok to eat animals, and you do so when you are out.