Hi,

It’s the woman with the plant based husband again.

Our kids go to a preschool that serves vegetarian food at lunch. Our daughter doesn’t eat cheese because she chooses not to. Her younger brother does like cheese. When they came home from school my son reported that he had cheese on his bean tacos!

My husband got annoyed and said, “I’ll have to talk to the teacher about that.” I said I didn’t think it was a big deal if he had some cheese. This disagreement started last year when our son started school with his sister. I hadn’t known my husband was adamant about not wanting the kids to eat dairy. So when the teacher asked me if I minded if she gave him cheese at lunch, I said no. Then my husband found out about it and was upset. When I disagreed he was upset with me becaue “studies show a big link between dairy consumption and disease and etc.”.. I don’t remember the exact words.

I feed the kids whatever I’m cooking, which is sometimes meat, not usually cheese because it makes me gassy and ethically I used to say I’d rather be a steak than a dairy cow, but I had thought that they could eat it if they wanted to.

After he said he wanted to talk to the teacher and make her stop letting him have cheese I got upset and angry and my thought was, “That’s stupid and creates a lot of unnecessary drama”. Which of course… getting angry creates a lot of unnecessary drama. I also had thoughts like, “I don’t want to be *those* parents, and “his vegan rants are so embarrassing.” “ I didn’t agree to raise food restricted kids…” “This is why we don’t have friends…” Big negative drama spiral.

I’d like to not care but I do. And I don’t know how to settle this other than to give up my point of view, and work on the thoughts around that, but I’m not seeing how always letting someone else dictate an argument’s outcome is healthy for me. And in this situation then the teacher doesn’t know which parent to listen to.

I really feel stress around disagreeing with my husband, I don’t know if it’s programming from my parents where the “father’s word is law” or what. I think I make it mean I need to get small and my opinion doesn’t matter, but then I feel like I need to assert myself so I don’t just ball up and withdraw from resentment.

I’ve heard you say, “pick no battles”. Does that really apply when it comes to kids and how to raise them too? I don’t like never having a say. What to do here?