My 16-year-old daughter has recently gone vegan, due to her wanting to help out the earth more, and I’ve been extremely supportive. I promised to make her vegan meals alongside with my non-vegan meals. She was happy about that.
I’m a single dad, and I do all the cooking, cleaning, etc, and I get really tuckered out by the end of the day. Recently, work has been keeping me late with a bunch of new projects & documents, and by the time I get home, it’s almost around the time you’d eat supper, and I’m about ready to sleep. And on top of having to make MY meal, I have to make a whole seperate meal just for my daughter.
However, I would push through even if I was tired. After about 2 weeks of it, though I decided my daughter’s vegan diet was most likely a phase, as I’ve seen multiple people go through this vegan/vegetarian thing. I decided it was not worth breaking my back over, when it would be so much easier to just make one meal for us both.
I immediately let her know, and I told her my reasoning, and that in a few months, she’d probably not even remember the time when she had wanted to go vegan, and I just honestly couldn’t keep putting myself through extra labor. She called me a bad father straight away, and told me I was ignorant to her feelings and her diet was not my choice. I understand that, but I don’t feel her “diet” should make me have more work to do.
I finally told her I was not going to change my mind, and she could either eat the meal I made, or she could go buy her food herself. She continued to call me a huge AH.
So whats wrong? What should I do.
Here are what netizens think:
- You went from doing 100% of the work to stopping altogether with little notice. Try her making her own meals, or making some of the family meals vegan, or some kind of compromise. Telling her it’s just a phase and she’ll forget all about it in a few months was really condescending. She might have forgotten about being vegan–but she’ll never forget you being a jerk to her like that.
- What is it with people thinking that anyone under the age of 18 has no long-term memory? I can remember my childhood – including the legitimate phases I went through. Whether or not this is a phase, a 16yo is not going to have her memory erased by the Men In Black in a month’s time.
- this is something a lot of people fail to realize. we all go through a ton of phases through our life. just because they eventually end doesn’t mean they’re completely erased and mean nothing. when you think about it, there are so many things in life that don’t stick with us forever. high school is a phase that will eventually end. should we have just not cared about it? pets don’t live forever, and their existence in your home is a phase of your life, so should you just not care and never get a pet to begin with?