Transitioning my 3 year old daughter

[Lara]

Hi there. I've just joined the group and have been reading and getting to know all your different "virtual personalities" thru these discussions.
My husband, Johnny and I have been vegan for years. My 3 year old Isabelle is vegan. We have been slowly transitioning to more and more raw living foods over the last 3 weeks. Already I am losing weight and feeling a bit more energy than I have in 3 years!!!! I'd say we're only about 50-60% raw, but we're getting there.
My question is, have any of you found your children "detoxing" during the transition to more raw?? Isabelle is coughing and coughing up alot of mucous, but does not have a cold or flu. Otherwise she is her normal happy healthy self. She naturally gravitates to raw foods anyway, so this is not a difficult transition, except she misses her bagels and occasional tofu dog. But being the very reasonable and wonderful child she is, after I explained to her that these things make her cough and not sleep at night, she cheerfully moves on.

I'm not necessarily worried about her, just interested in your experiences in your journey(s) to raw. Thanks!

[Wendy]

Lara,

I don't have a child, so I can't give any advice on this issue. I wrote you a private message though earlier and if you click on User CP on the top of the screen in the orange area you can get to your email there (I didn't know about this feature for a whle, so I'm figuring you might not know either). Thanks!

[Lara]

I clicked on user cp and it said there were no private messages...maybe I'm doing something wrong??

[lvg4him]

We transitioned very slowly. I never noticed any detox except maybe in the bm. We did have one episode of high fevers and coughing up a lot of mucous, but I think that was an actual virus and not detox (although detox could have been happening at the same time). My kids have all been vegan too. I have a 5yo, 3yo and almost 2yo. The 2yo has been high raw since birth.

That is great that your child is so welcoming of eating this way. Mine are to a degree. And my 3yo is the best of all. She will even tell ME that she can't eat something because it is bad for you. Or she will tell me that she is healthy and strong because of the thing she is eating. It really is too cute.

Wish I could have been more helpful.

[heather]

i am interested to see the replies for this because i have a 3 year old that is hooked on soy nuggets and tofu dogs. he wont touch smoothies. loves salads some days, others he decided he doesnt. fruit is ok.

welcome !!!!
heather

[coffeesquirrel]

hmm as i am fasting this is really hard in fact as i am really just starting to change my life i have not forced my son (he's 4) to really give up anything he likes (which are burger and fries and bacon.. need i say more) when i first talked to him about eating healthier he kinda freaked out about the idea. he kept asking be about all his fav food and if he would still be allowed to eat it lol (mom is potatoes good for me) (is bacon) all night long lol. right now i'm working on me 1st then him but since he goes to daycare and spends a lot of time with his grandmother (who is not raw) i'm afraid i will not be able to do 100% raw with him for quite a while. anyone else had this prob? I'm sorry i've not been any more helpful actually not helpful at all. sorry :eek: coffeesquirrel

[lvg4him]

Heather,

My almost 2yo is the same way. Do you think that might be their bodies telling them what they need? ALthough she ALWAYS wants fruit :D, she has days where she will eat a whole cucumber and then not touch it again for months. Want a salad one day and not the next.

coffee - it is WONDERFUL that your child is asking about foods that are good/bad for him!!! I know that my children ask all the time. Even though they might be eating something that is bad for them. I will answer truthfully "No honey, that is not healthy." Sometimes they will stop eating it and sometimes they continue (I think it depends on how hungry they are at the time and if there is another yummy option available that they can see). Whenver they eat something healthy, they always talk about it for weeks. "I ate carrots and am going to have bright eyes are my eyes bright momma?" :D Too cute! But I would be honest with your son and work on the foods NOW because the longer you wait, the more difficult it will be on him. Starting out easy on you (just answering his questions) is a great first start! My kids will actuallly refuse food offered to them by grandparents because I have told them it is not good for them!! :) So when you do take the bacon away, he will understand because it is not healthy. fromsadtoraw has a bacon substitute recipe (though I have not tried it yet). Might be worth looking into.

HTH!

[coffeesquirrel]

hey if you ever run into the raw bacon recipie please let me know because that would be a great substitute.. thx cheers coffeesquirrel

[spin_ducky]

hey if you ever run into the raw bacon recipie please let me know because that would be a great substitute.. thx cheers coffeesquirrel

http://www.fromsadtoraw.com/Recipes/BaconWhyNot.htm LOL, I am reading it right now.

As far as detox, all three of my children were off a little last week. Cranky some, one night all three of them went to bed early. The biggest thing I noticed was a change in thier bowel movements...they increased in frequency, became alot looser and alot stinkier.

I am reading an article right now that seemed to mention the possibility of mucous as a way to detox.

[coffeesquirrel]

how close to bacon does it taste? have you tried it yet? thx ducky hope your kids feel better soon :p

[heather]

i have switched the entire family to soy substitutes. i see it as a step in the right direction........they have a soy bacon that is supposed to be good....anything is better than fried BEAST. lol.

[coffeesquirrel]

my son is really fond of the soy substitues and i tend to feed that to him a lot as they are quick and easy and you don't have to worry about e-coli and stuff however if he's gonna be raw i'm gonna have to find some fast comforting food he can grove with thru the transition :D

[Mishka]

I don't WANT to put a monkey wrench in what you girls are relying on as substitutes...but at the same time I want to share what I learned here.
A little info about soy:
www.mercola.com
www.soyonlineservice.co.nz
www.coconut-info.com

I went vegan a little over a year ago...so we swung fast and hard to soy when we did that. My entire family was eating some kind of soy every day from soy meats, to soy milk , to soy creamcheese, soy butter etc. On top of soy lecithin being in almost everything that is packaged. Anyways, supposedly I have never eaten healthier...but had severe estrogen headaches, and was STILL overweight. WHY??? I wondered. Do alittle research on the above, and it'll become very clear.

I switched my kids fast to almond milk, seed milk, and rice milk . Right now they are still transitioning to raw. I guess it comes to a point you feel surrounded...by bad food. It's like they get hormones from eating animal foods, and hormones from eating soy...ugh. So the answer for us is eating raw. I'm just glad I found out now before my son developed boy boobs...yikes!

[heatkins]

Thanks for bringing this topic up Lara! I am so glad that we have this new subject area about kids eating raw. I have a four year old daughter who eats fairly well. She has been a vegetarian her whole life (although she does eat fish occasionally, and I do know that fish are not plants! ha ha) She is always willing to try new things and likes things that other kids wouldn't touch. However, she has gotten into a habit of eating too much sugar and dairy.

I am trying to transition her to at least 50% raw. She loves banana ice cream, smoothies, apples, strawberries, and melon. I find that if you let them help prepare the food, they are more likely to eat it. My plan is to eliminate cooked wheat, refined sugar, soy, and dairy from her diet (at least for what she is eating at home). She goes to daycare M-F, so that will be harder to control what she is eating there. This isn't going to be easy!

Hopefully we can help each other with ideas!

[tracyinfo]

Mishka, there are always different sides to this. I would personally like to know who funds those groups that are so anti-soy. The Japanese and Chinese people have been eating soy for eons. They have historically lived longer, healthier lives. That is slowly changing as good old American food has come to their countries.

-Tracy

[Sharon in Colorado]

Heather we used to eat the breakfast strips and links by morningstar farms in the freezer section. They are actually really tasty once you get used to them.

They are a step in the right direction. Thing about the strips (we call Fakin') is they taste much better baked. They are crispy that way and you can do them in a toaster oven too.

[Rawkinlocs]

Heather we used to eat the breakfast strips and links by morningstar farms in the freezer section. They are actually really tasty once you get used to them.

They are a step in the right direction. Thing about the strips (we call Fakin') is they taste much better baked. They are crispy that way and you can do them in a toaster oven too.


LOL! We call the strips "Fakin' too! :D My girls LOVE those strips, my 13-year old son hates them...says they remind him too much of the fake bacon strip treats we used to get for our dog we used to have! But they all love the 'fausage' patties, not the links too much. They also do the nuggets and chikn patties by Morning Star Farms. I realize that they may not be the best and I DO try and get my kids to eat more and more raw foods (I rarely buy the fakin and fausage) and the only time they eat the others is at dinner. Most of the day they're eating fruit or other things besides soy products.

Thing is, the longer we're raw, the more we'll realize that even the "raw" things we eat are merely for transitional purposes (speaking of all the dehydrator goodies). It's all about transitioning from one plateau to another and for some of us, soy is just one of those plateaus even if it's not the best and most optimal thing to eat.

[twinyoga]

I have 11 month twins. I do not feed them anything processed which includes all of this soy "fake" products. Let me correct myself, once in a while we will have a soy burger or soy meat balls. But only once in a great while. My twins do eat a little fish and a little chicken or turkey...but only about once a week.

I chose to raise them as healthy eaters with a raw food at each meal and everything is fresh. They've never had white bread...only sprouted bread!

To help answer the original question in this thread...I understand that dairy causes mucous. Could that be the problem (or did you say you're vegan...I can't recall).

[coffeesquirrel]

heather i'm with you on the whole day care thing.... it seems like there is so much of the day that we are not really in control of what our kids eat. I.e. daycare, friends house, grandparents ... the list is endless. I think in a perfect world we would all be able to get our kids on 100% raw but at his point i'm ok with simply upping the raw in his diet and teaching him the difference between junk food and healthy food that will make him grow. Hopefully this combined with an activly raw parent will help lead them in the right direction. cheer's jen

[Lara]

No we're vegan, no dairy whatsoever. I have to say though her cough has diminished greatly over the last 3-4 as we've been doing 80-90% raw days!
Now she's sleeping so much better! Her cough was waking her up (and consequently, ME) 2-3 times per night. Whew!
I am so lucky though- Isabelle LOVES the raw food! No problem really with her, I'm the one who's struggling to keep the variety going for the family and for me, I get bored very easily. :o

[Ariella]

Lara

I have a almost 3 year old son - he is very high raw. We started off with a good pregnancy with him and then when he started solids a lot of homemade baby foods (from raw foods) but then I got lazy or something and then for about a year some processed foods slipped in there - like tofu dogs, cereal bars, etc. Anyway, I just took one item a time out of his diet and just had other options available. Once he got used to the idea of not having that item than I removed another one until gradually they were all gone. He does still eat some cooked occasionally but it is like a baked potato or baked potato fries. Their tastebuds gradually change just like ours and they start to prefer that stuff. My son begs for his nut milk every day. He prefers that to a lot of things. If you want to read about what we eat - I journal at www.eco-centric.it you click on the UK flag and then on blog. Then you will find us. If you just want to read what he is eating go to the bottom of each days blog as that is where his is located.

Anyway, I hope that helps and good luck! It has been fun to see that he has not gotten sick all winter (with the exception of a mild cold for 2 to 3 days) while everyone else around us has had the flu and bad colds that they just keep passing back and forth and back and forth. I mean everybody. But I think everybody is too scared to ask what I am doing because they know that we eat high raw and it definitely is not easy to transition out of a SAD diet if you are not ready for it yet.

Ariella in CO


JUICE PLUS+
www.juiceplus.com/+dj73561

[SouthpawShelly]

Oh this is just what I want to learn more about. Our 20 mon. old daughter is vegan but I want to get her back to high raw and eventually 100% raw. Am really interested in learning what others have done. My husband thinks we should just do it "cold turkey" so to speak. I waiver on that idea. I mean I want her to be raw, but not sure that at this age that is the best way. We have been feeding her processed, cooked & sugary foods. To take it all away at once, seems risky???!!! I don't want to traumatize her or make food an issue. But I also don't want to wait so long that it gets harder to transition.

[lvg4him]

Do it all at once (IMHO). My younger one was much easier to tranistion than my older (5yr) one. I did make some sweet raw treats to help with the transition. Green smoothies are a great way to get greens in (as fruit is sweet and what child refuses sweet fruit?). 60% fruit 40% greens. There is an article on this board called ODE TO GREEN SMOOTHIE by VVictoria Boutenko. WONDERFUL! My children have always loved fruit smoothies (which was first). I made it fruit till noon. Then lunch was next to be raw. Alison included raw veggies with lunch then made lunch all raw. We just went all raw. This is usually a green smoothie now (but before it was veggies with nut dips). raw snacks inbetween of course - cookies and candies and dried fruits and nuts etc. Dinner is a huge salad (usually a blended salad for the younger ones). Although my 21mo now likes to eat salad just like mommy. Then a bit of cooked (although I am very quickly making dinner all raw too - my kids LOVE Alissa's recipes).

HTH!