Irritable Bowel Syndrome Message Boards | Re: We are here for you!

ConcreteAngel, I don't pretend to know what is going on between you and your parents but reading your posts in this thread got me thinking. You were saying how you felt when they put hamburgers and milk on the dinner table. Do you think that part of their resistance towards your dietary changes is because they are preparing your meals? I could be miles off with this but it just seemed to remind me of when I became vegetarian at the age of 14. For two weeks my mother kept putting meat on my plate and I refused to eat it. After two weeks of that I got so hungry that I gave up (temporarily) on the veggie diet. I spoke to my mother and realised that part of her resistance was due to thinking it was just a fad and that she didn't want to have to prepare a separate meal just for me. Indeed I don't think she would have known what to cook for me as it was an alien concept to her. The solution was to agree to cook my own meals. I wasn't used to cooking back then, so I had to learn fast. And over time the rest of my family got to taste my new meals and realised it was a perfectly valid diet.

I'm now 27 and live away from home. But now when my mum visits she cooks for me happily. It has to be said that my dad isn't terribly supportive of my new diet - he doesn't seem to understand that I have a real problem with eating out - so many restaurants around here put cheese in all their veggie meals *sigh*

Anyway, my point is that parental resistance to dietary changes of any sort, and for any reason, is not unusual. Finding the reason for the resistance was what has helped me. And I learned to cook into the bargain.

Hope that's helpful to you,
geekgirl

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