I had never met a vegan before I became one myself, so was a little naive about how it would be greeted by my friends and family. As I started explaining my new dietary choice to the people in my life who had noticed I wasn’t partaking of my two favourite foods (cheese and more cheese), barely an eyebrow was raised. But when I mentioned that my two and a half-year-old son would be joining me on a vegan diet, it was a different story. I simply wasn’t prepared for the hostility I was to face.

It turned out that saying you have a vegan child is to immediately put your credibility as a parent under scrutiny. I was accused of forcing my son to adopt an extreme diet on a whim, making him part of an unnecessary and dangerous experiment.

After a while, I became unwilling to talk about it. I started telling people I was vegan but that my son was lacto-vegetarian, a small change that made all the difference. I have since learned that other vegan parents use this tactic to avoid uncomfortable conversations. I was treated to the same questions I get asked about myself: what about protein? What about iron and the ever-elusive B12? The answers about my own nutrition were accepted but the information I had about my son’s diet was treated as suspicious and potentially false.

I had taken all the facts at my disposal and made a decision – one that, after considering the health, environmental and ethical considerations, I felt was best for my son. After a few weeks I began to suspect that this, in fact, was the problem: not that my son was on an atypical diet but that he was atypical anything. Could it be that in a society focused on individualism, rich in diversity and multiculturalism, children’s upbringing is one of the last bastions of intolerant adherence to tradition? I started wondering if home-schooling parents faced the same level of scrutiny and criticism.

When feeding my son what would be considered the mainstream diet, I had abided by guideline daily amounts (GDAs) and the NHS eatwell plate – the traditional notion of a balanced diet, which includes a “food and drink high in fat and sugar” component. When I switched my son’s diet, it occurred to me I had been following the rules without doing any thinking for myself.

Choosing veganism made me aware of pressures that I hadn’t even realised were there until they were gone. In restaurants we ordered from the kids’ menu, and I had been at the mercy of advertisements, supermarket layouts and my son’s own unique form of screaming persuasion. His pre-veganism lunchtime was chaos. Spitting and screaming from his booster seat, he would throw himself back and forth until the chair fell over if I offered him a piece of broccoli one too many times. Thankfully, there were a few meals he loved: fish fingers, spaghetti bolognese and chicken nuggets were guaranteed to get gobbled. Eating a meat- and dairy-rich diet eventually turned me into a complacent parent. I assumed he was getting everything he needed; it didn’t occur to me he could be getting too much. Since turning vegan I have become fully engaged in making the best possible food choices for him and, after a few weeks of scraping lentil curries out of the carpet, I have noticed that he has begun cleaning his plate.

In a world full of alarming statistics regarding the health of our children, surely people should be encouraged to discuss alternatives to the current mainstream diet. But if my experiences of asking medical professionals for advice about veganism are anything to go by, you’re as likely to be handed a printout about potential problems and sent on your way.

Despite all the talk of nutrient deficiencies and slower growth rates, feeding my vegan toddler has been fairly straightforward; the hardest part has been dealing with people’s misinformation and prejudices. That, and giving up cheese.