Scene set: My partner and I are raising our child as a vegetarian—something that’s really important to us - but if he wants to eat meat when he’s older, he’s more than welcome to. My partner’s family is from a culture that eats a lot of meat. They're a BIG family, all very very close, to the point of co-dependancy/enmeshment.

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This is about a breach of trust. My MIL looks after our son for 4 days in the working week and will not let us pay her. On one occasion last week, my MIL (plus my partner’s aunt and uncle and their Granddaughter), visited McDonalds and had photos taken with their food. This is a regular thing: grandbabies play date and a McDonalds lunch. The photos are always carefully taken before the Happy Meals are opened and sent to our family chat, but one photo was an in-app camera-response to a comment my partner made and it shows my son with chicken nuggets in front of him, even though the three grandparents know he’s vegetarian.

What made the situation even more upsetting was that when I asked about what he’d eaten, they all denied giving him meat and said he had the veggie dippers, sending a photo of the veggie dippers order screen (that I could literally go and take a photo of now in any McDonalds). I later found out from McDonalds that this wasn’t true, and that no vegetarian orders took place during the time they were there. Once we mentioned this, MIL backtracked, saying they were someone else’s nuggets. I believe the aunt and uncle encouraged or supported that decision, despite knowing it went against our wishes (not the first time we have had trouble with them).

MIL has spoken to other family members saying that it isn’t right that our son doesn’t eat meat. I’m upset because she didn’t come to us to ask any questions about it. Had she done so, I would have been able to tell her the amount of research we’d done on raising a child vegetarian, as well as the discussions I’d had with the doctor. 

MIL has not apologised or taken accountability for anything and is stone-walling my partner and me.

Because of both the disregard for our parenting choices and the dishonesty that followed, we’ve made a couple of decisions:

• Mother-in-law won’t be looking after our child unsupervised for the time being. We need time to rebuild trust before we can feel comfortable with that again.
  
• We’ve also decided to cut ties with the other individuals involved. I, personally don’t want any further contact with someone who played a role in this and showed such a lack of respect for our boundaries.
  

Making these decisions will have huge repercussions on time spent with the family. My partner is at a point where he has given up and knows that he'll never have an apology, but I'm not as enmeshed as him and I see how wrong it is. What would you do?