Coming Out To Your Parents Is Scary As Hell
Some parents are doing their best to make it even harder
The question of how much parents have a right to know about their children is apparently up for debate these days.
For the most part, it comes up when the debate rages about LGBTQ+ youth exploring their identity in school. The question tends to be whether teachers should have to inform their student’s parents about their child coming out, or if they have a responsibility to be silent per the student’s request.
Do teachers have a duty to report this to the parents? Or do they have a duty to respect the privacy of their students, letting the kids decide when they feel ready to share that at home?
We hear lots of comments and points from the perspective of the parents, but we don’t often get to hear what their children have to say about the issue. Whether that’s because the media is only highlighting one side of the story, or because the kids who want to chime in are unable to do so, I can’t say.
I figure I might as well throw my hat into the ring. I used to be an LGBTQ+ kid, after all. I have some thoughts on this issue.
If we lived in an ideal world where all parents were loving and everything was sunshine and unicorns and fluffy bunnies, we wouldn’t need to have this discussion at all.
There’d be no need to come out of the closet to begin with; everyone would simply be accepted for who they are!
But we don’t live in that idyllic world. We live in a world where coming out of the closet or choosing to stay in it can sometimes be the difference between a loving home and sleeping on the street.
Not always, but sometimes. Often enough to keep a lot of youngsters awake at night.
This discussion is often framed as some kind of existential war for the soul of the nation. Which nation? I’m Canadian, but at this point, you can draw one out of a hat.
Some people act like giving kids the right to privacy and the ability to choose when, where, and to whom they want to talk is like opening the door to Stalinist Russia 2.0.
Because they have no sense of irony, many proponents of the Parents’ Rights movement also often argue for removing all references to LGBTQ+ identities in schools, including banning books from the library.
Remove all references to anything non-straight or cis, and report on kids’ identities to their parents against their wishes.
This is to keep them free and safe and prevent their kids from being brainwashed.
Interesting logic.
They frame the failure to report on kids coming out as government overreach, tyranny, and indoctrination. They demand that parents’ rights be respected. In some cases, those include the right to decide who their child is, even when the child does not agree.
The fact that their kids also have rights is conveniently forgotten. The fact that supportive parents of LGBTQ+ kids often disagree with them is ignored.
There are a lot of unfortunate side effects to this, especially with regard to the mental health of the children in question. Personally, I went through a period of intense fear, despair, and denial when I first realized that I wasn’t straight.
I was coming to terms with my identity when support for LGBTQ+ identities was pretty high, and I knew my family was supportive. Still, I’d internalized a lot of attitudes towards sex that made me feel like being asexual was the end of my chance at finding happiness.
If I were thinking about coming out right now, watching these protests and hatred and attacks on the news? You bet your backside I’d have kept my mouth firmly shut and only hated myself all the more.
So, how do you think the LGBTQ+ kids in school are feeling right now? Think they’re feeling good about themselves, watching their friends’ parents protest their right to exist in the schools? Watching them stomp on Pride flags?
Think they’re feeling loved by their communities? Do you think they feel safe? Or do you think maybe they might be a little bit terrified?
Here’s something for these parents to consider: Why are your children choosing to talk to friends or teachers before they talk to you? Why did they not come to you with their identity first?
I’ll tell you exactly why.
They’re afraid to.
You are, hands down, the most important adult in their lives. You provide for their needs; you give them their home. Your opinion matters for their self-esteem, their safety, and their wellbeing.
They love you. They want you to love them. The prospect of losing your approval is terrifying to them.
And it’s terrifying for a good reason. Have you taken a look at the rate of homelessness for LGBTQ+ youth? Take a swing through the statistics provided by the Trevor Project. Really think about the picture they paint.
The misinformation and fear-mongering around the queer community leads to a lot of ignorance, and ignorance breeds hostility. Humans aren’t always great at empathizing with the people we view as ‘other’ in society.
This is not in any way meant to imply that all parents of LGBTQ+ youth are abusive or harmful. Far from it. Not even all of the ones who want to be told when their kid comes out are automatically being jerks.
Not all of the worried parents are freaking out because they’re bigoted, some are simply concerned because their kids might be struggling, and they want them to access help. They want to know so they can ensure their kids are getting the counseling that they need when they’re in pain.
I’ve heard some concerned parents raise the idea of simply increasing the presence of trained counselors in school, trusting in them more than the teachers to provide the kids with support.
That argument is totally fair. No shade towards parents who just want their kids to be safe and cared for.
It’s just that when you get angry about your kid’s teacher failing to inform you that your kid is experimenting with gender or sexuality, you are looking at the wrong problem.
If you want to know what’s going on with your child, you need to create an environment where your child feels safe and comfortable confiding in you.
If they don’t feel comfortable, there’s a reason for that.
It might be because they’ve heard you express an ignorant or outright hateful belief about LGBTQ+ people.
It might be because someone has told them that being who they are is wrong, so they’re afraid to talk to you about it. It might just be because they’ve heard horror stories of kids getting kicked out after coming out of the closet.
They might just be scared of how their life at home is going to change. They may not be ready to open that door, so they’re dipping their toes into self-expression by testing the waters with their friends first.
Maybe they’re going through a struggle with their identity and aren’t sure about it themselves yet. That’s a big part of the reason I didn’t come out to my mom until I was in my 20s.
My friends knew a lot earlier.
A lot of them are some flavour of LGBTQ+ themselves, so I knew I could expect support and understanding when talking to them. Given the lack of common knowledge about asexuality, I wasn’t sure my family would have the same level of understanding.
I knew I’d have to basically teach them what it meant. For a while, I wasn’t sure I would ever come out of the closet at all — and that’s with a family I knew would accept me, even if they didn’t fully get it!
If I had any doubts, I would never have said a word.
I imagine it’s the same for a lot of these kids. They only have to see their teachers for a little bit every day, not constantly at home. It feels safer to burn that bridge if something goes wrong.
If you’re concerned about your kids telling you who they are, and you want to make sure they feel safe in coming to you about it, there’s something you can do.
Get out ahead of their fears.
Bring it up to them first.
You don’t have to be specific. You don’t know whether or not they’re exploring their identity or not, and you don’t want to assume.
But it never hurts to sit down with your child and tell them that you love them, you respect them, and you will always support them no matter what.
You can make a point of raising your children with a good understanding of what being LGBTQ+ means, that there’s nothing wrong with not being straight or cis, and that you won’t love them any less if they aren’t.
You can raise your kids with awareness and respect for diversity rather than a fear of it. You can even sit with your kids and research the topic together if you yourself aren’t that well-versed. Learn about it together and discuss what you find out!
If you make it abundantly clear to your kids that it’s okay to be LGBTQ+, they’ll be much less afraid to tell you. As a bonus, they’re also way less likely to bully the other kids in school for being different.
And if all of this sounds crazy to you, and you can’t imagine raising your kid to love themselves and others around them, and you just don’t want them to ever know that being queer is an option… Well.
We’ve identified the problem, haven’t we?
It’s not about forcing school faculty to out your kids to you. It’s about being a present and loving parent to your children, so they never have to question if they’re going to lose your approval.
Many kids are understandably afraid that coming out of the closet could cost them everything. Our job as adults is to give them all of the love they need for free.
Solidarity wins.
Being different is hard to accept by a lot of people. You're either part of the tribe or your the enemy, as some perceive life and their society in those basic terms. I have a younger brother like that. You're either part of his tribe (with him being the alpha male) or the enemy, to be disparaged at every turn. Needless to say we have never really gotten along and we rarely talk.
I have made friends with folks in the LGBTQ community over the years and all they ever wanted was for people to accept them as they are. No judgements. Something I expect from people regarding myself. I am a little different than most mainstream people, not in a gender based way, but just my personality. I'm not afraid to stand up for myself and I would stand up for those whom I call friend, regardless of their gender orientation.
Being different should not be considered a crime but it is for some people. Whether it's their religious bias or just because they can't handle someone being different, or two-spirit, as the native americans call them. I don't think this is going to change anytime soon as humans still think with their forebrains instead of their logical brains first. Until we have evolved past that flight, fight or freeze instinct when it comes to something different than themselves, we're doomed as a species until a better mutation arrives on the scene. Something like when Homo Sapiens displaced the neanderthals and dysonians. Evolution, evolution.
After my Dad threw my older sister out of the house and me and my two siblings got a lecture about homosexuals being 'not very nice people', - I understood very clearly that there was no way on earth that I could safely talk to my parents my own nagging identity issues. Having been got at by surgeons with their steely knives and given courses of injections which nobody ever explained to me when I was only young I knew I was on shaky ground with anything to do with the whole subject of sex and 'privates' anyway.
Mum did finally explain it all to me in my 50s, but I was well and truly out as ACE and non-binary by then. My Dad died when I was in my late twenties and I know he never would have accepted me living like the person I should have been in the first place if I'd just been goddamned well left alone.