Gay and lesbian families by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Support

How can I support my child?

As a parent, you have to take care of yourself and your child. PFLAG

is here to help you with your individual needs so that you can be an even better parent.

Reading [information like this viewpoint] is the first step to supporting your child—you have shown that you are open to new information and hopefully you are now better informed.

Supporting your child now should be a natural extension of your general support as a parent: we need to talk, listen and learn together.

Every child needs different things from his or her parents. It is up to you to learn how to communicate with him or her about their needs and issues surrounding sexuality.

There are plenty of “authorities” you can quote as allies in defense of equal rights for gay people.

Some parents find that they are better able to understand and support their child by recognizing the similarities and differences in their own life experiences. In some cases it may help to talk about how you have dealt with hurtful incidents.

But in other cases you must recognize that discrimination based on sexual orientation is hurtful in a unique way.

Here, you can support your child by educating yourself as thoroughly as possible about homosexuality and by helping to bring it out of hiding in our society. It’s the hiding that allows the prejudice and discrimination to survive.

The future

Will I ever learn to deal with this new knowledge?

A psychiatrist answered the question this way: “Once most people adjust to the reality of their child’s sexual orientation, they feel like they’ve had a whole new world opened to them.

AI Gay/Lesbian Families INT 9/2/04 1:10 PM Page 75

Parents Should Support Gay and Lesbian Children 75

“First, they become acquainted with a side of their child they never knew. They now are included in their child’s life. Usually, they get closer.

And the parents begin to meet the gay community and understand that these are people just like any other community.”

“Once most people adjust to the reality of their child’s sexual orientation, they feel like they’ve had a whole new world opened to them.”

Another way to answer this question is to let some parents speak for themselves:

“I hit a point where I was feeling sad and thinking what would I say when people asked, ‘How is Gary?’ And then it occurred to me: Gary’s fine. I’m the one who’s not. And once I reached that point, it was easier . . . as we met Gary’s friends, we found them to be wonderful people and realized that he’s really part of a pretty terrific community. So what’s the problem? It’s society’s problem. That’s when we figured we were over the hump.”

—Mother of a gay son

“I’d say that reading and learning more about sexual orientation is what helped me most . . . laying to rest some of the myths I had heard. . . . So the more I learned, the angrier I got, and the more I wanted to change society instead of my son.

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