Sun 31 Jul 2011
If you love your kids, let them know that being trans is ok and that they can talk to you about it. They won’t know unless you tell them. Don’t assume that kids know your love extends to this, they are absorbing message after message from our culture that trans people of all flavors are disturbed and disgusting.
Trans children need the explicit knowledge that they are loved to counteract the sea of hate and the truth is that you most likely won’t know they needed you until they work up the courage to tell you… if they ever do. Some, like myself, spend their teenage years buried in depression and self hate.
Some aren’t even that lucky.
Talk to your kids. Let them know that you love them. Period. Full stop. Not “regardless of if you’re trans”, not “would love you anyway”… to people who are hurting, both of these imply that being trans is bad. Just that you love them, love all of who they are.
Thank you for your time.
Its not hard. My ma told me when I was a kid “Sometimes ladies are born with mens bodies and sometime men are born with ladies bodies, sometimes men fall in love with men and women fall in love with women, and its all OK”, and being a kid I just went “Ok thats interesting” and absorbed it and accepted it. (Ma rules).
I grew up hetro and cisgendered, but had I been queer my ma let me know from a young age that she’d accept it and still be my ma. As a teenager I’d be corrected if I used homophobic words (kids do pick up terms not really understanding the meaning) and I learned that it wasnt cool to be a be a biggot.
And thats all any parent needs to do. Its real easy actually. Just let em know when their young so when they grow up, if issues arise they know they are still loved and they can rely on their folks to help them thru it.
Sadly for some of my friends who where queer, it was the parents themselves who needed a bit of help thru it…. well in a few cases a bit of a slapping actually.