How to deal with fears if child is gay
Help! My Son is Gay
by Ricky Chelette, Executive Director
“So should I push my son towards women now?” That’s a question I often get from fathers of young men who are struggling with same gender attractions. Dads are often devastated by the discovery of their son’s homosexuality. But the retort to their son’s struggle is not to push him into the arms of a woman. In fact, such a move could actually do more damage than good.
But what should a dad undertake for his son? In a word: connect! I grasp when saying that many dads might think, “I am connected to my son. He’s my son. I’ve been around him since birth. We are fine.” But the fact is that simply being display doesn’t mean you have any benign of emotional, intimate, connection with your son. He is a sensitive guy who needs to be spoken to in a language he can notice and understand. Proclamations of facts undertake little to advance his heart. He wants words dripping with raw affect and heart-felt fire. He wants to know you, intimately, and feel the weight of your passion for him. In many ways, he wants you to look him straight in his eyes and inform him how much you love him, how proud you are of him, and how you think he has what i
5 Powerful Things You Can Do If Your Youngster Tells You, "I'm Gay."
You may not have been expecting to hear the words "I'm gay" from your child. Not only did you never envision it, but your religious beliefs and values also do not align with same-sex relationships. So, what do you do now? How do you respond to your child telling you they're gay?
As a parent, you may contain had the inclination that your child may be gay. As a product, the news may simply confirm your suspicions, and the conversation may be easy. On the contradictory, you may feel mad or shocked. Likewise, you may struggle with the idea and have a natural tendency to slam down the conversation or put it off as merely a phase they're going through. In existence, regardless of how you feel, the way you respond in the first five minutes could fix the tone for your child for years to come.
In this article, we'll discuss the critical moments after your child comes to you and says, "I'm gay." With the help of Dr. Devon Mills is a licensed therapist in Atlanta, GA, we'll highlight five mighty things you can undertake to help create a place of safety and love, regardless of how you feel about
I always considered myself a liberal. I grew up outside of New York City, the melting pot, attended college and worked in New York, yet when I found out my son, James, age 13, was gay, I reverted to "not in my backyard." Suddenly, I went into denial mode; how could he be? He had a girlfriend whom he said he was going to join. Although he didn't particularly like contact sports, he didn't exhibit the male lover stereotypical image: lisp, rainbow colors. How would he know he's gay, if he never had sex with a girl?
So What's This Uneasy Feeling I Have?
Back then, 1991, I didn't realize I was in denial. According to co-author of When Your Child Is Gay, Jonathan L. Tobkes, M.D., denial is the most shared initial reaction of parents to the jolting news that their child is gay. When I interviewed straight parents for When Your Child Is Same-sex attracted, they used words such as fear, shock, helplessness, stress, and extreme sadness to describe their experiences with denial. Some even recounted feeling numb for awhile.
Why do parents who are normally accepting of their children go into the denial zone upon learning that their youth is gay, bisexual, even transgender? In hindsight, I think I was sh
The Journey for Parents
It can be a shock to learn a child is LGBTQ and there are definite stages most parents experience. The stages below do not always occur in order, or just once, and some may not occur at all. Some stages pass posthaste, others slowly. These stages represent the struggle to accept an enormous transform in your family.
Many animation events can trigger senior feelings. For instance, if your child begins to date, moves away to college, encounters bullying or a hurtful comment, you may feel as if you have gone backwards to one of the earlier stages. This is not uncommon. Allow yourself to work through those feelings and regain your balance.
Denial
Initial denial or disbelief is common. Although many of us might wonder if our child is gay even before they tell us, usually we suppress and deny this possibility out of anxiety of what the correctness might do to our family.
Even after a kid comes out, parents may hope that this is a phase, a rebellion, or an experiment. However, when a child takes the important step of telling a parent he or she is lgbtq+, it is important to take them at their word. This is complicated, because it means truly facing what being homosexual means for t
As I relayed in When Your Youth Is Gay: What You Need To Know (Sterling, 2016), I found out that my son was gay from a note with our son's call entwined with another boy's, surrounded by a heart. I accidentally found that note in his room when I was cleaning.
I never questioned him about the heart I found on the sly. How would I have brought it up? Believe I was wrong? After all, he had a passion on a lady in his class.
I had suspected at times that he was lgbtq+. He only had girls to his thirteenth birthday party. He preferred gentler sports. He was always concerned about how he looked and followed fashion. Were these stereotypical thoughts from a straight mother? You bet, but it was ingrained through the culture's binary system and ideas about how males were "supposed to" behave.
As it turns out, our son didn't come out until he was 17, was on his own, and brought a partner to visit. Had I asked him if he were gay when he was 13, he probably would include defensively said "No!" He had to work it out and work through his denial. I'm glad I muzzled myself.
Susan Berland, the mother of a gay son who coaches parents of LGBTQ kids, caution, "It's not a good idea to ask. Let your c