Or your college age daughter came home over fall break and came out as bisexual. Perhaps your teenage son told you that he is gay.
Maybe today you are that bewildered parent (or grandparent, aunt, uncle, or teacher). We weren’t quite sure how to help, didn’t understand the terminology, and were generally clueless. We were worried how others would treat them. But as my husband and I talked alone, we admitted that we felt uninformed and completely out of our depth. We are so grateful that our child felt safe to share those conversations and realizations with us along the way.Īt first, we just focused on making sure that our child was loved and accepted, and we tried to listen and to understand. Sometimes coming out it is a decisive declaration, but for our gender-questioning kid, coming out looked more like a meandering process of discovery. National Coming Out Day is this week, and I have found myself recalling when my own child came out a few years back.
