Chelsea explores the significance of Pride Month and offers tips on discussing gender identity with your children, including how to empower them to express themselves confidently.
Chelsea explores the significance of Pride Month and offers tips on discussing gender identity with your children, including how to empower them to express themselves confidently.
Project Parenthood is hosted by Chelsea Dorcich. A transcript is available at Simplecast.
Have a parenting question? Email Chelsea at parenthood@quickanddirtytips.com or leave a voicemail at 646-926-3243.
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Hello. Welcome back to Project Parenthood. I am your new host, Chelsea Dorcich, licensed marriage family therapist here in California, where I see children, adolescents, parents, and families. I'm here today to join you on your conscious parenting journey, and I'm hoping to bring more curiosity, openness, acceptance, kindness, and non judgment.
Together, I hope we can accept what is out of our control, commit to improving our parenting life, And along the way, discover better outcomes for ourselves and our family. Today, I want to honor pride month. There is no better time to become more aware of our knowledge and our children's knowledge of the significance and importance of this month and celebrating the LGBTQIAP+ community.
I want to discuss the ways that we can start conversations regarding our children's identity. Their gender identity, the ways in which they express themselves, their perception of gender and their agency in navigating feelings about themselves and their relationships. Gender describes the internal experience of being a man, a woman, a non-binary person.
Think of gender identity as a person's innermost concept of self as masculine, feminine, a blend of both something else. It's not always congruent with biological sex or gender assigned up birth. So every person experiences gender differently, and this experience can change over time. We can't know someone's gender by simply looking at them.
I want you to think back to when you first learned your child's gender, whether it was revealed on an ultrasound or right there in the delivery room. As parents, we inadvertently set this direction or a path, uh, that our children, like for our children, that we, that's based on their biological sex and the gender assigned at birth.
And this trajectory that we pave, it may not always be congruent with how they identify. Start to notice and even name expectations that you set on your child based on their gender. How you decorate their room, how you dress them, what color you choose for their clothes, water bottles, backpacks, the toys and activities that you provide them.
Maybe even certain behaviors that you either ignore or address based on their gender. Bring more curiosity, more so than agenda. Ask yourself, what do your kids say about gender? What are they telling you about what is happening to them? How do your children want to express themselves with dressing, with activities, with colors?
And as they get older and know more about gender identity and you've conversed, you can even ask them, what are your pronouns? Your curiosity will empower them and leave more agency for them. When we talk about agency, think about this sense of control that you feel in your life, your capacity to influence your own thoughts and behavior, this faith that you have and your ability to handle tasks and situations.
We want our children to have agency just like we want it for ourselves, ourselves. So start having conversations about identity, about expression and perception of gender identity so that in turn your children feel more safe and welcome to ask questions and have conversations. Giving them more agency looks like having more conversations about the choices they have.
Asking who they are, what they are, will result in an environment where your kids do feel safe to express themselves and ask questions. If you're uncomfortable talking about Some of these things, chances are your kids will pick up on that and might be too. So, just be open and curious about what is making you uncomfortable.
Learn more about what you don't know. Maybe even unlearn some things you thought you knew. Be curious, be open, accepting, not judgment, and kind. When we think about identity, identities have so many layers. Reflect and acknowledge your child's identity. And then think about, what does culture say is good or bad when you think about your child's layers of identity and, and remember that identity is fluid.
What works today could be very different of what works another day. Our goal is to create a space for conversations over time so that as feelings about gender change, we are here to support those changes and really show that these conversations are ongoing. Ask your child, how do you identify? And when we don't know that there may be more layers than one, especially when it comes to race and religion, we think of this term intersectionality.
Kimberly Crenshaw, who is a professor at UCLA School of Law and Columbia Law School, provides the following definition. Intersectionality is a metaphor for understanding the ways that multiple forms of inequality or disadvantage sometimes compound themselves together. And create obstacles that often are not understood among conventional ways of thinking.
Take into account the societal impact on your children and their peers, given how they identify. While labels can be very liberating, it's a way for us to express ourselves and really even actually connect with others who relate to our experiences. But remember that there are those who are still questioning and exploring and going without a label is more comfortable than having to commit to one right away.
Now that we've gone over some information about identity, agency, and gender, let's talk more about these ways in which we can start conversations with our children. Exposure is the easiest way. So whether you're exposing them to books, shows, magazines, pictures, community, have that be where that is just.
That is what it is. There's representation is there. Go to bookstores and libraries where they'll have books honoring our pride month up front and center. Talk about relationships and what defines them. Go back to your values, highlighting love and respect. Or, you know, remind them or tell them that, you know, relationships look different from the outside.
It's, it's what the love in between those people in the relationship is, it's about the love is love. Share your own thoughts about books you're reading or an article you read or shows you're watching and inquire what your children's impressions are or opinions are. Ask them simple questions like, do your clothes express you?
What you're wearing or doing on the outside match how you feel on the inside. Maybe you're already doing a lot of these things and asking these questions and having these conversations, but you might have some legitimate fears and concerns about how your child will be received and treated. Use your five secrets to express those concerns.
Tell your child, I love and honor everything you do to be you and so proud and amazed by everything you do to be authentic to yourself. And I will always support this, but I do feel a little scared about you being hurt. You know, what are your thoughts about this? You have your stroking affirmation. You have your, I feel same, you have your inquiry.
Have that be the start to the conversation, segue into mental health concerns. As we know, there is. More susceptibility to depression, anxiety, trauma, suicidality, amongst the population of LGBTQ especially when there's intersectionality involved. So create a space not only where your child can speak to you, but know that you are a bridge or a branch to other resources within the community to help them have more support.
The more information your children have, the more agency they have to make decisions about themselves or in situations with others. Maybe they don't feel like an outsider when it comes to identity, but their friend does. They can be such an important ally to that friend. The more information they have, the more able they are to support that friend.
Think of them being an upstander in a conversation as opposed to a bystander. Them supporting someone, even if it's someone they don't know. Think of the situation I remember we were in where we were at a park and a group of kids were there and one child was correcting. They're a friend, you know, that they use the pronouns, they and them, and this friend just could not, you know, was pushing back, didn't understand, was, um, asking for more and more explanation.
And this child, the defeat just started to come in and, you know, I was so happy that my daughter and I could be able to come up and help provide support. And it's little things like that. If your children can, can do that, it's such an empowerment, it gives them more agency in their own identity and their own values.
So information is huge. So that being said, let's start with just the pronoun, the acronym, excuse me, lgbtq, IAP plus lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual, pansexual and more. If you're ever unsure about anything, be honest, tell your child, you're not really sure you know the correct way to answer this.
Let's do some research together. And two great websites to start with are the Trevor Project, which has resources regarding sexual orientation. Mental health resources, community resources, gender identity, talking about suicide, and then the National LGBTQIA Plus Health Education Center has an abundance of information and links to other websites.
Books are a great way to also learn more, um, One in particular is, uh, George M. Johnson has a memoir, Manifesto, called All Boys Aren't Blue. It's a great read, um, even for teens and older. Other books, and these books I'm going to read are just the tip of the iceberg, but it's just a combination of books from even preschool age to adult.
The ABCs of LGBT What's Your Pronoun? My New Gender Workbook. The Meaning of Pride. The Gender Quest Workbook, The Pronoun Book, Speak Up, Lunar Boy, The Black Flamingo, All of Us, Worm Loves Worm, Wonderful You, Traversing Gender. So again, just a few, um, a few titles that cross the ages from preschool on to adulthood.
But there's so many more, so I encourage you to check out your library or bookstores, local bookstores. This concludes our episode. Remember to be curious, open, accepting, kind, and non judgmental on your conscious parenting journey. If you have any questions about this episode, about your parenting journey, and or topics you'd like to hear more about, please reach out to me @cdtherapy. You can email parenthood@quickanddirtytips.com, or leave a message at 646-926-3243. Project Parenthood is a Quick and Dirty Tips podcast. Thanks to the team at Quick and Dirty Tips, Holly Hutchings, Davina Tomlin, Morgan Christianson, and Brannan Goetschius. May you be happy, safe and protected, healthy and strong, and live with ease.