Nothing ever really prepares you for the some of the questions that'll be thrown at you throughout the course of parenting your children. Today, I was confronted with a real doozy. I was asked to explain what "gay" means to my four (almost 5!) & three year olds. Oh dear.
My son & daughter were happily munching away on their blueberry Eggo Waffles when little brother ticked off little sister by informing her that it was his turn to watch Thomas the Tank Engine. She decided to hurl an insult back at him. I know she's not yet armed with an arsenal of witty comebacks like "you're momma dresses you funny". But she pulled one out of her hat & it came out like this: "oh yeah, well you're gay!" Hmmmm. Not good.
She refused to tell me where she picked up this this special little phrase. Certainly not in our home; we have many friends of varied cultural backgrounds & sexual orientation. It didn't come from us. I wanted to know who did it! I have an inkling...that horrible little kid who bit her arm last week. Must have been him. What angers me more is that she's in JK & only socializes with other JK students; one of them thinks it's okay to use the word "gay" in a derogatory manner - and his/her parents don't think it's necessary to correct this behaviour. Where's Nanny 911???
The inevitable happened.... "Mommy, what does gay mean? Why is it bad to tell someone they're gay?" Aw, c'mon!!! I haven't even finished my first coffee of the day yet. I didn't sign up for this. I thought we'd have this conversation toward the middle of elementary school, not now!
I used Ellen. Yes, I used Ellen DeGeneres. It went a little something like this: Well, gay is like saying you're white, black, Italian, Chinese, or straight. Mommy's gonna try to explain: Not all families are the same. Our family has a mommy & daddy as the parents; other families might have only one mommy or one daddy. Then there are other families that have two mommies or two daddies. Or sometimes a man & a woman love each other and don't have kids, right? Other times, two men or two women can love each other too. Then, there are other people who don't want to be with anyone & they like to be by themselves. All this was met with a blank stare. Okay, let's try this. Do you remember the Ellen show that we like to watch together? The one where we all dance around with Ellen? Eager nodding ensued. Okay, good. Well, Ellen is married to a lady instead of a man. And they love each other very much. So Ellen is gay. We like Ellen, don't we? She seems really nice & funny, right? She's normal, isn't she? She's not strange, right? .More nodding So, it's not nice to say to someone "You're gay" just to try to hurt their feelings, because there's nothing wrong with being gay. Okay? She nodded okay...as did my son, though I think this was thoroughly lost on him. They went back to their Eggos & I went to find myself a Valium.
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