Telling a child

The simple answer is to tell the truth and stick to simple facts. There is no need to over complicate matters, but the absense of reliable and accurate information from you will leave a vacuum for silly ideas and concepts about same sex relationships.

It needs to be something along these lines: "Sometimes men fall in love with men and sometimes women fall in love with women. When it happens, it's called a gay relationship".

It's possible that your daughter might ask about sex, in which case you should just tell her that it's the same as for straight couples. You don't need to go into details, just stick to the basic facts. I doubt it will come up though.

Personally, I wouldn't wait for her to ask. It's better for her to know and understand now before she is exposed to myth and gossip at school. It will not be long before it starts to happen, if she is 8 now.

 

Wondering about this too, I also have kids (3 & 7 years old). I'm not out to them but I've talked to them (mostly the older one, the 3 year old is too young to get it) quite a lot about the fact that sometimes women love women and men love men. We go to gay pride every year, they've seen TV shows with gay characters, and both of them know a kid with two mothers. So I'm hoping it will be normalised enough for them that they'll take it in their stride when I tell them about myself. I'm hoping that if I don't treat it as a big deal, they won't see it as one. I guess there's a balance though - I don't want them to feel as if I'm dismissing their feelings if it does turn out to be an issue.

So yeah, I can't really advise you on the coming out bit, but I'd start by laying the groundwork if you haven't already.

 

I think it's important to tell your daughter about homosexuality before someone else does, because someone else will, and that someone will be society. She probably won't ask about it unless she sees evidence of it somewhere, and that evidence will probably be negative - ie, some kid in her class saying someone is 'gay' to be mean. I know it sounds silly, but there are a few cartoons that have great representation of same-gender love - Steven Universe (my favorite) the Legend of Korra, Adventure Time, and Paranorman. If you have access to those programmes, maybe let your daughter watch them. It's not much, but it's something. Just tell her that some women fall in love with other women, and that some men fall in love with other men. Tell her that there's nothing wrong with that, no matter what anyone else says, and that you know because you are a woman that falls in love with other women too.

The hard part will be bringing it up. But kids are fairly easy to impart ideas onto. I wish my mother had told me that gay people existed rather than letting me believe the word 'gay' meant 'stupid' until I was 12 :eusa_doh: