Yeah, there are all sorts of ways kids can be, and the thing to do is give them room to figure themselves out in their own way, at their own pace.
My son, at the age of four and a half, is clearly straight, but loves dressing up in the girly stuff, and has been that way since around his third birthday, give or take. Maybe he’ll still like to dress up like a girl 10 years from now, and maybe he won’t. Either way, he’s my son and I love him with all my heart.
Because from a kid’s perspective, being sent to therapy marks them as different in itself. It carries a stigma. There’s a pretty good chance the message the kid internalizes is going to be “I have to go to therapy because there is something wrong with me.” (Believe me. I was that kid, and I spent a good chunk of my childhood feeling defective and deeply ashamed.)
I’m not saying that it’s categorically a bad idea to send a kid in this situation to therapy, but I disagree that there is no negarive impact, and I think it’s a choice parents should weigh very, very carefully.
This is just ridiculous. There is no inherent stigma to therapy anymore, so this is a nonissue. Unless you or your spouse are communicating (whether overtly or subconsciously) that you think your child is defective, they’re not going to think that.
*Every *divorced kid has to go through therapy, and lots of kids are divorced kids. And pretty much everyone I knew had family members in therapy for one reason or another. And I grew up in the 90s, so this was 15-20 years ago. Therapy is *even more *common now. The only reason a kid in therapy nowadays is likely to think they’re defective is because one of their parents runs around saying psychology is quack science.
Is it really mandatory in some parts of the world for kids to go through therapy for divorces? My parents divorced when I was a kid (well, young teen), and I never went through therapy for it (though I was in a bit of therapy around the same time for completely unrelated stuff). This was in Canada in the early 2000s.
I kind of think I’d benefit from being in therapy now, but I have no means of affording it.
It may well be the case that there’s no inherent stigma to therapy in some social groups, but I don’t think this is universally true by any means. I’d guess that it varies wildly between subcultures, although I take your point that it’s probably more common and less stigmatized than it was when I was a kid in the '80s. Nevertheless, I think you’re underestimating the likelihood that kids will pick up the “Something is wrong with me and this is something to be ashamed of” vibe from their peers, regardless of how the parents present it.
What? Who requires this? Is it court-ordered? I’ve never heard of this.
I love this post so much.
This is inaccurate. There’s research that shows that people often avoid therapy because of the stigma involved.
This is inaccurate. I’m not aware of a jurisdiction that requires that the children of divorced parents go through therapy, and I’m not aware that most children of divorced parents go through therapy. I’d be willing to bet that MORE children of divorced parents go through therapy than children of NON-divorced parents, but not every child of divorced parents “has to” go through therapy.
I mean no offense but how do you know a four year old is straight? :dubious:
Really all you can say is that your son likes dressing up in clothes that an adult sees as girly, he probably has not yet learned these stereotypes and social divisions so they are just clothes to him. I applaud you for being open minded enough not to to try to force your son to conform though.
Meh, I was pretty sure my son was gay by the time he was 4 years old or so. He wasn’t “girly”, for most of his childhood he was into robots and jeans and whatever, but he pinged my 'dar from the start.
I don’t remember mentioning it to anyone, but it sure was helpful when he sat me down at the age of 14 to tell me he was gay and I was able to say “I know! isn’t that awesome?”
It doesn’t seem any different than seeing a dude on the street and thinking yep, gay dude. Also I think it felt good for him to get some confirmation that he was born gay, it wasn’t something to be confused or upset about.
Mr. Jesus wants you to date boys honey, please try to find a nice one.
I think it’s skeevy too, but perhaps my opinion is colored by my own experiences. When I was a pre-teen my mother frequently accused me of being gay. “You’re gay aren’t you? I think you’re gay.” Which couldn’t have been further from the truth. It just confirmed for me, even at that young age, that my mother was a bitch.
I’m not going to multiquote the people who answered that yes, they know someone who’s gone to therapy in order to learn how to respond to possible bullying or that they would send their sick child to therapy for that reason. Thanks for your answers.
But I still see it as - not even reinforcing the idea that this kid is the one who is different and therefore wrong, if you do it pre-emptively you’re telling the kid he’s wrong beforehand. Instead of telling kids that bullying is wrong, you’re telling them that being different is wrong, that being attacked for being different is normal, that bullying is normal and if you’re different you need to learn how to cope with being the target of bullying because honey it’s going to be your life. Sorry, that’s royally fucked up!
I had a girl tell me she “knew” my son was “a future queer”. I was pretty pissed. He was four years old at the time and she based on him crying when he had hurt feelings. She wasn’t even trying to be mean. So my thing with parents doing this is that they’re using bad stereotypes or preconceived ideas about gender roles.
Many people over the course of my life have ‘figured out’ that I was gay.
I never figured that out myself and am constantly trying to have sex with women. (yes I’m a man)
I am a big advocate of therapy, but it would have made me feel weird if my parents had sent me to therapy before I had showed any signs of distress about me and my life. It’s one thing to send a kid to therapy when you know they are being picked on and they having a hard time coping. It’s quite another to think those things are inevitable, because they aren’t.
I kind of agree with Nava. If the purpose of seeking out therapy is equipping a kid with a substantial enough ego to deal with potential bullying, aren’t you kind of admitting that you are ill-equipped to provide a basic function for your kid? Hasn’t it always been the parents’ job to pump up a kids’ self-esteem, teach them how to roll their eyes and come up with a snappy comeback (or fight back, if it comes to that), and providing a safe, comforting environment to run home to? I’m not saying that a parent who sends their kid to therapy is forsaking their role as a parent because I know that there are a lot of things that parents just don’t know how to do well (like getting their kids to talk about problems). But I would think that in the absence of problems and gross pathology, the parent(s) would want to be the life coach, especially if we’re talking about little kids. If the parents don’t feel like they can take on this role, maybe they are the ones who need therapy. Not the kids.
Also, speaking as someone who’s trying to cope with the possibility of having to terminate therapy soon, I’d be worried about raising a child who thinks having a life-long psychotherapist is necessary to lead a healthy, happy life. It’s not. You don’t need to have someone to talk to about every little bump you encounter in life or every stray sad thought you have. Being in open-ended supportive therapy is helpful for tons of people, don’t get me wrong. But most people who are in it have chronic problems and have difficulty dealing with life. I would worry I’d be raising a kid who would inaccurately believe they were in this number if I plugged them into the world of therapy in the absence of a disorder, very early in life. And there is still a stigma of going to therapy. Not a stigma where you get teased and shunned, but one where people treat you delicately, like you are a troubled person.
I don’t know. It just seems like an example of hypervigilent parenting to me.
Where I grew up, any working class girl in a single-parent family home was a “slut,” and any working class boy who read library books was a “faggot.” That message came from the other kids, the school authorities, from the parents themselves. “We’re Us, we know it all: Don’t you deny it.”
As soon as possible, you move out, to somewhere more enlightened. “Oh, now you know a little bit of the opression we true sexually-liberated women/gays have had to experience all our lives.” Not exactly respite and validation.
Your’re pretty much on your own all your life. About your best take-away is the need to be aware of the power of pesumption and cruelty, and not inflict it on others.
(a while back I posted that where I grew up, a guy who’d go down on a woman would be branded as gay. It was deemed too submissive for a real man to do, or an act of “proving” how much he liked vagina. Some posters would not believe that other human beings could hold such convictions.)
I first encountered this idea outside the country I grew up in, I always get a good kick out of imagining well if a gay guy eats pussy, then a straight guy eats cock?
Well, that would just prove how secure he is in his hetero masculinity.
(there is no Bizzaro World, because there is no need for one)
I think it’s more like admitting you might be ill-equipped, and deciding to get outside intervention before your kid ends up scarred for life or worse. There have to be people out there who thought they were doing a good job teaching their kids those skills and who didn’t find out that what they were doing wasn’t enough until the damage was done. It makes sense to me to try and avoid that outcome.
IME with child therapy, the parent still is a life coach. They and their child just receive suggestions about coping tools from an outside source.
I see it as teaching your child that they can truly only control one variable in the situation- themselves. While bullying is wrong and the bully should suffer consequences from adults for their bad behavior, ultimately, your child needs to learn how to control themselves and understand it isn’t their fault that bullying is happening. While a therapist may have better tools in general to deal with this than a parent, I’d imagine it also helps for a kid to hear this from someone who isn’t related to them (and therefore more or less obligated to say it).
Would it be better to wait until the kid was being relentlessly bullied before you send him? Or until he starts cutting himself? Telling his friends online that he wants to die? I guess my question is: if not preemptively, what is the threshold for sending your kids to therapy when you know they are, in fact, different?
Beyond that, I’m certain that if you asked parents of gay (or just bullied) teens who have killed themselves in the last few years if they felt they had done their best to teach their kids coping mechanisms and pump up their egos, the answers would be yes. Most people don’t try to short change their kids.
FWIW: I’ve been to a therapist exactly once in my life (I was 16, my parents took me because my mom was moving to another state), so it’s not like I’m some person who is hyper-dependent on therapy myself. I just know I’m perhaps not the most emotional creature, so I accept my short comings there.
(bolding mine)
Kudos to your friends for trying to protect/(prepare?) the child. But IMHO, utilizing “therapy since he was six”, might be ‘jumping the gun’ a little.
Personally, I think that forming an opinion about the childs eventual adult sexuality may be possible, and on this I can empathize with some authority.
One of my younger brothers (I’m the oldest of four boys, no sisters), was* gay. While growing up he was always slightly effiminate, in some ways. He preferred to ‘play with girls’ and didn’t much care to participate in the usual boyhood “masculine” past times.
Fotunately, my family has always been rather accepting and open minded about different lifestyles.
Consequently, my brother was never chastised, ridiculed or ostracized for any seemingly ‘unmasculine’ behavior.
Oh sure, he got the chiding and ribbing from other little boys that is inevitable and unpreventable, but never anything like that from family.
IIRC, my brother ‘came out’ in 1978 or so, when he was 17-18 yrs old. (In retrospect, it wasn’t really a ‘surprise’ to me or those close to him.)
Brother and I had frankly and matter-of-factly, discussed his sexuality on a few different occasions. (Mainly out of curiosity on my part.) He told me that there wasn’t an epiphany or ‘Eureka’ moment, when he ‘decided’ that he was gay.
He had had sexual relations with girls at different times, but had always been more sexually attracted to men, than he was to women.
He said that he had felt that way, for as long as he could remember.
With all of that said, MY personal opinion is… Consentual sex between legal age adults, no matter their gender, does not make a person ‘Good’ or ‘Bad’.
And it’s really… NOT, ANYBODY ELSES BUSINESS.
*Brother passed away in 1998.
R.I.P. Rusty Braswell aka “Pinky Flashwell”