“I believe within a couple generations it won’t even be seen as a big deal. For the meantime, I think that as long as the parents keep a loving relationship with their children and really emphasize that no matter what, they’ll love their child, it will be as easy as it can get for the children of this day and age.You are about to enter a website that contains explicit material (pornography). “If the child grows up with hearing their parents talk about several forms of LGBTQ related topics shed in a good light, then it will be seen from a very young age that being LGBTQ is perfectly OK,” he told Buzzfeed.
The father, who has expressed gratitude for the online support of the Reddit community, has advice for parents who might find themselves in a similar situation. “Let them know that you will support their decisions, and that they should feel safe talking to you.” “It’s important to articulate to your children that you love them no matter who they love,” Alpert says. This father created a safe and loving space for his son to feel comfortable.”ĭiscussing your child’s sexuality can be difficult, no matter what his or her orientation, and Alpert says parents should take a cue from this father. Kids that age might not know what they’re feeling, and that’s OK. That by itself can cause someone’s mood to be all over the place and create some confusion. “At 13, the body is going through so many changes and kids are in the throes of puberty.
“He didn’t put any pressure on his son, he put a safe and nurturing environment for him to be honest,” Alpert tells Yahoo Parenting. Psychotherapist Jonathan Alpert, author of “ Be Fearless: Change Your Life in 28 Days,” agrees this father did everything right when approaching his son. “Having a proper little weep at this story,” tweeted one fan, with others called out the dad for being “awesome” and providing “probably (definitely) the best thing you’ll read today.” Another noted, “Hey world? THIS is how you nail parenting…” The deep Reddit exchange, with a little help from BuzzFeed, has gone viral, and Twitter users have been weighing in with approval. “ I had my arm around him and he was leaning his head on my chest, and all I could think of was that I’m the happiest father on earth right now.” “ I looked at him and couldn’t help myself from smiling, and I told him ‘_, you know I love you so much… right?’ and I got up and gave him a huge hug,” he writes. His gentle, supportive prodding worked: Later that evening, at the dinner table, his son told him he was gay. At the end of the conversation, dad kept up the gender-blind speech, explaining to his son: “ Well, whoever it is, they should be so lucky to have you as a boyfriend.” “ I wanted to make sure I didn’t say a gender when I asked him, so instead of ‘he’ or ‘she’ I used ‘they’,” he writes. The next day, after picking his son up from school, the dad asked his son if he had any crushes. STORY: What to Consider When Sharing Your Kids Online its good” or something like that but he actually gave me a detailed response which I absolutely loved because for the first time in a good while I’ve actually held a conversation with my son that felt really… rewarding,” he wrote. Comments poured in, like this clever one from Redditor atomicsiren: “Google ‘how to tell my son I will love and support him no matter what’ and leave it in his search history.”Ī few days later, the dad posted an update: “ I started off with talking about general media with him, for instance I mentioned how awesome it was that Tim Cook (CEO of Apple) came out as being gay and I asked him what he thought about it and I was completely expecting him to give a typical teenager response like “yeah.