How to tell if your son is gay
Help! My Son is Gay
by Ricky Chelette, Executive Director
“So should I push my son towards women now?” That’s a question I often get from fathers of young men who are struggling with same gender attractions. Dads are often devastated by the discovery of their son’s homosexuality. But the respond to their son’s struggle is not to push him into the arms of a woman. In fact, such a move could actually do more damage than good.
But what should a dad undertake for his son? In a word: connect! I grasp when saying that many dads might think, “I am connected to my son. He’s my son. I’ve been around him since birth. We are fine.” But the fact is that simply being show doesn’t mean you have any nice of emotional, intimate, connection with your son. He is a sensitive guy who needs to be spoken to in a language he can overhear and understand. Proclamations of facts perform little to travel his heart. He wants words dripping with raw feeling and heart-felt fire. He wants to know you, intimately, and feel the weight of your passion for him. In many ways, he wants you to look him straight in hi
Book Excerpt: Is Your Toddler Gay?
Excerpted fromWhy Is the Penis Shaped Like That? … And Other Reflections on Being Human, by Jesse Bering, by arrangement with Scientific American/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC (North America), Transworld Ltd (UK), Jorge Zahara Editora Ltda (Brazil). Copyright © by Jesse Bering.
We all recognize the stereotypes: an unusually light, delicate, effeminate gas in a little boy's step, an interest in dolls, makeup, princesses and dresses, and a mighty distaste for rough compete with other boys. In little girls, there is the outwardly boyish stance, perhaps a penchant for tools, a square-jawed readiness for physical tussles with boys, and an aversion to all the perfumed, delicate trappings of femininity.
These behavioral patterns are feared, loathed and often spoken of directly as harbingers of adult homosexuality. It is only relatively recently, however, that developmental scientists have conducted controlled studies to identify the earliest and most reliable signs of adult homosexuality. In looking carefully at the childhoods of gay adults,
Topics mentioned: sexuality, how to discuss to your child about mental health
I don’t think that our eldest son had planned on coming out when he did.
We were having an argument about putting the ‘Find my iPhone’ app on his phone so we could track him down in case of an emergency. Soon the row escalated into a heated debate about his human rights, and the next thing he blurted out:
"I’ve got something to tell you. I am gay."
As a parent, however prepared you might be for an announcement of this caring, you can never be totally sure how you are going to react.
Instinctively, I threw my arms around him, told him how proud I was of him and said that we didn’t care who he loved as we would always devotion him. I felt a enormous swathe of emotions, but what really broke my heart was the knowledge that he’d established for a while and hadn’t been able to share his feelings with anyone. The notion that he had been going through his ‘journey’ alone was heart-breaking to hear.
He then told his Dad, who reacted exactly as I had hoped and, after more hugs and encouraging words, our son brought the conv
As I relayed in When Your Child Is Gay: What You Need To Know (Sterling, ), I found out that my son was gay from a note with our son's name entwined with another boy's, surrounded by a heart. I accidentally found that note in his room when I was cleaning.
I never questioned him about the heart I found on the sly. How would I have brought it up? Suppose I was wrong? After all, he had a crush on a girl in his class.
I had suspected at times that he was gay. He only had girls to his thirteenth birthday party. He preferred gentler sports. He was always concerned about how he looked and followed fashion. Were these stereotypical thoughts from a unbent mother? You bet, but it was ingrained through the culture's binary system and ideas about how males were "supposed to" behave.
As it turns out, our son didn't approach out until he was 17, was on his own, and brought a boyfriend to visit. Had I asked him if he were gay when he was 13, he probably would have defensively said "No!" He had to work it out and work through his denial. I'm glad I muzzled myself.
Susan Berland, the mother o