When Your 7-Year-Old Son Announces, ‘I’m Gay’  

qbits:

The world need more parents like Amelia.

Q.

By: Amelia

Mother, wife, partner and breadwinner

Posted: 02/16/2012 1:04 pm

Considering that my son has a longstanding crush on Glee’s Blaine and regularly refers to him as “my boyfriend,” I thought there was a fair chance that he would someday say, “I’m gay.” But my kid is only 7 years old. I figured I had a few years before we crossed that threshold (if we ever did), probably when he was 14 or 15. I never thought it would happen this soon.

Six months ago “gay” wasn’t even a word in my son’s vocabulary. He has always known that some of our male friends are married to men and some of our female friends to women, and it is such a normal part of his life that he never needed a special word to describe them. When he did notice the word and asked what it meant, I told him that when boys want to marry boys and girls want to marry girls, we call that “gay.” He didn’t seem very interested and quickly went off to do something else more exciting than a vocabulary lesson with his mom.

Fast-forward a few months. I was on the phone with a relative who had just discovered that I was blogging on The Huffington Post and openly discussing my son’s crush on Blaine. I was in another room alone (I thought), explaining, “We’re not saying he’s straight, and we’re not saying he’s gay. We’re saying we love who he is,” when my son’s voice piped up behind me.

“Yes, I am,” he said.

“Am what, baby?” I asked.

“Gay. I’m gay.”

My world paused for a moment, and I saw the “geez, Mom, didn’t you know that already?” look on my son’s face.

I got off the phone and leaned down to eye level with him and rubbed my nose against his. “I love you so much.”

“I know,” he said, and ran off to play with his brothers.

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