to think my DD is confused about being bisexual?

[OscarWildesCat]

We were all sat having dinner last night and my DS (14) was talking about something to do with LGBTQ, my DD said she thought she might be bisexual. DD is just turned 11 and young for her age, no signs of puberty or anything yet. I feel like she’s a bit young to know this yet?. They’ve been learning about different LGBTQ groups at school and she does have a couple of very close girlfriends so I’m wondering if she’s just a bit mixed up with her feeling for her friends.
I sort of shrugged it off at dinner but went to speak to her later, obviously told her we don’t care who she wants to be with, we love her and reassured her she can talk to me or my DH any time. I couldn’t care less if either of my DC are gay, straight or whatever as long as they’re happy. Any advice on how I can support her?

But surely then they're just friends? Declaring yourself as gay / bisexual is a reference to your sexual feelings towards a specific sex. Not necessarily meaning that they want to HAVE sex with them, but that they find them attractive in a sexual sense.

It depends if you consider romantic attraction to be different from sexual attraction (as many ase people do).

Whenever teenagers are surveyed, the vast majority say they are heterosexual. If most of your friends say they are bisexual, then that's because people often make friends with people who are similar to them. My friendship circle has a really high proportion of bisexual women married to computer programmers who all attended the same university. That doesn't mean that it's social suicide for computer programmers to date straight women. Although now I think about it, it might have something to do with the fact that the university LGBT and Science Fiction and Fantasy Societies had their socials at the same college bar on the same night.

DD came out as bi at a similar age. Most of her friends have done the same so I think it might be just the current trend but it doesn't matter either way really.

I just smiled and said 'cool, thanks for telling me'. I knitted her a scarf in the colours of the bi flag to show my support. If she wants to go to the local pride march whenever it's on I'll go with her.
Just be supportive and don't worry about her being too young to know. It shouldn't make you act any different.

Does she know what it really means? She may just mean she doesn’t want to wear pretty dresses and play with dolls all the time or that she likes boys and girls (as friends), She is to young to have a boyfriend or girlfriend anyway.

If she isn't close to puberty I would say eleven is too young to know or even be thinking about such things. Someone has obviously put this into her head; it's fashionable at the moment.

You were quite right to take no notice but at the same time, don't make a big thing out of it in your mind. In two or three years she will probably feel quite different.

I knew I liked girls and boys at that age, although I didn’t have the vocabulary for it until a few years later. I’m still bisexual. It was all quite innocent, like thinking about kissing my female friends and how we’d fall in love and get married etc. The usual silly kids stuff. I mean, she might be bi, she might cringe at the memory in a few years. All you can do is be supportive and let her work through it.

@jessstan2

You were quite right to take no notice but at the same time, don't make a big thing out of it in your mind. In two or three years she will probably feel quite different.

If she had said she liked boys would you be telling OP that she will probably feel quite different in a few years?

@Starwind74

Does she know what it really means? She may just mean she doesn’t want to wear pretty dresses and play with dolls all the time or that she likes boys and girls (as friends), She is to young to have a boyfriend or girlfriend anyway.

Um...bisexual people can wear pretty dresses and like dolls.

She may be testing the waters for your reaction. Support whatever she says. Dismissing her will send a message that she can't be open about sexuality issues if they arise later.

FWIW I think the OP has done all she can for her daughter. Her daughter has opened a door, which goes with the idea of being child-led in discussions of this nature. OP has left it open and is willing to discuss the subject further as and when her daughter chooses too. She has given no judgement and is supportive - whether bisexuality or any other orientation is intrinsic or considered a choice combined with an identity is part of further discussion based on words her daughter used, and down to them to navigate at an appropriate time.

Children's natural sexual awareness develops over time and puberty approaching ramps it up, and it's all wrapped up with lots of other feelings about attraction which isn't necessarily sexual - unpicking this is something that comes with age and experience.

One thing I will say is that parents are caught in a bit of a double bind here - on the one hand there is a far greater awareness of safeguarding and the need to protect children from abuse, obviously this is a very good thing. Part of safeguarding is to recognise hyper sexualisation which may be caused by abuse going on. At the same time, issues around sexuality need to be discussed safely with children when they bring them up. It must be done age appropriately, and the message that who you love is your business is fine. Discussing the nuts and bolts of what bisexuality or homosexuality or heterosexuality means in practical terms is a handle with kid gloves scenario IMHO.

As a PP said, it is very difficult when there is a jump from a child focussed on childhood activities to announcing something about their "sexuality" - the parental view of a child is divorced from sexuality - they know those discussions will be had, but it's a bit of a broad side when you're not prepared. As adults we know that sexual relationships can be positive, negative, a minefield based on the millions of variables in human relationships, and the desire to protect a child from potential future pain has to be balanced with allowing them independence and making their own, hopefully well-informed choices, or following their innate orientation.

We live in a very fast paced world and have new information about all manner of things coming at us on a daily basis - keeping up is hard, but necessary

I don't think it's all that helpful to say you 'don't care'. I know it's meant nicely but saying you don't care about an aspect of your child's life could make them feel a bit sad. I'd say something more like 'I'm really pleased you felt like telling me that' or 'I'm glad you wanted to talk to me about this'.

I really think the 'it's cool to be LGBT' needs to die a death. It's so boring. People have been saying that to children for decades and it never stops sounding like the polite version of homophobia.

@Starwind74

Does she know what it really means? She may just mean she doesn’t want to wear pretty dresses and play with dolls all the time

You what now?

I really think the 'it's cool to be LGBT' needs to die a death. It's so boring.
Well, someone up thread claimed admitting to being straight is social suicide, so 🤷🏻‍♀️

@GreyhoundG1rl

I really think the 'it's cool to be LGBT' needs to die a death. It's so boring. Well, someone up thread claimed admitting to being straight is social suicide, so 🤷🏻‍♀️

Which is a pretty daft thing to say, let’s be honest.

[quote activitythree]@Starwind74

Does she know what it really means? She may just mean she doesn’t want to wear pretty dresses and play with dolls all the time

You what now?

[/quote]
Ask her what she’d prefer for Christmas - a pretty dress, a doll and a bracelet, or a pair of dungarees, some clumpy boots and a Kate Bush box set. That should make it clear.

@GreyhoundG1rl

I really think the 'it's cool to be LGBT' needs to die a death. It's so boring. Well, someone up thread claimed admitting to being straight is social suicide, so 🤷🏻‍♀️

I know, I saw that too.

This conversation is pretty much identical to what people were saying over 20 years ago when I was coming out to my parents. It was tacit bigotry then and it's tacit bigotry now.

@Singlenotsingle

I don't think I ever considered that gayness was actually a thing. I had innocent crushes on boys right from being about 4. It would never have occurred to me to crush on a girl, but this was a long time ago and sex wasn't a topic of conversation or teaching at school.

Same here. I didn't find out about homosexuals and lesbians until I was 12; I was curious in the sense that I wanted to read about them in order to understand but I did think it was strange. I spent years - until adulthood - thinking lesbian couples probably just kissed and held hands. :-)

I always had romantic ideas about boys.

Sexuality is not something you decide to ‘be’ it’s something you discover about yourself. A child does not think they are homosexual or asexual or bisexual or heterosexual - they just know who they’re interested in. The ‘sexual’ bit will come when they become ‘sexual’. I think there’s a pressure at school these days to get yourself under a flag. The LGBT group at my kids’ school is a well attended club and my daughter goes along to hang out with her mates who are a mix of non-binary, gender-non-conforming/dysphoric, gay and asexual. I smile at her asexual 12 year old male friend because he is so very obviously a child who’s nowhere near interested in sex (like most of them) but has felt obliged to announce this new label because he’s desperately keen not to get kicked out the group and is gender non-conforming (‘which round our way is a label applied to any boy who doesn’t like football)

It’s healthy for kids to be exposed to the idea that there are other options open to them when they start having relationships. That doesn’t need to involve explicit detail just the knowledge they exist and there’s nothing right or wrong about it. It just is. At the age of 10/11/12 making any declaration about these sexualities is a bit hypothetical in some cases but it feels grown up to make them. And we all know how much kids want to be seen as grown up. And then you can become part of a tribe and, unless you’ve grown up in a gay family, heterosexuality is now associated with being boring and unadventurous and like your parents. Who wants that?

I feel for the poster who is bisexual because I know biphobia is real. But I also know where the OP is coming from. If I was the OP I would just accept that your child might be bisexual or they might not. I’d just say to her child, you can discover who you are as you go out in the world. The BIG thing I would be watching is that they are careful around any older child or teen that is indulging in sexual activity either legally or illegally and be mindful of unknown adults who they come across that want to ‘celebrate’ their sexuality. Safeguarding is important and these days kids are finding out a lot more ‘adult’ stuff regarding sexuality and sexual activities at a much earlier stage. Obviously if you’re 12 and are announcing you’re pan sexual you’re going to be wondering how that all works and that’s when you need to get those controls well and truly tightened up on your internet. Make sure any clubs she might join are age appropriate ie. 12-16 not 12-25! And then just hope that anyone she ends up bringing home when she is in a ‘relationship’ is a decent person who treats her well.

@Flapjak

I think its interesting that a lot of posters are saying 11 is not to young to know that you are gay , lesbian or bi. Did the 90 % of heterosexual kids know that they were heterosexual ? I am pretty sure not regardless of how many girl or boy crushes you had. Surely most people dont know for sure until at least they have fully entered adolescence and even then i think lots of teens have same sex crushes but their sexuality goes on to be heterosexual.

I would agree with this. I'm a lesbian. At 11, I'd had "crushes" on lots of people, mostly boys, some girls. At the time, I probably didn't recognise them in the same way as it was basically "straight until proven otherwise" but the feelings were the same.

That is not the same as the sexual attraction I had to solely women as a teenager. I'm quite prepared to believe that I was just a bit slow on the uptake and that my peers were experiencing and identifying sexual feelings at 11 but when I've talked about these things with friends both male and female and a fair amount of them have said they spent time wondering if they were gay or bi in their early teens and they're mostly in heterosexual relationships now and say that they don't have sexual feelings toward their own sex. Similarly, plenty of people I know had romantic relationships with the opposite sex through their teens and later realised that they weren't specially attracted to them.

I think that "she'll grow out of it" is a terrible message to give but I doubt any 11 year old can absolutely declare their sexuality- it's just that a child declaring themselves straight probably wouldn't be disputed because it's thought to be the norm.
At 11 it doesn't make any real difference, she's much too young to be having sex. Just let her know that you'll be happy for her no matter who she's attracted to.

@SansaSnark I think you are taking things out of context and unfortunately unfairly labelling someone biphobic. I like these groups because they are (most often than not) a place for people to learn and express themselves without judgement. If someone provides advice in a way different from what you might have said, that doesn't make them biphobic rather they are just someone expressing a view from their perspective.

DS tells me he gets asked by other kids at school what his sexuality is, and they think he's weird when he says he hasn't decided yet as he's only 12.

I think there's a lot more pressure for DC to label themselves these days.

You are right howmanyhats.

I smile at her asexual 12 year old male friend because he is so very obviously a child who’s nowhere near interested in sex (like most of them) but has felt obliged to announce this new label because he’s desperately keen not to get kicked out the group and is gender non-conforming (‘which round our way is a label applied to any boy who doesn’t like football)

Or he might actually be asexual. I was 12 and nowhere near interested in sex, now I'm 42 and nowhere near interested in sex.

BIG thing I would be watching is that they are careful around any older child or teen that is indulging in sexual activity either legally or illegally and be mindful of unknown adults who they come across that want to ‘celebrate’ their sexuality.

Obviously if you’re 12 and are announcing you’re pan sexual you’re going to be wondering how that all works and that’s when you need to get those controls well and truly tightened up on your internet.

So should me sister keep my heterosexual 12 year old niece away from her brothers 17 year old male friends who are indulging in sexual activity? Should my sister tighten up her internet too even though niece isn't pan? Also, why is 'relationship' in quotes in your last sentence?

@jessstan2, it really isn't.

Let's say for arguments sake that you are straight - did you have innocent fantasises about maybe holding a boys hand before that age? Or just saying that so and so was your boyfriend? Did you think of yourself with the prince rather than the princess? You weren't thinking about having sex with the prince, but you knew what looked "right", in terms of a romantic relationship, to you.

11 might be too young for some to be having sexual thoughts, but romantic thoughts start much much younger.

Haven't read all responses. But I'd say just be accepting for now.

I actually feel I knew I was straight aged 4 as I liked a boy at nursery because he was good looking! But who knows if that was really a sign. I also had crushes on girls - I went to a girl's school for secondary so there wasn't much chance to have crushes on boys (though I did like certain male actors).

I agree it's cool to consider oneself bisexual amongst teens these days. My 15 year old does and says several of her friends say the same. She insists on it but mainly talks about having a boyfriend - she hasn't had any romantic relationships as yet, but does have intense friendships with girls. They all send each other birthday cards that sound like love letters (without any sexual references). I'm open to either, though suspect she is probably straight in fact.

My other dd used to tell me she was a lesbian but now says she's straight. She hasn't had any proper relationships yet either.