Any stories off children changing their label

[Maggie15]

2 weeks ago my dd 14 told me she is bi , I’m totally supportive and I’ve told her so , I love her and I’ve told her that I accept her and will be there for her 100 percent .
I’m just wanting to know if anyone has any stories off children changing their labels months/years later? Whether it be gay/straight/lesbian
My daughters friends all have labels and she mentioned the other day that she is Bi now but it might change ??? I’m not saying I want her to change but it was just strange her saying that.
If I’m being honest this is all very hard at the minute , I’m finding it hard to get use too, it’s something I wasn’t expecting and was a shock .
Me and dh both want to make sure we are doing/saying everything to support her , all new to us

All the kids have labels. It’s an ‘in’ thing which takes away from the genuine children struggling with their sexuality.

She’s jumped on the band wagon.

Hi
I do think she like girls , however it’s seems to be only ones that she’s seen on social media etc at the minute , she also wants to change her clothes style to alt (which I don’t think suits her but I would never tell her that )
I also know she still likes boys so I don’t know what she meant when she said she may change , can’t ask her either as she thinks I’m questioning her to much .
It’s just so hard and I’m trying my best to say and do everything right

I wouldn’t call it a bandwagon.

I think it could be a phase OP. As your DD is only 14 it’s hard to know so I wouldn’t think too seriously about it for now. As time goes on deeper conversations of wanting or not wanting children and so on will arise and then you will have a better idea.

Maybe she meant she's not completely sure if she is bi. Sexuality can be a difficult thing to figure out, especially at a young age, not everyone knows straight away

DS is nearly 18 and autistic. He's told me recently that he has no attraction to girls or boys and asked if this was normal. I suspect he may have either a very low sex drive or be asexual but I've simply said his feelings are normal for him and to talk to me if he wants to discuss it any furtjer. At present he doesn't and that's fine

Dd said she was bi at 14. At 15 she is fairly clear she’s a lesbian.

She got very cross with me for saying she might change but then she did so I get to say ‘I told you so!’ I know a lot of lesbians and I have known women who changed their sexuality in both directions as well as those who have known in their early teens and never wavered.

She seems happy and settled right now though so it’s all good.

Try not to stress op, you don’t have to do anything special! Just keep on as you are, telling her you support her. You don’t need to know too much about what is going on in her head- you don’t have to understand it to be supportive.

I thought I was a lesbian when i was that age, then in my late teens I was sure I was bi, then after that I thought i was a lesbian again. Now I realise i'm probably bisexual but don't feel a romantic connection with men. Things can change in that way, I think that could be what she means

I think at that age its perfectly normal to be working things out, lots of people think they're bi and then realise they're actually gay a bit later or vice versa. It's not really something you need to stress about.

Not quite an experience of "children changing their label", but from an adult who's been through something similar:

My first label was "straight". That's what I would've told you I was if you'd asked me when I was your daughter's age. I didn't figure out that I liked girls too until I was 18—partly due to growing up in an environment where LGBT+ people were either not mentioned at all or else openly disparaged (so, on behalf of all the non-straight kids who had a similar experience, thank you for being a safe & supportive person for your daughter to come out to! )

I came out as bi in my second year of university, but by my mid-20s, I'd changed my label again and started calling myself "queer". This wasn't a change in who I was attracted to, just how I described myself—I'm not going to go into all the details, but there's a lot of not-always-friendly debate within the LGBT+ community about whether "bisexual" or "pansexual" is the better word for describing attraction-to-more-than-one-gender, and picking "queer" was partly a way of opting out of that debate.

At 28, I met the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with. We've lived together for a number of years, were planning our wedding before the whole COVID thing ruined large gatherings, want to have kids together, and so on & so forth. I often casually refer to myself as "gay" these days, because it's a useful shorthand for "the only person I'm interested in romantically is another woman"... but I still appreciate the eye-candy factor of a good-looking guy in a well-fitted suit! And if I ever did find myself back on the market for some reason, I'd consider dating men, & would probably go back to calling myself "queer" or "bi" 100% of the time.

So... lots of changes of label, but far fewer changes of who I actually am or who I fancy: mostly just changes in how I describe those things to the wider world. Like me, your DD might take a while to figure out how she wants to describe herself to others; I think the best thing you can do is be patient with her while she does that figuring-out.

Oh, and @Whiskyinajar, I love the response you gave your son! "'I've simply said his feelings are normal for him and to talk to me if he wants to discuss it any further" = perfect

I know a young person who went from straight to bi and now identifies as a gay man. So yes, I think young people do change their labels.

I also know more than one woman who was married to a man and then was in a relationship with a woman. Not sure they would have identified as bi at the start, or at the finish.

Just support her she don't make a big deal of it.