10 year old Dd says she's a lesbian.

[Freeasabird76]

My 10 year old Dd came to me this evening with her friend on a WhatsApp call saying her friend had something to tell me,as she passed me the phone she cuddled up to my side and looked scared,her also 10 year old friend said quite matter of factly,Dd is afraid to say it but wants you to know that shes a lesbian.
At this time my Dd broke down in tears,I told her friend thank you for telling me but I had to hang up now to comfort Dd.
I obviously comforted her and told her like I have before that she should never be afraid to tell me ANYTHING and like I've said in the past I love you no matter who you like,be it girls,boys or girls and boys or neither.
I asked her how long she'd wanted to tell me this and she said a long time.Now I honestly do not care one bit if she likes girls,all I care about is her happiness.
I have questions though,there's been a lot of talk in Dds class this year about girls being lesbian boys being gay etc,obviously different generations so I dont have any experience of this,when I was a child this didnt come up until we were at least say 15.How sure can you be at 10 about your sexuality? I dont recollect being so self aware at that age.

Remember we’re all peado’s, not only that by merely leaving our homes we’re shoving our sexuality down peoples throats, unlike straight people who keep theirs a closely guarded secret and take care to ensure that no child (including their own) every discovers their sexuality.

Ah and the old encouraging, because sexuality is obviously a choice, something that can be caught or encouraged.

I agree

It’s extremely common for girls age 7-12 to be ‘in love with’ or ‘fancy’ other girls. Some might even say its a normal developmental stage for females. They have an intense friendship with one best friend, get jealous over who holds hands with whom, and sometimes even practice kissing on girls. Usually this later progresses into fancying boys. When exactly that happens depends on when they’re first exposed to attractive boys (as opposed to their spotty rude classmates).

It’s possible that your DD will never fancy men. It’s also possible that she will. I didn’t think much of guys until I saw Brad Pitt in Thelma & Lousie 👀😍👀

All the ‘lesbians’ I knew at secondary school are now married to men and have kids. Even the one who did pride marches and was engaged to a woman. Just sayin 🤷‍♀️

I didn’t have a proper boyfriend until uni as my secondary school male classmates were 🤢 If there had been LGBQT clubs back then, I can imagine they’d have easily convinced me I wasn’t straight.

If this were my daughter, I would tell her that she is six years too young to be even thinking about a sexual relationship, that her brain and body are still developing and neither you nor she have a clue what it’s final state will be, that she doesn’t even ovulate yet so of course she isn’t attracted to boys, and that she may or may not one day settle down with a man or woman or no one - but there is no need, and it is deeply unhelpful, to give herself a label now.

(There is huge pressure on social misfits at the moment to declare themselves LBGQT$#*?!+ as that gives them access to instant admiration for their ‘bravery’, access to a support network, and huge amounts of attention. Can you find her a different source of camadarie, in a completely different social circle? Drama group? Rock band? Cadets? Dance? Scouts? Etc. Work out what your ten year old is really craving. I guarantee it is not sex, whether lesbian or straight.)

Sorry your DD has been brainwashed into thinking about sex and labels at the age of ten 😢

I prefered Louise 😂

Meh, I knew from about 12 that I liked girls and boys. Still do now.

I just googled and Harrison Ford's filmography means I fancied boys at 9. Wanted to be Leia, wanted to kiss Han.

The message in my house (and DD is currently omni ) is that I don't care who you like as long as everyone is mature and consenting.

Your homophobia is showing, dear.

Being gay isn’t an ‘adult’ thing. Would you say a 10 year old girl with a crush on a boy was being groomed, or vice versa?

I’m struggling to understand why you think being a lesbian shouldn’t be ‘encouraged’, could you explain what you mean by that please?

I'm gay but didn't know when I was that age. However a gay male friend did. DD1 (10) casually mentioned recently she had a crush on a girl, I told her she was a bit young for all that but ok and gave her a hug. Sounds like your daughter told you in a very emotional way so it sounds like you responded appropriately and gave her support. Lots of kids are coming out very young these days and more of them, I think because homophobia has overall decreased over the decades. Life as a tweenager is very dramatic and I wouldn't give it that much more thought. It may be a stage or it may be who she is. Would it be a problem to you if she was?

Why is it considered negative to be “labelled” a lesbian?

Apart from homophobic attitudes that assume being a lesbian is a bad thing, of course.

My daughter hasn’t been groomed by anyone. She currently says she is a lesbian and she may or may not continue to be one.

I knew I was attracted to girls at 10.

I had a huge crush on a girl in the year above, so I must have been in year 5.

This was in the 90s so I didn't have any words for it, I didn't have any exposure to anything LGB. So I struggled alot with my feelings. Same sex attraction just wasn't talked about so I was pretty confused.

I'm pretty sure that if I was 10 now I would have came out like your daughter.

I would be proud that she is secure enough to tell you.

She may be a lesbian. She might not.

I spent up until year 10 thinking I was a lesbian and wanting to come out to my friends.

All my crushes were girls (but I did have male celeb crushes too)

But I did end up married to a man. I still am very much bisexual and have had relationships with women.

I think you did the right thing by comforting her and telling her you love her whatever happens.

Oh and my 13 year old daughter is broudly bi too. She has a bi flag in her room and has always been very open about it!

I agree with this!

If this little girl had said I like a boy in my class would you tell her her feeling of heterosexuality aren't valid and she's not straight?!

Being a lesbian isn't a choice or dressing up.

How very weird.

Have you spent any time on youth social media lately - say TikTok, Tumblr or Discord groups? Youth culture at the moment is profoundly different from anything previous generations experienced in the 80s, 90s or early 2000s. We did not have access to 24-7 electronic social media, some of which is circulating “new gender drops”, bdsm and pretty hardcore porn as normal to young preteens and young teenagers as part of the labelling culture. I spend a fair bit of time using apps like that for hobby purposes and girls from around 12-13 onwards are being pressured to decide labels for themselves by peers online in ways that really are not healthy explorations of sexual orientation at all (a lot of that youth labelling culture is also bound up with various forms of self-harm and girls’ reactions to porn).

There are girls in my 9 y o DD’s class at school who are already discussing whether they are trans or “demi” or asexual or queer because they have been watching TikTok videos about sex that they should not really have been accessing at that age. My DD is happily quite sceptical about all of it because she is a) pretty independent and feisty and b) not allowed on any social media, but it’s noticeable that it’s the more easily influenced and insecure girls often taking these ideas up.

Same amongst my undergraduate students, where those who are very bought-in to the labels culture are the ones who are invariably the most fragile and who look to online identity groups as mental health support. In that age group mental health issues have really rocketed, as I’m sure you’re seeing too. (I estimate from around 15-20 percent of my students requiring mental health support around ten years ago, it’s now up to 60 percent - and this started well before the pandemic. The students also tell me they feel online media contributes massively to this themselves; so it’s not just something I personally think, but something I hear then regularly articulating as all part of the same oppressive online culture!)

It’s very far from a positive culture that affirms lesbianism. If anything, “lesbian” is considered quite a pejorative “label”, and young women are heavily encouraged to police others’ self-identity and sexual orientation as well as their own. There’s also a heavy push to collapse “queer” identities into “kink”, and to stigmatise any young woman who objects to the increasing sexualisation of any identity as “kink-shaming”.

My advice to anyone with a preteen or teen girl is to keep them off online media as long as possible, and encourage them to get into real-world hobbies and activities with plenty of non-online social events. The online teen culture of constant self-examination and policing everything is really negative.

And it’s perfectly possible to be supportive of a child’s emerging identity / sexuality without buying in to the full labels culture. I’m lesbian but as I said upthread really wouldn’t have known at ten, and have always made a point of saying my my DD that she is free to love or marry anyone — but I don’t think it’s homophobic at all to also acknowledge that young people’s sexuality is often changeable and fluid and it’s fine to try out identities and also change your mind.

One can be accepting and positive without buying in to the online labelling culture OR having too rigid an idea of what sexuality is and that gender year olds know innately if they’re straight or gay. Some might. Lots won’t. Either is fine. They shouldn’t be under pressure to decide either way.

Gender year olds?? Ten year olds 😂

My first memory is Christian Bale in Little Women (also 9) 😍 Timothee Chalamet doesn't come close

Same here. At that age, I actually wanted to marry a horse and thought we'd spend our lives together.

I was about 10 when it began to become apparent to me I'm a lesbian. Nobody encouraged it, and I'd never have dared mention it. I am a lesbian though, so not unusual to know from a young age.
She doesn't have to label herself though, not yet. It's fabulous OP that she now knows she can talk to you, well done.

I think it's good that children feel confidant to talk about it. When I was at school (I'm 44) no one came out as gay, plenty were and come out later on . I think it's sad they didn't feel like they could tell people when they were younger

I definitely know from around the age of 9 that I liked boys

Why is your 10 year old using Whatsapp to speak with friends? I'd be more concerned with this.

Those saying it's sad kids are made to feel like this these days and it's being forced on them and they would be clueless otherwise...

How do you explain me being 10 in 1992, and going through the same thing?

Who was influencing me? No tiktok or tumblr around then.

I had no idea women could be together

But I felt it!

How do you explain that?

Yeah that's exactly it!! Except for me it was more 1999. Still no influence at all.

This.

Yep, same here but for men. I knew from about 8, but I didn’t know it had a name or that it was something that even existed for other people, I knew the word gay as an insult, but I had no idea what the word really meant. By 10 I was aware it would have to be beaten away if anyone ever found out and by then I knew what gay actually meant.

Guess what guys, it still didn’t go away, nor is it comparable to someone wanting to marry a horse, oh, are you Johnsons friend by the way, he also likes to compare the relationships gay people have to beastiality, but he prefers dogs.

Homophobes on here are a joke! Small minded and ignorant. Yes I'm talking about you @Aquilegia23 and @CoastalWave