11 year old daughter has a crush on a girl

[Elle2208]

Hello all,

I have an amazing almost 11 year old girl. She is fun, kind, empathetic, has an amazing sense of humor and is extremely loving. She's also dyslexic and lacks self esteem. She doesn't have close friends at school and she is described by other kids as "weird".

We have been working with a child psychiatrist to see how we can help her with that, but now a new factor has come into the equation: one of her friend's mum called me and told me that my daughter confided in her friend that she has a crush on another girl. Please note that English is not our mother language, but she goes to an international school and the kids tend to speak in English amongst them. She did not go into details, she just told her friend the name of the girl.

The problem is that this girl is a bully. She has been known to have such issues and to also create major issues to other children, mostly vulnerable and quiet.

My question is: how do i protect her from being ridiculed by this girl, if she shows how she feels about her? Knowing how that child has behaved in the past, I'm sure it will be devastating for my daughter and she will be bullied relentlessly. On the other hand we wouldn't want to expose her friend, or make her feel that she did sth wrong.

Our doctor tells us that crashes (on boys or girls) at this age are expected that we should pretty much do nothing.

I will not lie. Knowing that our child might be gay is not the easiest thing to digest. In any case, though, we love her unconditionally and our only hope for her is to be healthy and happy. And we make sure she knows that.

If the crush was on any other kid, we would let it go. But knowing that she runs the risk of being completely isolated at school, because of that bully scares the hell out of us.

Any thoughts / ideas / advice would be much appreciated.

Thanks!

ps: please excuse any language mistakes - as said, English is not my mother language :)

I had crushes on girls at secondary school and turned out to be completely heterosexual.

She is 11. An age when children might start to explore. If you go back and look at girls schools stories (or even diaries) over the last hundred or more years, girls crushes on teachers, other girls (particularly girls with more power) does seem to crop up a lot. She may be gay, she may not. She may not know yet. But the concept of crushes is not new, and many who have had crushes are not gay.

you are right to be concerned about the risks of bullying , but please don’t place too much stress on her regarding sexual orientation. Don’t paint her into a corner she can’t get out of, don’t let her feel ashamed. She is a child.