It’s strange to me that people think having gay representation in books you read is “growing up too fast”. She isn’t asking for romance (or at least not beyond the level tonnes of YA books read by her age group have!). She is asking for positive lesbian representation. Eg a book in which the character happens to have two mums; a book in which the teen character’s distant unachievable crush happens to be a girl. Etc. This is all stuff you get the straight version of constantly in books at this age - especially if like her you read several books a week. I don’t think having gay representation in a book should need to be associated with it being overly “adult” and that’s why I asked for suitable material. And of course people don’t ask for book recommendations that offer straight role models - because that’s what the vast majority of books already do!!
I do of course know that she may well grow up to be straight (or bi or whatever), and I couldn’t really care less either way. But right now she is thinking about her sexuality and thinks she is likely gay - and I don’t think in this case it’s supportive and helpful to say “no dear, that’s not for you, just go back to playing with your spinning top”. Like I said above, I think knowing her very well as I do this is reasonably likely to be “real” - it’s not like she has randomly picked it up at school or whatever. She told me nobody at school is talking about it at all and she doesn’t know anybody at school her age who is gay, as an example. That’s partly why she wanted to talk about it as she says she has noticed she feels very interested and engaged when she sees even a tiny bit of gay representation.
On the “she is just a kid” stuff: she has had her periods for over a year and is fully developed. Possibly some of the people on here who are talking about 11 year old kids haven’t met a mature nearly 12 year old girl recently. Treating her like a nine year old on this stuff is really not going to fly - she wanted to talk about it and share it with me and discuss it properly and seriously, not have it brushed away.
It’s definitely true that some people are too young to know at this age and that lots of people wonder about their sexuality when young and end up straight. She knows all that and is very sensible about it. But it’s also true that some people know young that they are gay - certainly that’s what some of my gay friends describe. So you want to make it easy for her to change her mind and not at all feel a rush to label herself, but you also want to actively demonstrate that you support her if she is gay, make sure she feels comfortable talking to you about it, and show that you think it’s normal to have lesbians in the world -including in the world of books she reads and the TV she watches.
Also, I shouldn’t have to say this, but she is of course still a child in tonnes of ways. She spends most of her time playing team sports, reading books, messing about with her siblings, and drawing or doing random crafts. She has no social media or internet access. She is not exploring relationships or anything mature beyond maybe a bit of liking someone from a band.
obviously I am not going to give her a load of AI generated rubbish. That’s why I came to mumsnet for help!