What age should kids learn about different sexual orientations?

[unpredictablemum]

I’ve been categorised as a closed minded parent for saying a 4 year old is too young to understand and that they might be confused by it, I’m now wondering if I am in the wrong? And most importantly to clarify I have absolutely nothing against people with different sexual orientations.
Back story is I was incorrectly told that the new superman is bisexual (it's actually a new character, superman's son) and as my son loves superhero's I expressed that my son might be confused if his favourite superhero started kissing men all of a sudden, is that not a fair comment 🤷‍♀️

@CornedBeef451

I've just casually dropped into conversation that some men love men and some women love women and it's no big deal who you love.

Also I've always said "when you have a boyfriend ... or girlfriend" to the point where my 12 yo DD finally said "yeah mum I get it, it's fine if I'm gay"!

It doesn't have to be a big deal to tell them, it's not like you'll be explaining the sex lives of any particular sexuality so just make it very matter of fact and just about who you love.

I catch myself doing that with DD sometimes but she's only 7 so hasn't called me out on it yet 😂

"When you're older and your husband...or wife, or if you choose to be single, or just not married or....well......whatever......"

Homophobic dolphins 😥😔

@ClumpingBambooIsALie

Homophobic dolphins 😥😔

They're pretty vile without that. Don't get taken in by their nice smile.

😂

@TheCheeseBadge. Your post was the 8th post in. The op had only done her opening post which was not rude in any way.
It is not true that she started off by describing homesexuality as taboo. The word taboo wasn't used for several pages after your comment, when she said it was taboo when she was a child. That's not the same as saying homosexuality is taboo at all. It was something her parents didn't talk to her about. That's not the ops fault.
She did, long after your comment, say that nature intends male and female to breed and reproduce so I guess you are extrapolating from that that she thinks that gay people are unnatural. But that is a leap that you are making because you're looking for an insult. Stating a biological fact that in the human species males and females are required to procreate does not cast a slur on same sex couples enjoying sex. Indeed the op says that the human race has evolved from just male and female. (I will agree her comment of anything goes is a bit hmm.)
Where people have challenged her, the op has acknowledged errors and apologised.
However, regardless of all that, your comment was made in response to an opening post which was not derogatory and was asking for advice and feedback. You are gay and made a good point. But using HTH is just rude.

I don’t think there is too young an age. If they can understand that a man and a woman can love each other/be a couple then they can understand 2 men or 2 women can.

I don’t think it’s confusing at all, most children would just accept that if it is presented matter of factly. I imagine young children wouldn’t bat an eyelid unless it is presented as being strange or out of the ordinary.

It is absolutely homophobic and close minded to worry there is something “confusing” about two men kissing. Interrogate your own prejudices before you pass them on to your children. We all have a duty to do this if the world is going to be more tolerant place for the next generation.

My DD’s best friend has two mums. She’s never batted an eyelid. She did ask where her Daddy was & I simply explained that some people have two mums, some have two dads etc .. & on went life.

She’s also a big Strictly fan, she watches the dances on Sunday. She said ‘oh, there’s a man dancing with a man’ & I explained that you can love whoever you want & some men love each other etc. And she nodded & we moved on. She adores John & Johannes, mostly cost of the pirate costumes 😂

I wouldn’t think my 4 year old would really watch anything where anyone is full on snogging but a kiss between anyone is completely normal!

I think it depends what you think you’re explaining. As adults we see the word ´mum’ and think both ´biological mother - genetic mother, gestational mother, AND social mother. The same with father. So you think when you’re telling your child that they have the same hair as their dad, that they will understand that children inherit traits from their genetic parents. But actually kids that young only remember the social part of parenthood. They don’t remember being in the womb and they don’t understand sexual reproduction yet. So I think it’s not confusing to talk about different kinds of families and introduce the concept of biological parents properly later along with sex education.

On a side note, kids are also proper ruthless. When I told my dd that some children had two mummies, she asked if we could swap daddy and get another mummy instead. She then sulked for about half an hour when I said no.

She loves her dad to bits and would miss him terribly if he didn't show up for a few days.

But that's how kids think. Not that it's weird or wrong to have a same sex relationship. But wouldn't it be cool to have two mummies.

Kids' minds are so ace. And the best bit if you can fill their minds with all sorts of wonderful things - or homophobic things - as their parent you decide what goes in and the child decides what comes out.

My children didn't watch any sort of movies that had kissing of any type in at the age of 4.

One of my child’s friends has two mothers, so it’s always something I’ve been completely open about from as soon as she could talk and understand. “Some families have a mummy and a daddy, some families...” etc. She’s 3 and it’s all completely normalised to her.

What is actually confusing about it? Wouldn't it actually be more confusing to learn about these things later on? Kids are very accepting.

I'd always be honest if and when things come up naturally.

It was when dd was 4 or 5, that she came home from school one day and said very seriously 'Annie is love with John and I'm in love with Annie', to which the only possible response was 'oh right, that's nice'.

Love, sex and baby production are not the same thing, to people who know nothing of sex. Love is love, marriage is an expression of love and people can marry whoever they like. For children, the fact you can marry anyone you like is much more consistent with their natural ideas and assumptions, than for there to be limiting rules about it. To explain why only hetero couples could marry requires you to explain about sex, at some level.

And do you remember the 'Daddy or chips?' adverts? Children can love foodstuffs, pets, all sorts of things, in preference to an actual person.

I think it's a really good thing to equate marriage and relationships with love, pure and simple (and with choice). I feel it makes my job as a parent much, much easier that the law has changed to catch up with the thinking of four year-olds (foodstuffs and pets currently excepted)!

Because I was bought up straight around straight people.

And I grew up in an American Evangelical community with a lot of weird messages around it. It was only when I was adult that it occured to me that an adult I grew up with saying "I only go forward, I never go anywhere straight" was a joke about sexuality. I still knew about gay people in grade school though.

As you've noted, there are people you grew up with that didn't fit the mold you're discussing and as an adult, and especially as a parent, we can't treat our childhoos as excuses. An explanation, maybe, but we've a responsibility to educate ourselves as adults.

the reason sexual pleasure originated was probably to incentivise activity that's likely to lead to reproduction

Evolution still doesn't have any motivation and in social species like humans, sex is used well beyond reproduction since our survival relies on our building social bonds which in many species - pair bonding involved or not - sex is used (though in species where sex is used socially it's also used violently, but little in nature is always nice).

Even if it was to incentivize sex, that doesn't mean we should teach little kids based on reproduction. Relationships and the emotions around them are the core, reproduction comes in later.

There doesn't have to be a motivating consciousness for something to have reasons for existing. And those reasons don't have to be exclusive, or a morally guiding principle. I just felt it was only fair to defend OP to the extent her POV was defensible, because it doesn't benefit anyone when somebody who's open to having their mind changed is piled on and made to feel that they're being berated for every single thing they think.

This sounds a bit homophobic to me.
What would you do if they spent time with a gay couple - lie to dc and pretend they were siblings? 🤦🏻‍♀️
Why can they understand that hetro couples exist but not homosexual couples?

It's a pretty regular part of our daily life as neighbours (and now friends!) are a same sex couple and their son loves playing with our kids so for our two it's just normal. I think you should just build it as a part of everyday conversation wherever possible.

Ok appreciate it does sound homophobic but science and nature intended for male and female in order to breed and reproduce and this is a default teaching to any child... guessing I am wrong again with this... please don't hate me!

This does sound like the definition of being homophobic.

Ok appreciate it does sound homophobic but science and nature intended for male and female in order to breed and reproduce and this is a default teaching to any child... guessing I am wrong again with this... please don't hate me!“

So what is responsible for homosexual people, if not “science and nature”?

Your son is at a good age to start opening his eyes to different family setups. For example some kids are picked up by mum, others by Dad, grandparents, childminders...

He will take his cue from you. If you treat it as normal then so will he.

I don’t know why the idea that sometimes two men or two women love each other in the same way a mummy and daddy might, or that some other children might have two mummies or two daddies, should be particularly hard for a child of any age to grasp.

Sex doesn’t come into it with little ones, you are talking about love and different types of family.

@Harlequin1088

I don't think it needs to have a set age. If it's something that's normalised in day-to-day life then there never really needs to be a big fuss made about "learning" about it.

In the course of growing up, your kid is bound to see same-sex couples on TV, go to school with children who have same-sex parents, see trans persons walking down the street in high heels and glitter. No fuss needs to be made. If it's just a normal part of growing up, it's something kids naturally accept as life and not something that's hidden then touted as some sort of big reveal when they get to a certain age.

My 17-year-old stepson was round our house a few weeks ago and was crying as his lifelong (male) friend had just come out to him as trans. I asked him why he was crying and (stupidly) expected him to say something like, "He won't want to hang out with a boy now that he's a girl" but instead he said through his tears, "I'm just so happy that they're finally living their truth". It was the most beautiful thing I've ever heard and I was really touched that the lad wasn't sad for the friend he lost but happy that the friend he'd gained was a happier, more comfortable version of themselves.

I think the younger generation is a lot more accepting of sexual differences than we give them credit for so if my 17-year-old stepson is coming out with statements like that now, just imagine the level of acceptance and understanding a 4-year-old today will have by the time they get to 17. No need for a "talk" about it. I think it just "is".

I needed to read something nice today, that story nearly made me cry. Bit late of me, but thanks for sharing it.

Ok appreciate it does sound homophobic but science and nature intended for male and female in order to breed and reproduce and this is a default teaching to any child... guessing I am wrong again with this... please don't hate me!“

Science and nature have no intent.

Science attempts to understand, describe, then predict what nature does. (There are good genetic explanations for homosexuality. Homosexual behaviours occur in animals as well as people, for example).

Human reproduction follows from penetrative sex between a male and a female person, very occasionally. That's a description of nature. Not every instance of sex though. Not every person, or every couple. Not every hetero person or hetero couple.

So if, according to your worldview, the point of all relationships is children, then what is the point of love, or marriage, companionship, or most sex, given that none of these reliably results in children? What is the purpose of hetero people who don't have children? How do you explain or excuse them? Surely they are as problematic for you as homosexuality?

Then, what is so great about reproduction, about more children? Aren't there enough already? Why would overpopulating the world be viewed as a good thing, per se?

So whose intent and whose teaching are you talking about, exactly?

I think this is why there should be more types of families depicted in kids TV. It helps normalises it and let's kids with same sex parents feel represented.