Woah- wasn't ready for that question!
LoveEeyore
member
Today my daughter asked if all mommies were married to husbands. Me- I am the dramatic, over-thinking mom wondering if we were headed down the two mommies talk. So I told her no, her Aunt So-and-So was married, but she's not anymore, but she is still a mommy.
She pushed me. "But mom, most kids have a mommy and daddy married at the beginning, you know, at the start when they're babies."
So I agreed, yes, most kids we know have families that look just like that,
And here's where I am proud of me. I stopped there. I am proud of my gay friends and their families and I am proud that I will always be open and honest with my kids. But I'm proud I stopped because I didn't know if either of us is ready for a deeper discussion. She is barely five.
I am SO not ready for these real life issues. Likely she is just trying to figure out the whole family unit how do babies come thing (I have a lot of pregnant friends and new babies in our circle). Where is my baby??!!
Re: Woah- wasn't ready for that question!
www.facebook.com/TryVermontFirst
I love these two beautiful children!
haha - yes, DD asked me before about being married and asked me if two girls could get married and I said yes, and then she declared that she didn't want to marry her BFF. I said that was fine, she could decide whoever she wanted to marry when she was old enough. End of story
I think I BLEW her mind the other day when we were talking about disabilities and I was telling her about blindness and deafness. I made the mistake of mentioning seeing eye dogs/help dogs and she was couldn't get off of that for like a day. And wanted to know all about the dog schools, what other animals go to school, what are the teachers names, etc.
This! DD loved when I got this from the library.
She's always asking questions and from day one we've been very open with her, especially with family stuff like this and things like disabilities. The other day she said a friend told her they couldn't kiss because they were girls so we addressed that right away with a some girls to kiss each other like mommy and daddy kiss and that's a-ok. DD has a peanut allergy and wears glasses so we try to point out how we all have individual things that make us each special. Some of our responses are probably over her head, but oh well.
LOL thanks for the thoughts. Helpful. I like the book suggestion and Kathryn's response. I am not usually tongue-tied when talking to her- and usually we'll stop what we're doing and go to the library if she stumps me but she usually is inquisitive about dinosaurs or math or astronomy stuff! I am very open, flexible and passionate about everything, DH is reasonable but methodical about coming to conclusions on topics and once he comes to a conclusion, he never departs from it. We are great complements but it makes these issues tough!
My Blog
We have a lesbian couple in DD's class, shockingly, none of the kids have asked about it at all.
I don't see the harm in talking about it. What kind of questions would be so difficult to answer? DS and I talked about different kinds of families back when he was 3. He wanted to know if everyone had a mom and a dad, so we talked about all of the different kinds of families there are. We've got a few gay families as friends, families with kids living with grandparents or aunts and uncles, families with only one parent, etc. It provoked no odd questions from him.
He once wanted to know if you could marry whoever you want, and I said that if he was a grown up, and he fell in love with another grown up, whether it was a boy or girl, and they loved him back, then yes, they could get married. (No need to go into whether that would be a legally binding marriage at that age of course.) He was satisfied with that answer.