Warning
The following text may be upsetting or disturbing
Foreword
From a parent's perspective and experience, raising a child can be an easier or harder challenge depending on each person's circumstances. As a parent, the love for your child and the desire for him to be in a safe, healthy and happy environment has no limits. Families with LGBTQ+ children or adolescents, especially parents who have never heard of or have less access to information about gender identity and/or sexual orientation, they can become confused due to a lack of knowledge of these terms. Receiving correct information based on the origin of the socio-cultural, linguistic and geographical environment had a more significant reaction of support, and help to protect LGBTQ+ youth by the family, according to a detailed study Helping Diverse Families Learn to Support Their LGBTQ Children.
Explained what LGBTQIA+ means
According to Cosmopolitan magazine, Cosmopolitan: LGBTQIA+ meaning explained the term LGBTQIA+ encompasses people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and asexual. Learning terms specific to the LGBTQIA+ community can help allies and the parents, friends, and peers of someone who identifies as LGBTQIA+ demonstrate their support and understanding of queer culture.
Be a supportive parent
On the Ministry of Defence website, there is a guide with essential information created to offer support to parents of LGBT+ children. Also, here you can find the real, inspirational experiences and lives of LGBT+ children who have now reached maturity. In the examples provided by them, it can be seen how important communication between parent and child is. From these shared experiences, we can see LGBT+ adults who have founded a family, and, through the same right as heterosexual people to become parents, thousands of LGBT+ families are raising children worldwide. Through parental support, showing your love, involvement and trust, you will lay the foundations for developing a healthy, confident child who will become an adult with healthy principles and values Ministry of Defence: Guide for parents of LGBT+ children.
Call for awareness
As a parent of an LGBT+ child, if you feel alone, overwhelmed or disoriented and do not know how to approach the situation you are in, there are always support people who have gone through similar experiences to yours, willing and happy to help you understand and manage the situation more easily A Practitioner’s Resource Guide: Helping Families to Support Their LGBT Children Connecting and communicating with the parents of LGBT+ children is vital in protecting and supporting them. LGBT+ is not just some written letters; they are children, children's friends, friends, neighbours and our colleagues. Take some time and do an exercise for a few minutes by emptying your mind and putting yourself in their place, reflecting on it. We, as parents, must be their first supporters and offer them parental warmth and understanding. How do we want others to look at and receive our children with kindness if we do not offer them this? Only through our love, involvement and connection with others can we break the chain of prejudices and create a better place for our LGBT+ children in this world.