Common Question: How Do You Explain It?

Every time something major happens in the LGBT+ (depending on who is posting) community that is all over the media such as federal rulings or things involving celebrities, I am inevitably asked by people how we explain these things to our son.  And I struggle with that answer.  These people are almost always people that know me and my family well enough to know some basic facts about us:

• My son does not watch mainstreem/popular TV.  He watches, even at almost 8, only kid friendly tv shows and the food network at his aunt's house.  He doesn't actually watch much TV at all.
• My son is autistic and not aware of much of anything beyond his surroundings.
• We live in a part of town with a large gay population.
• My wife came into our lives when he was 3 and, therefore, from his point of view, she has always been there.

So I stop, and remind them of these facts and watch as their expressions tell me what I suspected all along: They don't want my answer to their question, they want me to answer that question which they are struggling with themselves.  They want me to tell them some magic recipe for telling their questioning children.  And I think this is what people are generally asking when they ask gay parents how they explain it to their kids.

The truth is that our son doesn't know about a world where gay people do not exist any more than your child knows about a world with slavery and public hangings.  He grew up in this city where it is just as common to see a male and female holding hands as it is to see two males holding hands.  He has seen people with beards and hairy legs wearing dresses just like he has seen the same king of people wearing pants.  He sees and doesn't give it a second thought.  Why should he? Women wear both dresses and pants, why can't men?  There are actually some buddhist monks that we've seen in the neighbourhood, I'm pretty sure there is a monastery near by, and he thinks they're wearing orange dresses too.  It's just clothing to him.

He has known his specific parental structure as long as he has use of memory.  And he has not questioned it.  Maybe because I don't have a father in my life.  Maybe because I come from a long line of powerful matriarchs and single mothers.  Maybe because The Lion King was his favourite movie for a long time and we've seen Bambi and Annie plenty of times as well.  He just knows that different children have different looking families.  I know questions will come up eventually.  But as of now, we have never had to explain our adult relationship to our child.

So I'm sorry I don't know what you should tell your questioning child.  Part of parenthood is explaining things to our children that we could have never anticipated and don't quite understand ourselves.  I've had to explain to my son that a parent going away doesn't mean she doesn't love him and explain that there are laws that make it difficult for us to just live happily ever after.  Explaining the immigration process was one of the most difficult things I've ever had to deal with, but we figured it out.  But maybe you can start with, "Everyone is different, and that's ok."