So now it’s time to head back to school for the new school year.
One in grade 3 and one in grade 5. The school knows us well by now and generally speaking there haven’t been any issues. Both kids have faced the firm retort from a school peer saying there is no way they can have two mums. Our eldest handled that well, explaining different family structures to demonstrate it was actually possible.
Our youngest had a harder time in prep when telling peers he had 2 mums. Kids laughed at him, told him it wasn’t possible and so on.
The hardest thing for us was he didn’t tell us until much later. It was after the end of the year when somehow the conversation came up and he told us of what had happened. His response to this treatment was to never discuss his parents at school again for the whole year.
Oh how our hearts broke when we heard that. To think he soldiered through the year at the age of five, keeping his family structure out of the conversation. Our job is to arm our kids with tools to handle situations or to step in and help if needed and it’s heartbreaking to think he toughed it out alone.
Reflection is such a wonderful thing. With hindsight we would have checked in with him during the year on that specific topic. We believe we have very open two-way communication with our kids and I can only guess he didn’t want to hurt us so kept this to himself.
So many people tell us how mainstream same-sex headed families are today and in part I agree. We’ve come an incredibly far way, however there are still people who have never knowingly interacted with gay people and families and those who are deeply critical and/or homophobic. The feeling expressed by these people slap you in the face and bring you crashing back down to earth when you realise how deep their feelings run sometimes. I feel confident as adults most of us can generally tolerate the hate and ignorance but what about our children? It is for them we must continue to seek further change.