{"id":160313,"date":"2015-04-06T17:54:17","date_gmt":"2015-04-06T17:54:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2015\/04\/06\/ultimately-your-child-is-going-to-live-into-their\/"},"modified":"2015-04-06T17:54:17","modified_gmt":"2015-04-06T17:54:17","slug":"ultimately-your-child-is-going-to-live-into-their","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2015\/04\/06\/ultimately-your-child-is-going-to-live-into-their\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote>\n<p>Ultimately, your child is going to live into their identity one way or the other, and I hope it will be a luxuriantly long life they get to enjoy and not the kind tragically clipped short by despair. You can\u2019t change your kid, no matter what kinds of fears you have. What you\u2019re choosing now is whether you get to be the parent of \u201cmy folks were really supportive,\u201d or whether you\u2019re five years, ten at the most, away from \u201cmy parents and I don\u2019t really talk.\u201d Your children might turn out to be transsexual or transgender or genderqueer. Or they might be gay or lesbian or the other kind of queer or something else festive and new in the world of gender and\/or sexual orientation. That part is not up to you. It wasn\u2019t up to you before they came out and it isn\u2019t up to you now, either. I know that\u2019s hard news, but it\u2019s the truth.<\/p>\n<p>I also understand that it might seem like making them hide and pretend and lie is the right answer because they\u2019ll get less static in the world. It might seem safer in the short run. It might seem like a way of protecting your kid. But really, if you don\u2019t hear anything else, please hear this: that\u2019s how you make a kid ashamed of themselves. That\u2019s how kids get the message that their parents are ashamed of them and regret that they were born. A kid who gets bullied or taunted at school but feels loved and cherished at home (and gets to see positive images of other trans\/gender-independent kids, of which there are many) will grow into a well and whole adult so much more often than a kid who fits in with peers at school but lives every minute feeling like they\u2019re an awful secret. That\u2019s also the truth. That\u2019s also the choice you\u2019re making right now. Please, please, choose well.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<div class='attribution'>S. Bear Bergman, \u201cDear Parents Who Have Written to Me\u201d in\u00a0<i>Blood, Marriage, Wine and Glitter.<\/i> (via <a href=\"http:\/\/nicejewishqueer.tumblr.com\/\" class=\"tumblr_blog\" target=\"_blank\">nicejewishqueer<\/a>)<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ultimately, your child is going to live into their identity one way or the other, and I hope it will be a luxuriantly long life they get to enjoy and not the kind tragically clipped short by despair. You can\u2019t change your kid, no matter what kinds of fears you have. What you\u2019re choosing now &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2015\/04\/06\/ultimately-your-child-is-going-to-live-into-their\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"quote","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[564,1656,4],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160313"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=160313"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160313\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=160313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=160313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=160313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}