How much do you know about LGBTQ topics, particularly about what it means to be transgender?
If the answer is “not much” that’s okay, and I’m so glad you’re tuning in today.
This is a topic that we hear about in the news, often with sensationalized headlines, but the people who are most impacted are average families with average kids, children that go to school with your children and who just want to be accepted for who they are, like everyone else in this world.
I have been blessed to learn so much about LGBTQ topics from one of my dear friends, Holly Young, who has five children, including a transgender daughter named June. I have learned so much from Holly and June and have been reminded all over again that the best way to learn about any topic is directly from the people who are living it every day.
But maybe you don’t know anyone in your real life who is transgender. I didn’t before I got to know June. That’s why to celebrate LGBTQ Pride Month, and to help the listeners of 3 in 30 understand more about this topic, I invited Holly and June to come on 3 in 30 today, and they graciously agreed.
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1) Teach your children about what the acronym LGBTQ+ means. Teach them to respect and honor those who are different from them, even if you don’t understand or agree with it.
2) Refer to them by their preferred pronouns and name, even if it isn’t reflected on legal documents or honored by other people. There’s been a lot of talk about pronouns in society recently. Even if you can’t see the importance, they are human– address them as they want, because it’s respectful. It makes a significant different in transgender lives if they are referred to as they see themselves.
3) If you see someone who is transgender being bullied, excluded, or not having their preferred name and pronouns honored, do something. As adults, we may need to do this in conversations or interactions we witness, by just speaking up and saying, “I’m not okay with that” or “I don’t agree” or “Please don’t treat them that way.”
>>>Are these tips about supporting transgender teens helpful? What would you add to the takeaways? Tell us in the comments below.
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- Documentaries on Netflix: “The Death and Life of Martha P. Johnson” “Disclosure: Trans Lives on Screen”
- Books for Young Children: “Rainbow: A First Book of Pride” Michael Genhart PhD and Anne Passchler “Eugene the Unicorn: A Kid’s Book to Help Start LGBTQ Inclusive Conversations” by T. Wheeler “What Are Your Words?: A Book about Pronouns” Katherine Locke and Anne Passchier “Pink is for Boys” Robb Pearlman and Eda Kaban “The World Needs More Purple People (My Purple World)” by Kristen Bell and Benjamin Hart “I am Jazz” Jessical Herthel and Jazz Jennings “Stonewall: A Building. An Uprising. A Revolution” Rob Sanders and Jamey Christoph “Pride: The Story of Harvey Milk and the Rainbow Flag” Rob Sanders and Steven Salerno
- Books for Tweens/Teens & Adults: “Being Jazz: My life as a (Transgender) Teen” Jazz Jennings “Little Book of Pride: Quotes that Inspired 50 Years of Pride” “The Little Book of Pride: The History, the People, The Parades” Lewis Laney “The Queen’s English: The LGBTQIA+ Dictionary of Lingo and Colloquial Phrases” Chloe O. Davis “Beyond the Gender Binary” Alok Vald-Menon “Evelyn Hooker and the Fairy Project” Gayle E. Pitman and Sarah Green “History Comics: The Stonewall Riots: Making a Stand for LGBTQ Rights” Archie Bongiovanni and A. Andrews “Stonewall: The Definitive Story of the LGBTQ Rights Uprising that Changed America” Martin Duberman
