Learning Points: Pride is such an important word to teach our children

Different LGBTQ flags hold by people on a protest

Working clinically with teenagers is such an enlightening experience. Of course, we have all been teenagers and experienced that world but it is easy to forget the pressure and insecurities you feel as a young adult. That important stage of human development can be tricky. 

The fear of standing out, feeling awkward in yourself as your body changes and not knowing how to relate to the adult world you are hurtling towards. It’s a time of discovery and loss. Innocence is lost and you discover things about yourself you didn’t know as a child. Sometimes those things you discover can be startling and frightening. And for too long teenagers felt alone about those discoveries, and that dramatically impacted teenage mental health. 

Working with teenagers keeps me young and on my toes. There is an honesty in teenagers that the adult world often seems to lack. Working with teenagers has allowed me to see, first hand, the shifts that are taking place in society, from their perspective. I have been particularly struck, in recent times, how the majority of teenagers seeking therapy are not doing so because they are struggling with their sexual identity. 

Over the years it has been very difficult to sit with a beautiful young adult who hates themselves because of who they love. Those conversations always stay with me. The sheer isolation and utter sense of self-loathing in the room because of their sexual identity has been hard to listen to.

But things changed. I noticed from 2016 onwards the majority of teenagers coming to me were seeking help with other aspects of their life. Sexuality was actually something they were proud of. It all seemed to coalesce with the same sex referendum of 2015. This was a seminal moment in our state when we grew up as a nation. When we told our children, sexual identity does not define you as a person. In 2015 we voted, as a country, to celebrate difference. We acknowledged we are a diverse and progressive people. 

Of course, a lot of work remains to be done. There are still many hate crimes perpetrated against the trans community. I wonder how many LGBTQ couples feel as free to express their love as heterosexual couples? 

I had a client tell me recently that as she cycled home a group of boys started to scream sexually motivated pejoratives at her because of how she looked. The word ‘gay’ still gets used in the schoolyard to describe something bad or stupid. So, we have work to do. But it is important to recognise significant change has occurred in recent years.

The myriad rainbow flags, postboxes painted in rainbow colours and police cars magnificently coloured tell our children they should be proud of themselves, whatever their sexual orientation. When we change the discourse in society, we change how our children talk to themselves. When society seems to say; ‘we accept you and we love you’, it changes everything. I think that is what I have noticed in the last number of years. Teenagers feeling more accepted by society. 

We have to get better at how we talk about issues in the adult world so that we don’t feed that terrible destructive internalised prejudice that can so often develop in our children. I have heard it for far too long in my practice. Teenagers sitting there describing how they hate themselves because they are different. I hear the same story, a child delineating how they are ‘weird’ ‘odd’ or ‘freak’ because they didn’t play the games the other kids were playing or dress or act like the other kids. Children have an uncanny ability to blame or label themselves for why other children don’t play with them. 

As parents, we must help our children talk to themselves in a more positive way about who they are. We must help them to celebrate their uniqueness and fight the urge to force them to be something they are not. When we force our children to conform to some sort of concept of normal we damage their development and future happiness.

Pride! Such an important word to teach our children. We should all be proud of who we are. Guilt and shame have destroyed too many of our children. When I look back on my primary school education, 5 of my childhood friends died by suicide. That was a time when boys didn’t speak about who they were and certainly didn’t celebrate difference. It was such a claustrophobic time with terribly destructive linear ideas about sexuality. Thankfully we have moved on. 

We should be proud of the fact that we were the parents that really opened up the discourse about sexuality and changed how our children perceived themselves. Pride month is a significant event in our calendar. We should all be out there celebrating our difference.