I'm hearing about how teachers/liberals/"the gays" are indoctrinating kids. How we're exposing them too early to ideas about gender and sexuality and not letting them be kids.
Let me tell you about my kids.
When he was little, my elder child wanted to paint his nails because he liked it. He thought it was pretty and fun and he wanted to do it. So we let him.
He stopped because of teasing. Other preschool and kindergarten boys told him it was girly and gay and definitely wrong. Someone had already clearly taught them about gender, and they used it as a weapon against my child. His teachers and parents could not make the world safe enough, so he hid who he was.
He didn't like sports. He didn't like shoot-em-up video games. He loved logic puzzles and beautiful graphics and thoughtful stories. He still does.
We didn't tell him he had to love these things. He just chose them on his own.
Our younger son was AFAB* so we put him in dresses and he chose leopard print everything to wear, and wouldn't let me touch his hair. He grew up loving art and science with a burning passion. He picked and chose from every side of the gender spectrum based on his own aesthetic response to the universe. He is uniquely himself in all ways.
I didn't know he was a boy or "make" him be one.
He told us, when he was ready, who he was inside.
Nobody is indoctrinating the children by showing them rainbow flags or even by letting them know that it is okay, it is always okay, to be who you are. It is not indoctrination to say we will love you as you are no matter what.
Children know, from a very young age, what they like and dislike and how they feel inside. Mentioning the words "gay" and "trans" do not force or even persuade *anybody* to be someone they weren't already in the first place.
We aren't indoctrinating the children.
We're just trying, desperately, to make the world safe for them to exist as they are.
*Assigned Female at Birth. Which brings me to the thought I have every time I hear "God made your child a girl, God doesn't make mistakes." If you believe this, ask yourself why you are so devoutly sure of a gender assignment made at birth by a person? Not God. A person. Isn't it possible that the person who assigned the gender got it wrong because they were basing it only on what they could see? Maybe the mistake is in our own understanding of how utterly complex people are in their creation.
