There’s a big protest being organized across Canada to protest SOGI being taught in schools, and I’m fed up with it. There are so many vulnerable students who need to know that what they’re experiencing is normal, and right-wing extremists are politicizing human rights and spreading manufactured controversy about children being shown pornography in schools.
The linked article is just one of many anti-SOGI protests happening across Canada on Wednesday.
Anyway, the reason I bring it up here is that some of these right-wing anti-SOGI [redacted; unkind] are parents of kids in our kids’ classes, and a couple of them are close friends with my kids.
How do you handle that? Kids shouldn’t be held accountable for their parents’ beliefs. But what about playdates and birthday parties and such? Should we discuss the friendship? It feels wrong to ostracize the child. They deserve to feel safe and have friends.
Also, I’m thinking of taking time off work to counter protest, and making a sign like this one:
Not really related to parenting, but I think it’s important kids feel supported and bigots are told their archaic world views are unwelcome. It’ll be super awkward if a parent I know is standing on the other side of the protest.
Can’t directly advise, but when I was a kid and I had queries about stuff, my mother was great at explaining in ways which also encouraged me to weigh up what she was saying, and to evaluate all of it in light of the basic idea of treating everyone well & letting everyone do their thing, but having firm boundaries against hateful behaviour.
Anyhow, once she was happy that I’d got why it is totally cool to not be compliant with whatever social norm, she’d usually suffix it with a bit about “not everyone believes that”. Somehow that was always put, yes as a heads’ up, but mostly as a “you might want to reflect on stuff, and how to handle that when you come across it”.
To this day, I don’t think we’ve ever disagreed when it comes to views, nor on the impact of bigotry & similar hatreds, but she tends to think I don’t give enough scope for the possibility that a given bigot could be misguided, and I tend to think she’s a bit too willing to hope for same (with the proviso that I feel I’m already too willing to assume the least bad). We get very fiery on this at times!
I ramble.
Point is, if you’re talking to your children, and they’re engaging with ideas about the world and people in general, they can hang out in a bigot’s house or even with children who have absorbed bigoted views, and not be at any risk of becoming a bigot. Were there such a risk, then there’d be an equal risk that the bigots’ children would develop healthy views by playing in your home with your children…
Really, the issue here is that at some point the kids could disagree to the point that they fall out. This would be painful for them, and emotive for all sets of parents, but a normal part of being human and learning how to weigh one’s own values against one’s own social needs. Meantime it is of course uncomfortable for you to drop your kids off to this house, and maybe moreso if you must make polite talk with the adults, but you’re not endorsing the parents’ views or the culture of that household - you’re only endorsing your child’s relationship with their child, and only as it currently stands. If that relationship changes, or you feel it is no longer safe for your children or you to interact with that family, then you change what you do accordingly.