How to Support Your Child Who Has Come Out as LGBTQ

Most parents of an LGBTQ+ child love their child, without question. But usually the harder part, the part with far less room to be said aloud, is the sense of unease or the quiet grief that sit alongside that love after a child comes out.

Your child come out as LGBTQ to the family – what now?

A parent can be entirely devoted to their child and still find the adjustment genuinely difficult. There is nothing contradictory in that, even if it feels as though there should be. Admitting the difficulty does not make anyone a worse parent.

Many parents go quiet (or change the subject) in that first conversation with their child, not out of rejection but because they genuinely have no idea what to say. That silence stays with them long after the moment has passed. But this difficulty often surfaces later, in the nights spent replaying the conversation, or in a quiet grief for the future they had assumed their child would have.

This piece is for the parent who wants to do right by their child and is not yet sure how. It is written without any assumption that you have reacted perfectly, because most people have not, and that turns out to matter far less than what you do across the months and years that follow.

Why family acceptance matters for your LGBTQ child

It helps to know that the way a family responds is not a small thing in a young person's life. Research on LGBTQ youth has consistently found that family acceptance is strongly protective for their mental health, with higher acceptance linked to markedly lower rates of depression (Miller et al., 2020). What is worth holding onto, particularly for parents in Singapore whose hesitation is often bound up with faith or cultural expectation, is that this protective effect held regardless of the family's religious background (Miller et al., 2020). A parent does not have to resolve every question they hold about belief or tradition before their support begins to matter to their child.

None of this is reason to feel you are under more scrutiny. If your influence is this significant, then the ordinary things you do — such as staying in contact, keeping the door open, showing your child they are still wanted at home — these matter to your child even when you feel clumsy at it.

Common mistakes parents make when a child comes out

The reactions that do the most damage are seldom the cruel ones, but the quieter reflexes of a parent who is struggling and has nowhere to put it. One of the most common is a kind of hopeful denial, carrying on as before, still asking a son about girlfriends, or treating the whole thing as a phase that will pass with time. It feels harmless from the inside, even loving, but a child reads it accurately as a wish that they were someone else, and they tend to respond by sharing less and less.

A second reflex is making the moment about your own shock or disappointment, so that the child ends up managing your feelings instead of being met in their feelings. While understandable, since the news genuinely is a shock to many parents, but a child who has just taken a real vulnerability in telling you, their parent, should not also have to carry your reaction for you. There is a difference between having difficult feelings, which is normal and human, vs. asking your child to be the one who soothes them.

The third is pressure dressed up as interest, pressing the child to explain or justify themselves, to account for how they know, or to prove their identity is real. Curiosity offered too soon and too insistently lands as interrogation, and it puts the child in the position of defending their own existence to the person that they most want acceptance from.

The difference between tolerating, accepting and affirming your child

It is worth being honest about the difference between three things that can look similar from the outside. Tolerating your child means putting up with their identity while making it clear, in a hundred small ways, that you wish they were different. Accepting means no longer wishing it away, acknowledging your child as they are. Affirming goes a step further, treating your child's identity as a genuine and good part of who they are, something you can be glad of rather than merely permit.

Most parents do not arrive at affirming overnight. Tolerating is a real starting point, and the movement from one stance to the next is what your child notices, and it is also what tends to repair your relationship over time. The goal is not to perform the right attitude flawlessly, but to keep moving in your child's direction.

How to support a child who has come out

Above all, your child needs to know they still belong in the family, and that coming out has not cost them their place in it. This is not always easy to convey, and it is carried far more by ordinary continuity than by grand declarations.

Keeping family routines intact, continuing to involve them in family life, using the language they use about themselves and the people they love, asking about their life with genuine interest instead of suspicion — all of this says "you are still my child and this is still your home" more than any single conversation could.

Supporting your child well does not depend on understanding everything they are going through. Supporting your child well depends on remaining present and involved in their life, giving them time to settle while you find your own footing. If you slip, which most parents do, you can repair it. Going back to your child to say you did not handle something well, and that you are still here, often does more for them than getting it right the first time would have.

Struggling to accept your child’s coming out is more common than you think

Longitudinal research following LGBT young people into adulthood found that those who lacked family support early on often gained it over time, with many families becoming more accepting and the relationship recovering as they did (McConnell et al., 2016). Where you are at the start is not where you are bound to stay.

Often the thing that helps a parent move along that road is having somewhere of their own to work through what coming out has stirred up, such as the grief, the guilt, or the questions about faith or family that cannot be said in front of the child. Bringing that to your own therapy is often what lets you be steady for your child, instead of your own unsorted feelings getting in the way.

There is not much set up for parents in this position. Because the focus tends to land on the LGBTQ child, and the parent is left to sort through their own feelings with very little guidance of their own. At our counselling practice, we work with parents as well as LGBTQ clients. If any of this feels like more than you can manage on your own, it can help to talk it through with someone. We are located on the East side of Singapore, and you would be welcome whether or not you have any of this figured out yet.

Stella Ong is a clinical member and registered counsellor with the Singapore Association for Counselling, registration number (C0940). Click here for more information on Stella Ong.

Individual Therapy

Book Now

Follow us on our social media: Facebook / Instagram / TikTok

References

McConnell, E. A., Birkett, M., & Mustanski, B. (2016). Families matter: Social support and mental health trajectories among lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender youth. Journal of Adolescent Health, 59(6), 674–680. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2016.07.026

Miller, K. K., Watson, R. J., & Eisenberg, M. E. (2020). The intersection of family acceptance and religion on the mental health of LGBTQ youth. Annals of LGBTQ Public and Population Health, 1(1), 27–42. http://dx.doi.org/10.1891/LGBTQ.2019-0005