My daughter just came out as bisexual!

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Xarto

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My 13yr old daughter just came out to us as bisexual! Talk about a shocker! As a father and a Catholic I could really do with advice. I gave her a hug and told her I love her but where do I go from here?
 
Don’t go anywhere. Listen to her without encouraging her, but realize that this could just be a phase.

She is 13 years old. Hopefully, she has no experience, which means she really might not know what she is really even saying, or what it really means.
 
Apparently she has felt this way since she was 11 and she was a bisexual cousin so she knows.
 
With all due respect, she may be “influenced” by a a cousin she looks up to. And she is 13. That is still young, no matter what our world wants us to believe. Yes, our children know lots of things exist, but that doesn’t mean they really understand all that it actually means.
 
Very true. I thought of that myself but the problem is society encourages this as a “valid” way of life. Some of the family are talking of having a “coming out party” ffs.
 
Oh, I wouldn’t support that idea at all. It only reinforces something that she is too young to know for certain. And then, she may feel uncomfortable if she backs away from it at a later date.

I think there is a big rush these days to label everyone and have everyone know what they are at an early age. It just isn’t always something that people know until they are older.

I know that some people know they are gay at an early age. But there are lots of young girls being influenced by social media to think they are bi-sexual. It was thought to be “cool” for a while to say so.

Again, I wouldn’t have too much to say about it until the time comes that she really makes a choice. And 13 is too young to be dating in my book, so…
 
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For what it’s worth, it’s not uncommon for sexuality to be kind of confused and in flux at 13. This could well be some kind of phase.

I think you handled it right. Just tell her you love her and nothing is going to change that. Maybe reiterate that inappropriate behavior is still not okay, regardless of the other persons gender. But I think overall just don’t make a huge deal out of it.
 
I don’t think anyone said to tell her it’s a phase, they said it may be one. I think a lot of people were not thinking about their sexuality at all when they were 13. This is a thing that has occurred in recent years, and for some people, they are influenced by what is going on around them. Not all, but some.
 
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I wouldn’t trust the judgment of a 13-year-old on many weighty matters; there is a reason that we don’t allow 13-year-olds to drive, vote, move out or marry (with rare exceptions), or consent to sex with older people.

I am not saying that the parent should dismiss the child’s feelings as unreal or unimportant, but at 13 the child is too young to be “leading.”
 
Not to mention that it’s normal for girls to have “crushes” on each other for quite awhile before they become interested in boys. At 13, a girl is likely to have more emotional intimacy with another girl than a boy.
 
heidi_storage said:
Not to mention that it’s normal for girls to have “crushes” on each other for quite awhile before they become interested in boys. At 13, a girl is likely to have more emotional intimacy with another girl than a boy.
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I agree. Many of us personally had such “girl crushes” and later moved on to guys when the boys and ourselves had matured a bit.

However, in the past when I and others have made similar statements on here to parents with young teens in similar situations, they’ve been flagged and removed.
 
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Xarto said:
I gave her a hug and told her I love her but where do I go from here?
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I think you handled the situation quite well-in fact, I would like to commend you for it, when some other parents with similar situations who post on here resorted to disciplining or expelling their children.

The next thing to do now is to explain to your daughter what the Church teaches with regards to homosexuality. Emphasize the fact that the Church does not consider her as inherently disordered or more prone to sin because of it, but merely teaches that homosexual sex is a sin, and that homosexuality, not her, is disordered. If you’d like, you can suggest seeing a priest for a more thorough explanation. Said priest can also act as a counsellor to guide your daughter through her feelings.

This may be a phase, in which case you won’t be hearing about it after a while. Continue treating your daughter in the same loving, commendable way you’ve described, and if it turns out not to be a phase after all, I think the above advice would be helpful.
 
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Maybe you could talk to her about how when someone you love and respect holds a certain stance, our love for them can make us want to move toward them and embrace that stance so we can feel close to them without any conflict. But there’s a deeper love than that, which recognizes that they’re not perfect, and we’re not perfect, and we don’t always have to agree or be like them. Throughout our lives we’re going to encounter people who hold stances that don’t agree with our Catholic faith. We’re going to be challenged about what love is and where and how it can be found. But we know that God is love. God loves us, and we show our love for him not only by what we do for him, but also by what we don’t do, what we give up for him. Sometimes the world might tell us that it’s wrong to have to give something up for God, but we know that it’s love. And we know that we need this love, we need to love God and to remain in his love.
 
Thank you, I will try that.

She says she doesn’t believe in God yet yesterday we were in town and I called in to the Blessed Sacrament Chapel for 5 minutes, she knelt of her own accord and prayed and after I was so happy to hear her say that she’d like to start praying more, I was delighted. Then that bombshell later on. I think I will try to keep subtly influencing her with prayer and take the soft approach and bring her back around.
 
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