Are Kids Ever “Too Young” to Know About Queer People?

Years ago, at a holiday party back in Tucson, therapist and writer Chris Tompkins came face-to-face with the subtleties of familial homophobia. He was sitting next to his childhood best friend, a woman his age, when his six-year-old nephew ran up to him.

“Uncle Chris, is that your girlfriend?,” his nephew asked. 

Though the question was seemingly innocent, Tompkins—an openly gay man—was struck by the heteronormative assumption. Sure, it was fair to judge that a man and his female guest who shared friendly chemistry were a couple, especially at a family holiday party. Besides, his nephew’s young perspective was filled in by straight parents at home, straight people on TV, and straight couples in life. But Tompkins had already come out to his family. 

When he asked his family why his nephew didn’t know he was gay, they told him: “he’s too young to understand.”

That moment changed Tompkins’ life. An entire philosophical-parenting dilemma unfolded in his mind. Whether or not his nephew was even gay, was there good reason to consciously avoid telling the kid that his Uncle Chris is gay, and that there are many gay people in the world just like him? Are kids ever too young to know about the existence of queer people?

Kids start developing a sense of sexuality earlier than many of us think. 

“I knew that I was gay when I was around six. [That’s] when I recall having that kind of conscious awareness,” Tompkins tells LATV Queer. “I kind of started to notice that there [were] differences about me from other kids that I played with, or even in my family. And so I had that awareness, and I also had the awareness that being gay was not okay.”

For a long time, Tompkins hid in the closet, in large part because he thought being gay was wrong. Queer identity was never openly discussed in his childhood, and that absence was made into a dark obstacle well into adulthood.

“It’s the things that we don’t talk to our kids about that they internalize as something wrong or bad,” he continues. “So when we talk to kids about things, we normalize it and it makes it more approachable.”

When parents don’t talk to their children about queer people, their children may develop homophobic prejudices unknowingly as they get older, and, if a child happens to be queer, that lack of dialogue early on could delay coming out and increase feelings of shame.

In school, queer icons are often left out of history books, queer authors abandoned by literature curriculums. This lack of representation exacerbates loneliness and misunderstanding amongst queer youth.

Not talked about at home, not normalized in school, the word ‘gay’ (and its many sister synonyms) can take on a negative undertone. That was the case for Tompkins as he began exploring his sexual identity.

‘I had always told myself that being gay was like meeting guys in a dark alleyway. I call them ‘messages from the playground’: the subconscious beliefs that we pick up from our childhood,’ he says. ‘We have them about everything. So when it came to the messages that I received about what it meant to be gay, I thought that it had to be like a secret meeting at night on the weekend.’

In Mexico for work, Tompkins finally shattered these preconceived notions of gay life. He met a man in broad daylight on a Tuesday outside a pharmacy and they fell in love.

Tompkins’ journey is not unlike many in the queer community. Had he been positively exposed to queer people at home and in school, being gay wouldn’t have included the emotional labor that being straight circumvents. 

That said, normalizing queer identity within a heteronormative society will take more than adopting more inclusive parenting styles. The movement requires systemic change across entertainment, business, and politics. But making space at home is a good place to start. 

In his book, “Raising LGBTQ Allies, A Parent’s Guide to Changing the Messages from the Playground”, Tompkins provides tools for having open and honest conversations with children about queer people.

Since there is nothing wrong with being queer, there is no need to tip-toe around talking about it, no matter how young a child is. (Who knows? Consider that child is queer?)

For more on this subject, check out the full LATV Queer interview with Chris Tompkins.