Celebrating Pride Month with your kid can be a great way for your family to learn more about love, acceptance, and diversity. It's also an opportunity to show appreciation and respect for all of our true selves.
Whether you or your child is a member of LGBTQ+ communities, Pride events honor the principles the month represents: love and inclusivity. Far more than parades and parties, Pride marks resistance against hateful ideas such as homophobia, biphobia, and transphobia.
You can share the history of Pride with your kids: how the movement grew from the Stonewall Riots in 1969 into a celebration of self and community. You can also talk about important historical figures like Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, two trans women of color whose protests were critical to the LGBTQ+ rights movement.
Here are some Pride conversation starters to get you and your kid talking:
“What’s Pride Month?”
Pride is a celebration of LGBTQ+ communities. It celebrates the history of fighting for people to be able to love who they love and be who they are — without being bullied or discriminated against.
“What does LGBTQ+ mean?”
LGBTQ+ is an acronym. L stands for lesbian, G stands for gay, B stands for bisexual, T stands for transgender and Q stands for queer or questioning. You may also see “LGBTQIA,” and in this acronym the I stands for intersex and the A stands for asexual. These different identities can represent who someone is attracted to, likes, or loves — which is called sexual orientation. They also signal how someone feels inside about their gender — which is called gender identity.
“What does the rainbow mean?”
Rainbows are a symbol of diversity in LGBTQ+ communities. The rainbow flags you often see were designed by Gilbert Baker in 1978. Each color in the rainbow flag has a meaning related to life, nature, and community.
“What do all the other flags mean?”
You may see a lot of other different multi-colored flags associated with Pride. Those flags represent other identities and communities within LGBTQ+ communities. For example, there’s a transgender Pride flag, a bisexual Pride flag, and more.
“Why is everyone dressed up at the parade?”
One way people honor Pride is by expressing themselves in celebratory ways. Wearing many different kinds of clothes (or wearing very little), makeup, hairstyles, accessories, and outfits that show off your identity and body can be a joyful and creative way to express pride in yourself. We also get to celebrate everyone’s different kinds of body shapes and sizes because every body is beautifully unique. When people do this together it can help us feel connected through shared happiness.
You can check out these kid-appropriate books on LGBTQ communities. And learn more about sexual orientation and gender identity.
Tags: LGBTQ, pride, pride month