[CORE Teen logo: the shape of a house sectioned off into triangles of different colors. Critical On-Going Resource Family Education] [Shane Read] I wanted someone to actually see me for who I was. [Nicole Pauling] If you can't love and support them as they are, you should not be parenting them. [Darquita Fletcher] They need to feel accepted. They need to feel cared for. They need to feel safe. [Gerald Peterson] The most fundamental quality that I think is critical for resource parents is empathy. [Lamontez Tanner] Don't judge me, especially being LGBTQ. We're looking to be loved and accepted. [Shane Read] Acceptance is really huge. [Jessie Fullenkamp] Listen, ask questions, affirm that the child knows who they are. [Monica Sampson] If you show just a little bit of supporting behaviors towards your child, that could save their life. [Caitlin Ryan] Just imagine if the families that are so distressed when they learn that their child is LGBT and they say this isn't what we expected. It's wrong, it's against our values and beliefs. Imagine if they stopped and said, "We didn't know anything about this, this is all new to us and we love you. We're gonna be there for you no matter what. We're gonna learn about this together as a family because you're so important to us." (music) [CORE Teen logo appears on screen: the shape of a house sectioned off into triangles of different colors. Each section has the title of one of the CORE Teen curriculum chapters: Transitions, Continued Connections, Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity & Expression, Parental Regulation, Trauma-Informed Resource Parenting Part 1 and Part 2, Parental Adaptation, and Relationship Development. Screen zooms in on the "Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity & Expression" title.] [Narrator] This is CORE Teen, right time training for resource parents. In this episode, we focus on sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression, SOGIE for short. We'll learn from professionals what resource parents can do to support adolescents who identify as LGBTQ: [Gerald Peterson] As an LGBTQ child, you're constantly trying to figure out, "Am I safe? Can I tell the truth?" [Narrator] We'll learn from veteran resource parents the difference family acceptance can make: [Nicole Pauling] Who you are at the core of your being is someone who is worth knowing, worth loving. [Narrator] And will listen to the voices of youth: [Shane Read] To listen to them, that's the biggest thing. [Narrator] As we explore acceptance, what it means, how to show it and why it matters. [Title Card: SOGIE Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity & Expression] [Angela Weeks: Project Director, LGBTQ2S Quality Improvement Center] LGBTQ2S stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning, and two spirit youth. Lesbian is a term to describe, typically, women attracted to other women. Gay is typically a term used to describe men attracted to other men or women attracted to other women. Bisexual is a term that's used to describe someone who has attraction for their own gender and then another gender. And then transgender is a term that's used to describe someone who has a gender identity that does not match the sex assigned at birth. Questioning is a term that we use to describe anyone who's developing and they're trying to figure out exactly where they are. Two spirit is a term that is used by some Native American communities to describe someone who identifies or feels like they inhabit both the male and female spirit. [Narrator] SOGIE stands for sexual orientation, gender identity, and expression. There is a distinction between sexual orientation and gender identity. Likewise, gender identity and gender expression are two different things. [Lyndsay Smith: Program Specialist, LGBTQ2S Quality Improvement Center] So we've started using the term SOGIE or sexual orientation, gender identity, and expression to really encapsulate everyone's sexual orientation and gender identities because that's something that everyone has. If a person is heterosexual or straight, that is their sexual orientation. They're not really left out of the acronym. And when we're talking about marginalized groups within that, we often say young people with diverse SOGIE. [Gerald Peterson: Executive Director, Ruth Ellis Center] Sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression. We all, as human beings, have a sexual orientation. [Jessie Fullenkamp: Director of Education and Evaluation, Ruth Ellis Center] When we say sexual orientation, we're talking about people's inherent attraction, which includes social attraction, emotional, spiritual, intellectual, as well as physical and sexual. [Gerald Peterson] We all have a gender identity, which is intrinsic to who we are. [Angela Weeks] Do you feel like a woman? Do you feel like a man or do you feel like maybe both or none of those? And so there's lots of different types of gender identities depending on how the person feels about themselves. Sometimes that aligns with biological sex and sometimes it doesn't. [Gerald Peterson] And then how we express that truth that we feel inside about our gender becomes our gender expression. How we dress, how we wear our hair, the colors we choose. What we all really need to understand about lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender identities is that that they are simply a natural part of the continuum of ways that we all as human beings identify ourselves, live out our lives. [Card: When I Came Out...] [Man] When I came out, my parents said pretty much like right off the bat, we still love you. And they said that it didn't change anything, but what they said afterwards didn't really indicate that. And so I think my mom said something like "I'm never gonna be a grandmother" and then my dad said something along the lines of like, "It could be worse." So at the time, that was hurtful and I think that was a sign to me that -- I never doubted that they loved me, but I think those sort of like contradictory statements they gave was also a sign of like, "Oh okay, we're gonna be in for some rocky stuff." [Jessie Fullenkamp] When I was younger, I was out to my father. He was the first person I came out to and his response was more neutral. He didn't kick me out of the home, it wasn't extremely rejecting. But the first thing he said to me was, "Don't tell anyone else." And so what he was trying to say in that moment now that I understand is, "I don't want you to get hurt." So that was his intention, the impact of him saying that was my read on that was that he was ashamed of who I was. He was embarrassed. He didn't know if he quite believed me and didn't want me to share information that that would be difficult for a family to hear because that would make him uncomfortable. And so the result of that is I didn't really talk with him about it again. [Card: It's not "just a phase" and other truths] [Gerald Peterson, off-screen] Well, "They can't know." "They're just confused." "They'll grow out of it." [Monica Sampson, LMSW: Clinical Social Worker] One of the largest myths that people believe is when a child because they're a child that identifies as LGBTQ, they feel that this identity is a phase and that's not true. [Gerald Peterson] When you think about anyone who identifies as heterosexual and I asked the question, when did you first become aware that you were attracted to the opposite sex? The answer is usually somewhere around 10 to 13, which is the age of puberty. And in fact, a child can know by the age of 10 to 13 whether or not their natural expression of who they are is gay, lesbian, bisexual. [Promise Adams-Brown: Foster Care Alumna] I knew when I was very young like probably about eight years old. [Shane Read: Foster Care Alumnus] I found out I was gay when I was about 14. [Nicole Pauling: Foster Parent] My son already knew who he was when he moved in. He knew he was transgender, he knew he was gay, but he had never been allowed to be transgender or be gay. [Jay Theden: Foster Care Alumnus] Most of my childhood, I was a boy. My grandparents saw it before I did, but I started self identifying I think as early as like fourth or fifth grade. [Gerald Peterson] The truth is, a six year old can know that there's some mismatch between their gender assigned at birth and the gender identity that they experience and feel inside. [Shane Read] I told some treatment staff and I think another foster home and they literally like shunned me. [Gerald Peterson] So resource parents need to be able to suspend judgment and to hear the truth that a young person brings forward, regardless of their age. [Card: Sexual orientation and gender identity are intrinsic qualities] [Gerald Peterson] One of the common misconceptions is that this is a choice and often using the word lifestyle, that it is a chosen lifestyle. For myself as a gay man, I can assure you that I spent 17 years married to a woman. I have three adult children, five grandchildren. I spent a lot of time and psychic, emotional energy doing everything I could to not be who I am. [Monica Sampson] Being LGBTQ is not a choice. It's who you are, it's intrinsically who you have developed to be. [Jessie Fullenkamp] If they're not sharing that they identify as LGBTQ until they're older, it's not because someone is choosing it, it is because they might not have had the words or the safe environment to come out. [Card: LGBTQ teens have the same interests and concerns as other teens] [Crystal Wilson: Youth Support Partner, Allegheny County Department of Human Services] I think that one of the most important myths that needs to be dispelled about LGBTQ youth is the idea that their sexuality or gender identity or gender presentation is always gonna be at the forefront of whatever's going on with them. Just because I'm 15 and I came out as lesbian or as transgender does not mean that I'm not still worried about my friends or that I'm thinking about my grades or everything else that's going on in my life. I'm still just a kid with a bunch of other stuff going on. [Jessie Fullenkamp] This also brings me to another myth which is that a lot of people think that if someone shares that they're LGBTQ that that means that they have had sex, which is not accurate. [Card: Sexual trauma has not been shown to influence sexual orientation or gender identity] [Jessie Fullenkamp] A lot of folks assume that children who have had experiences with abuse, specifically sexual abuse or non-consensual sexual experiences that that is the cause or reason for their LGBTQ identity. [Man] That some kind of abuse is likely what caused them to identify as LGBTQ. [Sonia M. Emerson: Project Coordinator, Kinnect] That's why our SOGIE is so diverse. [Jessie Fullenkamp] We often hear people telling young girls who come out as lesbian, "You just think you're a lesbian because you had that traumatic experience with sexual abuse when you were younger and now you don't trust men." That is then just creating this perpetual loop of trauma and telling someone that who they are is tied to that experience of trauma which is completely inaccurate and very damaging. [Card: You're perfect just the way you are] [Lyndsay Smith] The social and cultural messages that we get as young people that are negative about LGBTQ identities or people with diverse SOGIEs, really often those messages are ones of, "You are deviant in some way." [Man] There's something wrong with you or you have a really sad life. [Sonia M. Emerson] That having a diverse SOGIE is a type of perversion. [Lyndsay Smith] If you have an identity that's in the minority. If you are lesbian, gay, or bisexual, if you're transgender, anything that's not of the majority is often portrayed in the media and through a lot of other lenses widely as being something that is negative or bad or wrong with someone when we really should be looking at the negative thing is the discrimination. Somebody having an identity of saying, "I'm bisexual. That is who I am." That's a positive thing, that's a piece of someone's identity. [LGBTQ people can live full lives] [Jessie Fullenkamp] Sometimes parents think that that means their child can't get married or that their child can't have children and that they won't get to be grandparents. [Man] So you have one lane if you're straight and you have another lane if you're LGBTQ and for her, it was like oh, all these opportunities that she thought that I would have are now gone. [Caitlin Ryan, PhD, ACSW: Director, The Family Acceptance Project, San Francisco State University] And so what we have to tell young people is that there's a place for them, that they belong, that they can have a future, that they can have a good life and one of the powerful findings of our research is that when young people are accepted by their families, if I could show you a chart right now, you'd see it up at the pinnacle that those young people believe that they can have a good life, a positive life as an LGBT adult. [Chart titled: Youth Believe They Can Be a Happy LGBT Adult. IF the Level of Family Acceptance is EXTREMELY Accepting, then 92% of youth believe they can be a happy LGBT adult. If the family is VERY accepting, then 77% of youth believe this. If the family is A LITTLE accepting, then 59% of youth believe they can be a happy LGBT adult, while if the family is NOT AT ALL accepting, 35% of youth believe this.] [Card: The healing power of acceptance] [Gerald Peterson] There still is a prevalent belief in U.S. culture and really around the world that these identities are causing harm to the child. And that it is the identity that's causing depression, substance use, risky sexual behaviors, that it's inherent in the identity so the identity must be fixed. We now have research through the family acceptance project that makes it clear that LGBTQ children growing up in accepting family environments do not have any higher incidents of suicidality, depression, mental health issues than the general youth population in the United States. Where these issues show up is in LGBTQ children who are being abused or neglected or fully rejected by their families. [Caitlin Ryan] Family acceptance is protective against suicidality, against substance abuse, against depression. I like to say that family acceptance is like a vaccine that protects your child with love. [Gerald Peterson] As an LGBTQ child, you're constantly trying to figure out, am I safe? Can I tell the truth? What are the signals that I'm reading in my environment? [Kayla VanDyke: Foster Care Alumna] Just based on my past history of rejections and trauma, I knew just from being bisexual that like I was never gonna be truly accepted and loved and even though she was really forward about being in support of gay marriage, there's just kind of like one kind of off-hand comment she made once when I was like 15 where she said, "I don't really think bisexuals exist. I think they're just horny and would have sex with anything" and then she never got to know my identity until I was an adult. [Staci Hirsch: Residential Director, Ruth Ellis Center] So think twice, maybe listen before you... My great-grandmother used to say "Close your mouth and open your ears," and that's for grownups too. That's what you need to do. Pay attention, your words matter. [Kayla VanDyke] And one day we finally had a conversation about it and I mentioned, "You said this thing to me once and it just made me scared to ever disclose to you. Like even though I know what your values are like, it made me feel as if that could be like the thing that either makes you perceive me differently or gets some of my privileges taken away from me. And so I didn't let you know." [Staci Hirsch] Your behavior has this critical impact on whether or not these kids do well. Everything we do for, about, and around children contributes to how they turn out later. [Angela Weeks] For families and caregivers of all kinds who want to make their home feel supportive to an LGBTQ youth, there are some nuances that are really important to pay attention to. For example, instead of asking young people if they have a boyfriend or girlfriend or if they like a boy or a girl in their class, just leaving it really open, "Do you like anyone?" and being okay if that answer comes back different than you expected. [Amena Johnson, MS, EdD: Affirm Supervisor, LGBTQ2S Quality Improvement Center] When those youth come into your home asking what their preferred name is and what their preferred pronouns are, letting them know what your preferred name is and what your pronouns are. I think to youth, especially to LGBTQ youth, they'll know that that means I'm in a place that isn't making assumptions about who I am. [Lyndsay Smith] Having some sort of visibility in their home whether it's an LGBT rainbow flag or a trans flag, having books that are about LGBT topics. [Shannon Deinhart: Associate Director, Kinnect] And I think remembering that youth coming into your home may never have identified as LGBTQ to us, to anyone, but when they feel comfortable and safe in your home, they will. [Jessie Fullenkamp] These are children who are vulnerable on so many levels who've already experienced trauma of being removed from their homes, of having a lot of transitions and instability. [Darquita Fletcher: Bureau Chief, Prince George's County DSS Ready by 21] They feel rejected and they can't be who they feel like they want to be. I think foster parents need to know that when you accept a young person, you make them feel like they belong, that you make them feel like they're okay. There's nothing wrong with them. [Shane Read] Listen to them, that's the biggest thing. I didn't have people listening to me. I'm an LGBT youth, I identify as a transgender male. So my last foster home, they did not really see eye to eye with that. It didn't come up too much other than around like prom time and haircuts. Like they don't want me to have a mohawk, but I got it anyways. They didn't want me to get tattoos, but I got three while I was there. [Narrator] Sometimes the desire to protect a child comes across as disapproval. [Shane Read] Prom was probably the biggest issue. The words said to me by them were, "If you wear a tux to prom, you'll be an embarrassment to our family." And that like really hurt. [Caitlin Ryan] If they had just said, "I really care about you. You're going out at night, it's in a tough part of town. It's not really safe for you to be alone in those parts of town. Let's talk about what it means to be out in the world because I love you and I care about you." [Lamontez Tanner: Foster Care Alumnus] No child wants to feel alone or not loved. So that's the worry we worry about, that we're gonna lose any acceptance or any understanding or any support and we're gonna be left all alone. [Promise Adams-Brown] I like women and she didn't want to accept that. She was like, "That's not -- the Bible clearly states that that's against it," and then she started trying to pray the gay away. [Nicole Pauling] I'm not gonna tell you you're bad and that you're dirty and that you're going to help. That is not unconditionally loving. [Promise Adams-Brown] She tried to send me to counseling. [Brandi Smith: Trans Justice Facilitator, Ruth Ellis Center] My mom, she was like, well, "Maybe this is a phase," or she sent me to therapy before and also boot camp. [Promise Adams-Brown] She tried to basically tell me where, "You can't leave the house. You can't have company here." [Gerald Peterson] Another thing that's critically important for parents to do is to be willing, if the child has LGBTQ friends, allow some of their friends to actually be present with them in your home, provide safe space. Another one is transparency and truthfulness. It's vitally important. A young person knows when you're uncomfortable and they perceive your judgment whether you ever use words or not. It is really much better for them if you're willing to say, you know what, "I'm hearing you and I love you and I'm struggling right now to understand." Be honest, absolute silence and ignorance of the child's identity is every bit as oppressive and develops as much fear in a child as someone who overtly says, "You need to stop that. You can't go out dressed that way, this needs to stop." [Jessie Fullenkamp] I think that there are small ways that parents can show that the LGBTQ identity is not invisible, that they understand it's a part of who the child is. [Gerald Peterson] Even if it scares you, even if it makes you feel like "What am I gonna do with this? I don't know how to respond to this," young people don't necessarily need you to respond. If you're able to sit quietly, ask questions, and simply let their responses be, you will build trust. They will feel safe. [Man] They listened to me. I think they gave me space to be able to talk about where I was and what I was feeling and also to, I think, especially to be able to talk to them about how coming out was really good for me and they didn't like interject or be like, "Oh, but what about these other things?" They just really listened to me. And I think they also wanted to know about my life. So like, was I dating anyone or like, what did my friends say? So they still wanted to know about my life and so that felt really affirming. [Caitlin Ryan] One of the most important things that parents and caregivers can do is to talk to their child about that child's experience. That's one of the basic building blocks of the supportive and accepting behaviors that we've identified and measured in our research. And you know what, that's a behavior that anybody can do even if they think that being gay or transgender is wrong. [Lyndsay Smith] It's okay to say, "I don't understand some of this stuff, it's a lot," but also to say, "Maybe you can help me understand it." [Caitlin Ryan] It doesn't have to be all or nothing. You don't have to choose between your child and your values or your child and your faith. That there so many ways that you can be there with your child, increase the level of intimacy, and just imagine if the families that are so distressed when they learn that their child is LGBT and they say, "This isn't what we expected, it's wrong. It's against our values and beliefs. I don't think you can live here any more." Imagine if they stopped and said, "We didn't know anything about this. This is all new to us and we love you. We're gonna be there for you no matter what." [Gerald Peterson] I really believe in sympathy and listening, it's suspending judgment in the moment, listening carefully, eye contact, being present. And at the end of it, being able to say, "I love you. I love you." (calming music) [Title Card: SOGIE Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity & Expression] [CORE Teen logo]