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Coming Out, Coming Home: Helping Families Adjust to a Gay or Lesbian Child resources

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xii  Foreword may be close when discussing fashion or feelings but not regarding peers, school problems, or cross-gendered behavior. He believes the avoidance of talking about homosexuality until they are ready, while staying connected in other ways, may be important for maintaining nurturing connections until the time is right for the youth to come out. LaSala conveys the importance of education in helping parents over- come the blame they tend to put on themselves, given the societal messages, despite all evidence to the contrary, that bad parenting makes a child lesbian or gay. He discusses the importance of intervening not only with families, to help them wend their way through the issues of coming out, but also within stigmatizing institutions and other environments. This is a strong mandate for us as clinicians. We must take the time to understand when and how to intervene with different family members, when to encourage them to talk together and when to coach them separately. The importance too of siblings, extended family members, friends, and other members of the family’s social network cannot be minimized. Clearly, the wider the net we spread, as a container for young adults coming out to their parents, the better. The issues are not only personal or even familial but also social and societal, and this awareness is a critical part of our clinical mandate. LaSala’s study shows this extremely well through the voices of parents and children who have a deep attachment, but are driven apart by societal stigma and prejudice. All clinicians should keep LaSala’s insights in mind as they work to create a therapeutic context to help families hold on to their connections in the face of painful social realities of ostracism, shame, and rejection, which, given our society’s closed-mindeness, can too often break loving families apart. 01_lasala14382_fm.indd 12 3/10/10 12:50:44 PM

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