Kids for Pride, Pride for Everyone!
by Brita Johnson, Bridgetown Baby Lead Doula and Storyteller
My then 4-year-old at the Portland Pride parade.
Anyone who has attended the Tuesday Nurturing Circle has heard me reflect on the ways that becoming a parent has opened up new horizons for me. As I walk alongside my kids at their different stages, I learn about, and learn through, their developmental trajectories.
When they were babies, it might have been the way their tiny hands began to reach for the things that caught their increasingly acute eyesight - it was an epiphany how these growing skills fit together like pieces in a puzzle. (What places in my life are like this, where a ladder I’ve incrementally built suddenly allows me to reach a new height?)
As they’ve gotten older, I’ve been delighted and constantly surprised as they’ve learned to navigate language with humorous aplomb, and as they connect bits of foraged knowledge into cohesive theories about how things work in the world. (What feathers and strings and tiny branches have I woven into my own world view…and in what myriad and fascinating ways have others done this work, as well?)
This is what our kids are supposed to be doing - so in some ways, it’s banal; they’re following the human developmental imperative. But in other ways, it’s a daily miracle: they are participating in a universal, yet dazzlingly unique quest to become an individual. Each of them, each of us, is a perfect paradox.
It kind of blows my mind.
For me, parenting a child who identifies as queer is like an amplified version of this experience. Where I have watched the basic developmental building blocks slide into place and it has given me a drilled down perspective on the human she’s becoming, watching her step into and celebrate her queer identity has broadened my perspective on the fluid possibility contained in each and every human being.
If before I felt fierce about my kids having the freedom to be who they are, I feel fiercely joyful now, fiercely celebratory and fiercely protective of every child’s - every human’s - right to live, love and express the gorgeous spectrum of identities within us.
It’s a feeling a lot like…pride.
Brita Johnson is a Certified Postpartum Doula and parent to two wild and wonderful children, ages 12 and 7, who fill the house with rainbows and books. Holding space for growing identities - her children’s and her clients’ alike - is central to the caretaking work she does.
A Selection of Family-Friendly Pride Resources:
A fun read-aloud for toddlers and preschoolers that celebrates unique identities - from Oregon Children’s Theatre
The Children’s Library Lady on talking to children about Pride month
8 activities to celebrate Pride with young kids
30 LGBTQ+ Children’s Books for Pride Month, from Mutually Inclusive and ReadBrightly
Two resources to explore and celebrate gender fluidity
Multnomah County Library’s list of nonfiction LGBTQIA+ books for kids of all ages and inclusive books for younger kids
