Is this the Person to Whom I’m Speaking Times Two

In a conversation with an attorney, I was recently mistaken for my dad who has practiced law in this town for just over half a century. An honest mistake in that my dad and I sound alike on the phone and neither of us had met the attorney in person before this particular event. The discussion, such as it was, involved contractual arrangements, amortization schedules, and something apparently called a “prepayment penalty.”

Not only was I unaware of the answers, I didn’t much understand the questions. I suppose I could have pretended to be an attorney, but the deception would have proved uncomfortable and short-lived because, stop me if I mentioned this point earlier in this paragraph, I had no earthly idea what was being talked about. Thank goodness I was able to disclose that I am not now, nor have I ever been, an attorney. The mistake exposed, the actual attorney and I had a good laugh; he went off to find my dad to chat amicably about title insurance, and I was able to go have a little lie-down.

Imagine though if I had not been able to say proudly, “Hey! I help kids and families make decisions about colleges or therapeutic boarding schools. I do not know an escrow account from a Count Chocula!”

Which is basically what gay people had to do until recently, don’t you think? Lie about who they were, I mean. I am not familiar with research regarding a relationship between sexual orientation and breakfast cereal. Before a gay man could say, “No, thank you. I appreciate your willingness to set me up with your offspring, but I’m not interested,” he had to say, “Yes, please. I’ll look forward to her call.” Truly, I don’t know what people did in the years before caller ID.

But of course, these newsletters are not about sexual preference, a topic that is right up there with closing statements on the list of things about which I know next to nothing. These newsletters are about children and parenting. So tell me if there might be an analogy here: “My child is smart but lazy. If she just studied harder, she would do better in school.” Doesn’t that sound just like “Being gay is just a phase. He’ll outgrow it. That’s not really who my son is.” This parental lament applies to both kids who aren’t great students and to gay young people: “They’re not who they say they are; they are who I say they are.”

Which is a problem, you have to admit, because wouldn’t you say that the young person with the best insight into who a young person actually is would be said young person rather than some other person even a well-intentioned person of the parental persuasion?

As recently as a hundred years ago, we marginalized, punished, and imprisoned gay people for being who they were. Are you trying to insist that your child is someone else? Are you willing to be angry and disappointed for the rest of your life if your kid doesn’t do as well as you would like in school?

What if her “laziness” is neurological? What if she’s just not motivated or interested? What if there’s something else going on? Sure, she could study harder. In the same sense that my gay cousin could “try” to be attracted to women. But no matter how hard you coerce, cajole, punish, reward, beg, berate, and badger, she still isn’t going to take advanced calculus and do well. In the same way that some years ago, someone offered to pick up the dinner check if my cousin would only agree to take a girl to the restaurant.

Which is not to say that we shouldn’t encourage our children to do well in their studies, to be intellectually curious, to read widely and well, to talk about ideas, to think critically about subjects both in the classroom and out, to do the best they can in school. Gentle encouragement and modeling are good ideas neither of which ever makes use of sledgehammers.

What you can’t do successfully is force your musical child to study accounting or your language-impaired child to be a linguist.

What you can do is destroy your relationship with your son or daughter. Instead of going camping, taking a walk at sunset, hanging out at the dog park, playing Parcheesi, watching “Modern Family,” attending a sporting event, tossing a Frisbee, or having a pleasant relationship, you can have each and every conversation go back to the same worn out place: why aren’t you somebody else?

Throw in a pinch of thinly disguised disgust at the “choices” your child has made and you have the recipe for sadness that can last a lifetime.