One random Saturday afternoon while eating cake, my eight-year-old daughter asked me, “Mummy am I a girl?” I asked her what she felt like and she said, “I feel like a girl mummy, but boys can have long hair and be like girls too can’t they?”
by Jo White
We had a chat around all the many things boys and girls can do until we’d finished our cake. But one question she asked stuck with me, “When a man marries a man, does one of them grow boobies?”
I realised that no matter what we talk about as a family - the books my daughter reads in school and at home, the people she sees in our village, all fit the typical stereotype of a female mum and male dad. How can I change that?
The first person I turned to for some ideas was Daniel Gleghorn, Chair of the LGBTQ+ and Allies Network here at NHS Digital. He introduced me to the NHS Digital library at our Leeds office. I’ve never worked anywhere before that has its very own library!
A window to our world
I popped along to the Leeds office library the following Friday and left with a fabulous collection of every primary age LGBTQ+ story I could get my hand on. Daniel had kindly shared the reading ages of the books they stocked so it was easy to know which ones were appropriate for my eight-year old daughter and four-year old son.
A work library is a cool idea when you think about it because you’re safe in the knowledge that all the books have been checked and are recommended. This was especially important to me when looking for LGBTQ+ topics because I didn’t know where to start.
Sharing books is actually good for the environment too so you’ll be doing your bit for the planet if you create your own work library. It’s fairly easy to set-up, all you need is a space and a shelf alongside a soft comfy chair if you have room.
When I arrived home with an armful of books, I was barely through the door before both my children asked to read them all. We settled on the sofa and read, read, read.
I’ll be honest, when I opened, “It feels good to be yourself” by Theresa Thorn, I thought wow this jumps straight into it, there’s no fluffiness here - yet my children really enjoyed learning about gender identity in a clear and upfront way. It was brilliant. They liked the new words and I had to read it again….and again.
‘Call me Max’ was a particular favourite with my son. It’s a sweet, heart-warming introduction to transgender children and we read this one over and over again. My daughter enjoyed all the books (she’s a real book worm), and she particularly liked Sulwe by Lupita Nyong'o. It’s a beautifully written story about colourism, self-esteem and learning that true beauty comes from within - a must for every child's collection.
Introducing LGBTQ+ books to school
As well as introducing LGBTQ+ topics to my own children, I took the books along to my daughter's school at the next Governor's meeting, to introduce them there too. I’m a parent governor monitoring Special Educational Needs and Equality, and we’ve worked together to diversify their book collection to cover different races and family setups, but I had not even considered LGBTQ+ topics - until now.
I showed the teachers the books and shared my children's enjoyment when reading them and how well they responded to the directness of some of the stories.
The teachers had a look through and the reading lead took them home for a test run with her own kids - they loved them too. Next step is writing to the publishers to see if they will each gift a copy to the school library.
As all the books were such a hit at home, I regularly pop to the library to see what’s new. With it being Pride month, I picked up the book Pride by Rob Sanders to help my children understand the meaning behind the rainbow flag.
It’s written in a very simple, honest way with beautiful illustrations and both children were curious to know more once we’d finished. My four-year old couldn’t comprehend the ending, in hindsight he’s probably a bit too young to understand assassination, but it was nice to hear his older sister explain to him why it happened and how it’s not really like that anymore.
The next morning my daughter asked if we could make a pride cake for her class after school. So after a quick lunchtime run to the shops and a lot of after-school mess (!) she made a beautiful cake to celebrate Harvey Milk and the Pride flag.
Happy Pride Month
Jo White is communications manager at NHS Digital. You can say hello on Twitter at @jolwhite
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