Beyond Expectations: Loving The Child You Have. ©

This might be a rant….I'm okay with that.

I am endlessly fascinated by human behavior. I had my usual crime-and-mystery shows running in the background when a show came on about a man who murdered his three sons just to hurt his estranged wife. Needless to say, it worked — and now that woman has to spend the rest of her life mourning her boys. Her babies.

Unfortunately, her story Is not an isolated event. The first question that any clear-thinking person might ask is how depraved must one be to take the life of innocent children? Murder, in and of itself is unthinkable but the grief certainly hits different when the victims are children.

There are people, loving people in this world who pray for children. Who spend thousands of dollars on In Vitro Fertilization. People, loving, and unselfish people realize that children are a gift.

A few years ago, my daughter encouraged me to watch the TV show POSE. In the very first episode, Damon, a Black teenager, comes home from school, goes into his room, and turns on the radio. He begins to dance — the way so many of us have done when we’re alone in our rooms, lost in the music and free to be ourselves.

Then the door slams open. His father stands there, gripping one of the magazines Damon thought he’d hidden under the mattress. On the glossy page is a photograph of a shirtless male in a seductive pose.

His father began to rant about how his coworker saw Damon "Skipping out of that dance school in ballet slippers."

The words aren’t really about dance. They’re about who Damon is in that moment, the magazine becomes validation — at least in his father’s eyes — of what he had long suspected and refused to accept: his son is gay.

“I just want to dance,” Damon says quietly.

He spits out the word that reduces Damon’s entire identity to something shameful. "Sissy." His mother stands in the doorway, torn and silent, until finally she tells him he has to leave.

That was television — but it’s also reality.

I was reminded of it recently when I saw a rap video by Infinite Cole, son of Wu-Tang Clan’s Ghostface Killah. The track is hot. Yet the commentary around it focused less on the music and more on hearsay. It is alleged that Dennis Coles, known to the world as Ghostface, is embarrassed by his son’s sexuality.

If this is true, he wouldn’t be the first parent to feel that way — or to let that feeling become rejection. And that’s the tragedy: that a parent’s inability to accept a child for who they are can push them out of their own home, just as Damon was pushed out of his.

I once had a client who so refused to accept their child's sexuality that they shoved bible verses under the adolescents bedroom door. The act was to impose some homemade form of a conversion-oriented practice. Needless to say it didn't work. Hence, they came to counseling.

Parental rejection of LGBTQ children is heartbreakingly common. More than half of LGBTQ youth report some form of rejection at home, and those who do are far more likely to face depression, anxiety, and even thoughts of suicide. The Trevor Project’s 2023 survey found that 41 percent of LGBTQ young people seriously considered suicide in the past year—most often those rejected by their families. Many are also pushed out of their homes and into homelessness. What’s striking is how much difference a parent’s support can make.

Simple acts—listening without judgment, using a child’s name and pronouns, affirming who they are—can dramatically lower these risks. Damon’s story in POSE may be fictional, but the pain of being cast out because of who you are is real for far too many young people.

We often think of rejection as something that happens only around identity — race, gender, sexuality. But there’s another kind of rejection that hides behind respectable language and even behind what some call “high standards.”

It shows up in the parents whose love begins to cool because their child didn’t finish college… or didn’t choose the “right” career… or isn’t earning as much as the neighbor’s son or the friend’s daughter. Sometimes they don’t even realize they’re doing it. A small sigh at the dinner table. A pointed comment at a family gathering. A story about someone else’s child who is “really doing something with their life.”

The message lands the same way every time: You are not enough as you are.

We don’t talk enough about how deeply this erodes the bond between parent and child. It turns achievement into the currency of love. And when a young person realizes that they will never be the dream their parents had for them, many begin to wonder whether they will ever be loved without conditions.

Not every story ends as painfully as Damon’s. Not every child is put out of the house.But the wound of being measured and found wanting — whether for who you love, how you express yourself, or how you measure up against someone else’s yardstick — can leave just as deep a mark.

Parental love was never meant to be a prize at the end of an obstacle course. It was meant to be the ground beneath a child’s feet, no matter which path they take. A child’s sexuality is not up for debate or negotiation. It is not a phase to be corrected or a problem to be solved — it is simply part of who they are. That aside, before you judge who your child is or what they’ve become, ask yourself what you truly invested in them — your expectations, or your love. Were you present for them, truly present — listening, guiding, affirming — or were you merely measuring them against the dream you had in mind? Did you sacrifice your good times to create good memories with them? What are their memories with you?

Did you celebrate their smallest wins — the little steps that told them they were seen and valued? How often have you told them you were proud of them, not for perfection but for effort, for courage, for becoming themselves? Or have you met them more often with unpleasant gazes — the looks that say you’ve fallen short — instead of words that say I see you, and I’m with you?

Unconditional love means choosing to affirm your child even when their life doesn’t mirror the one you imagined. It means replacing judgment with presence, and expectations with care. Many adults spend years chasing approval, not realizing that validation, freely given in childhood, is what allows a child to grow with confidence and self-worth.

Unconditional love is free — the moment it comes with conditions, it stops being love and becomes a transaction.