Community isn’t about having a hundred people who agree with you on everything. It’s about having a few people who show up consistently.

When you’re advocating for LGBTQ or neurodivergent children, documentation isn’t about being dramatic. It’s about being prepared.

This isn’t really about cheerleading. It’s about gender expectations getting challenged.

Kids can’t access skills they don’t have yet. All of this matters not only for neurodivergent kids, but especially for ND kids who are also LGBTQ.

Learning out loud doesn’t mean processing everything AT your child. It means letting them see that growth is allowed.

Rainbow Roots exists because the most powerful protective factor in a child’s life isn’t policy, platforms, or institutions. It’s regulated, informed, connected adults. And most of us didn’t grow up with tools for this.

But kids don’t magically wake up one day knowing how to regulate their emotions. They learn it from us. Which means, regulated adults create regulated kids.

Raising kids - especially queer, neurodivergent, and disabled kids - is not for sissies. This is advanced-level parenting.

Not all nervous systems learn the same, and schools are required to meet kids where they are. That’s not an opinion. It’s the law.

No program gets to claim it’s about character if it teaches kids to endure abuse to belong.

When queer kids witness violence - especially when medical care is obstructed, when authority escalates instead of protects - their nervous systems quietly ask: Will this happen to me? Will anyone protect me if it does? Will help be allowed to reach me if I’m hurt?

Am I safe in this world?

Love for your child does not require abandoning faith. It requires letting love lead it.

Inclusion isn’t about forcing kids to fit the environment. It’s about shaping the environment to fit the kids. Which honestly feels obvious once you say it out loud.

We aren’t just fixing the moment. We’re teaching our kids that love doesn’t disappear when things get hard.

But here, we can learn to ask a different question. Instead of: “What’s wrong with my kid?” We ask, “What’s my kid trying to tell me?”

When adults learn how to show up differently, kids get safer.

It really is that simple. And also THAT HARD.

Awkward allyship isn’t about having perfect language or social media polish. It’s about being willing to show up clumsily instead of waiting until you sound perfect (or never showing up at all).

What if the way we protect queer youth isn’t by rescuing kids, but by growing parents?

When the World Feels Loud, Kids Need Adults Who Stay Grounded

I’ve literally packaged the “thing” they mean when members of the LGBTQ+ community say, “I wish someone had explained this to my parents.”