Have you ever wanted to say something supportive to your kid, opened your mouth, and immediately thought, “Oh no. That came out weird.”? Congratulations. You may be an awkward ally.

I use that phrase affectionately because I know this person very well. <<<Point at self>>> Sometimes your heart gets to the conversation before your vocabulary does. You love your kid, you want them to know that, and then the sentence you carefully assembled in your head comes out sounding like you learned queer terminology from a pamphlet at the DMV. It happens. What matters is what you do next.

Awkward allyship is not about knowing every word, understanding every reference, or somehow achieving a level of queer-parent fluency where RuPaul personally hands you a certificate. (Although I wouldn’t be against Ru and Michelle appearing in one of my videos.)

It IS about staying in the conversation when you feel uncomfortable. Maybe you use the wrong word and your kid corrects you. Okay. Maybe you ask a question and realize halfway through that you probably could have Googled it first. Also okay. Maybe your teenager looks at you with that expression that says, “I love you very much and I need you to stop talking now.” Extremely possible. (And if we’re being honest, it’s most likely already happened. Multiple times.)

You can survive all of that. The useful skill is learning how to recover without turning your mistake into another job for your kid. You do not need to spiral into, “Oh my God, I’m terrible, I ruined everything, please tell me I’m still a good parent.” Now your child has to comfort YOU, and we have somehow created a second problem. You can just say, “Got it. Thanks for correcting me.” Then keep going.

That is what an awkward ally actually does. They learn. They adjust. They come back. And sometimes they apologize because whatever happened was bigger than a vocabulary mistake. A lot of us are very competent adults until our children introduce us to something we do not understand. Then suddenly we are standing there like somebody unplugged the router.

I say this with enormous affection for my fellow Gen X parents and grandparents because adaptability is basically our whole fucking brand. We figured out Thomas Maps. We figured out answering machines. We figured out the internet. We figured out smartphones after spending years insisting we didn’t need one. We can figure this out too.

The harder part is accepting that being supportive may occasionally require admitting that your kid knows more about something than you do. That can bruise the ego a little. Your ego will recover. Your relationship benefits when your child realizes they can correct you without having to prepare for a defensive reaction.

There is also a point where “I’m still learning” stops being an explanation and starts becoming an excuse. If your kid has corrected the same thing twelve times and you have made no effort to remember it, that is different from making an honest mistake. If you keep asking them to educate you about something you could reasonably learn on your own, that is different too.

Awkward allyship still requires effort. The awkward part gets grace. The ally part requires action. And for me, one of the most useful things to remember is that we are allowed to revisit our words as we grow. Again for the people in the back: WE ARE ALLOWED TO REVISIT OUR WORDS AS WE GROW.

You can realize a conversation went badly and return to it. You can say, “I thought about what you told me, and I understand it differently now.” You can apologize without writing a five-page defense brief explaining why you meant well.

Sometimes growth is incredibly profound. Sometimes growth is just shutting up two sentences earlier than you did last time. Both count. So if you love your kid and sometimes feel like you are learning a language everyone else already speaks, welcome to the club.

You do not need to perform perfect allyship. You need to keep becoming someone your child can trust while you learn. And if they occasionally roll their eyes at you along the way? THAT is family.

That’s all for now. For more, please visit rainbowrootsmedia.com. And don’t forget to take good care of yourself today. Seriously. Drink some water. Stretch a little. Our knees have opinions now.