Book Description

Packed to the hilt with living narratives, scholarly research, and problem-solution scenarios, Queer Kids: The Challenges and Promise for Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Youth examines the unique challenges faced by today’s homosexual young adults. You’ll learn what modern-day queer kids do to cope, survive, and find understanding in a world riddled with homophobic intolerance. Queer Kids is a lens of clarity that will help the average straight adult--and maybe even the average gay adult--see things from a kid’s point of view. Its detail-oriented, well-wrought chapters will provide you with literally hundreds of stories of young people who are trying to define themselves sexually and emotionally in a society of criss-crossing judgment, stereotyping, anger, and expectation. Aimed at three target groups--counselors, parents, and youth--this book introduces you to a variety of interesting kids, offers you a look at the process of coming out, and helps you grasp the experience of queer identification. Specifically, you’ll read about: queer kids and their families and peers the medical/health care profession’s impact on queer kids the teachers and counselors of gay, lesbian, and bisexual youth how to alleviate harrassment, abuse, withdrawal, and loneliness the effects of familial denial, prejudiced counselors, and standoffish gay adults Being a kid is tough--but being a queer kid can be even tougher. Fortunately, Queer Kids is available for students, ministers, teachers, youth- and health-care workers, and especially the friends and families of teens who are working through the personal turbulence that too often accompanies sexual and emotional definition. Guided by its upfront approach and practical resource list of written, computer, and telephone aids, you’ll see that a solution is not as distant as you think. Read it, and relearn what it means to be a kid again.