Nothing a Little Trip to Provincetown Won't Fix

I took my kids to the dentist the other day, and when their checkups were done, the dentist let them pick out a toy ring as a treat. My son chose a grasshopper ring, while my daughter picked the pink gemstone one (surprise, suprise).

When we got home, I took my daughter's ring and playfully slipped it onto her finger. "There. Now we're married."

"Two girls would never get married," my son said knowingly.

"Umm...well...yeah, we'll talk about that another time," I lamely replied.

Should I read my kids
this book, perhaps?

It got me thinking: When is the right time to explain to one's kids that there are other ways a family can look besides the traditional One Mommy-One Daddy-Plus Kids model? My son is only five and barely understands the concept of marriage, so to explain all the possible variations would only confuse him at this point (I think).

Ideally, the conversation will occur naturally when he's a bit older--maybe he'll overhear something on the news about New York passing a Marriage Equality Act (soon, I hope!) and ask questions. Or maybe he'll make a new friend at school who just happens to have two mommies or two daddies (though it's unlikely in our traditional Westchester hamlet). Most likely however, it'll be one of our day trips into the city that will get my son scratching his head and wondering Hmmmm.

If we'd signed my son up for afternoon preschool instead of the morning session this past year, he would've learned pretty quickly that families come in many configurations:

One day last fall, I was looking through the preschool directory for a phone number to arrange a playdate for my son with a kid in the afternoon session. As I skimmed the list of names, I saw that three of the kids had the same hyphenated last name. Wow, triplets! I thought. But then I noticed that only two of these siblings had the same December 2006 birthday; the third was born in January '06, 11 months earlier. OMG, Irish triplets? The mom had one baby in January then got pregnant again immediately with twins? I shuddered at the thought, and couldn't wait to find out the deets at my son's playdate.

A few days later, I grilled the friend's mother about this unusual family. Turns out there's two moms! Which, though it makes way more sense than one poor mama birthing three babies in a single year, never even occurred to me (I'm ashamed to say). Everyone just seems so traditional and straight-laced around here (including me these days) that I never thought we'd actually have a same-sex couple living in our vicinity.

So that's good to know, because I'm all for diversity.

But my son doesn't know these kids and won't be going to school with them in the fall. Sure, I realize that he doesn't need to learn about "two mommies" or "two daddies" anytime soon, yet I'm also aware that it's best to teach kids about diversity early on.

And besides, all of my daughter's princess books aren't exactly helping the issue. The Disney Princesses are all poor/overworked/misunderstood at first, then WHAM!, they get fabulous new gowns & jewels, marry The Prince, and only then can they live happily ever after. There's just so much Boy + Girl = Happiness messaging (plus close-minded bullying) in the world that I worry my kids could end up ignorant and unintentionally hurtful if I don't say something sooner rather than later.

So then the question is this: How soon is too soon, and how late is too late?