Navigating Family Gatherings When Gender Confusion Is Present

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Hello friends. Today's podcast question says, "I have a sister who is part of the LGBTQ+ community claiming a non-binary gender and is engaged to a trans man (a woman who thinks she's a man). I have three kids aged four and under. How do I wisely navigate family gatherings?"

This is a really heavy question because it involves a serious situation and real people's lives—both the children in this family and this questioner's sister and fiancé. Today we're going to look at how we can wisely handle a family situation where we know that the lifestyle being lived is not following God's good design, specifically God's good design for sexuality and for gender. How do we wisely walk through this with our kids?

That's the question we're diving down deep into today on the Foundation Worldview Podcast, where we seek to answer your questions so that you can equip the children that God has placed in your care to carefully evaluate every idea they encounter and understand the truth of the biblical worldview. I'm your host, Elizabeth Urbanowicz, and I'm thrilled that you've joined me for another episode today.

A Word of Encouragement

The first thing I want to say directly to this questioner is I'm really sorry. I know that walking in wisdom in such situations is difficult. Not only is it difficult thinking through how to faithfully disciple your children, but it's also difficult because you love your sister and you see that she is rejecting the goodness of God's design. There are strong emotions on both sides when thinking through this.

But I want to encourage you that it is such a good thing that you are thinking through this intentionally. You are not waiting until you encounter an issue or a really uncomfortable situation before you start thinking through how you can biblically walk through this situation with your children.

Now, I am going to offer this listener, as well as anyone else who wants to think through a similar situation, some general biblically grounded guidance that I think applies to anyone in this situation. However, I know that this situation represents real lives, and it's complicated because real lives are complicated. I know so few details about the specifics of this situation.

So for this questioner and anyone else who's walking through a similar situation, I highly recommend that you seek out others at your local church who are wise, who are biblically grounded, who know you, and who can ask you more questions about the specifics of your situation. With that information, they can give you wise and biblically informed counsel. Someone who knows you and is able to ask you a lot of questions can offer much more nuanced and specific counsel than I can as a podcast host who knows very little about the situation.

Start by Teaching God's Good Design

What I would recommend to anyone walking through a situation like this is that you start by teaching God's good design for gender, for sexuality, for marriage, and for family. As I have said on many podcasts before, it's important that we start off with what is good and what is positive.

The fact of the matter is that God is the author of sexuality and God is the author of gender. God has designed these things as part of his good design, and they are gifts to us. If we want to help our children understand this, we have to talk with them about what is good, what is true, what is beautiful before we dive into how sin has corrupted God's good design.

I highly recommend that you start having these conversations around the age of four. Now, I know the person who wrote in this question—your oldest is four—so this is a conversation mainly to have with your oldest right now. But I highly recommend that when your kids turn four, you start having these conversations with them.

The Talk Made Easy Series

For those of you who have never had the basics of conversations with your kids about gender and sexuality and reproduction, I highly recommend you check out our miniseries "The Talk"...Made Easy. It is three short lessons. Every video is 10 minutes and under.

In the first one, we go through the basics of God's design for humans as male and female. In the second one, we go through the basics of God's design for sex in marriage. And in the third one, we go through the basics of God's design for reproduction.

Those are videos you can walk alongside your kids so that you let us say the uncomfortable things for the first time. Then you have biblically grounded and developmentally appropriate language to continue these conversations afterwards. That series, "The Talk"...Made Easy, is available at our website at FoundationWorldview.com. It's only $15.

I can't be 100% certain, but I am in the upper nineties of certainty that that will probably be the most effective $15 that you spend this month in being able to ground your kids in God's good design for gender and sexuality.

The Framework: Design, Corruption, and Redemption

Once you have laid this biblical framework of understanding the difference between males and females, of God's design for sex, God's design for reproduction, then you can start talking about how sin has corrupted the goodness of God's design.

For any of you who have taken the children in your care through our God's Good Design curriculum at Foundation Worldview, you know that is a 30-lesson curriculum (or actually, is it 25 or 30? I can't remember—I think it's 30 lessons) on God's good design for gender, sexuality, marriage, and family.

In that curriculum we take a specific format that we recommend any parent take their child through: first covering the goodness of God's design, then covering how sin has corrupted that design, and then how God's plan has always been to redeem what has been broken through the curse of sin. So we focus on design, corruption, and redemption.

That's my recommendation to start these conversations off with your children. Again, I highly recommend you check out our series The Talk Made Easy, and then after you're done with that, you check out our full-blown curriculum, God's Good Design. You will then have laid the foundation for the goodness of God's design for gender, sexuality, marriage, and family. You'll help your kids understand how sin has corrupted the goodness of that design, and then how God's plan has always been to redeem the goodness of his creation through the redemption that is found in Jesus Christ.

Navigating Family Gatherings

Now the next question is, how do you navigate family gatherings once your children are trained in this way? How do you work through Christmas and Thanksgiving and birthday parties and Mother's Day and things like that?

This is where wisdom from someone at your local church will come in, as I know so little about the actual specifics of your situation. However, what I'm going to do is offer some general thoughts that I think can be really helpful, and then recommend that you connect with an older, wiser, biblically grounded person in your local church who can offer you more specifics.

Enter as You Would Any Other Family Situation Involving Sin

My general thought is I think it is wise to enter into these family gatherings as you would in any other family situation where a loved one is living in sin. There are so many situations that we encounter with our extended family—whether it's a loved one who struggles with their alcohol consumption and might struggle with alcoholism, whether it's a loved one who is walking through a divorce, whether it's a loved one who is pregnant or has children and is not married, whether it's a loved one who uses foul language or is harsh with their spouse and their children.

There are so many different family situations that we can walk through with our extended family. It's an odd day when there's an extended family situation where that family is not, in their gatherings, affected by family members who are not living according to God's design. In fact, I have yet to meet a family like that. I'm sure that there are one or two out there where they're not navigating such tricky situations, but I've yet to meet a family like that.

So I think first, treat this, enter this as you would any other family situation with a loved one who is living in sin.

1. Seek to Love Them

The first thing that I think is important to do is to seek to love them, to seek to engage your sister and her fiancé in conversation. This will be modeling for your children what it looks like to love others with the love of Christ, because God loves your sister. He loves your sister's fiancé. He wants them to come to himself, and so model that by the way that you engage with them.

This is a great opportunity for your children to see this modeled. I even think of my own family situations growing up, just at extended family gatherings. On both sides—my mom's family and my dad's family—there's a host of family members who are not believers or are not walking in the truth. I just watched my parents growing up at Thanksgiving and at Christmas lovingly engage with our extended family members. That was something that was so powerful for me when I was growing up, just watching my parents and saying, "Oh, this is what it looks like to love someone who is not living according to God's design."

2. Set Healthy Boundaries

As you're seeking to love your sister or, for other listeners, whoever else it is in your extended family, the second thing I think is wise to do is to set healthy boundaries.

Now again, this is where I know so few specifics of the situation, so I really can't offer specific guidance of what healthy boundaries would look like in this situation. But just think through what are healthy boundaries around what your children can and cannot do at such gatherings.

I know at family gatherings when I was growing up that my parents set certain boundaries around what we were and were not allowed to do. They did allow us to do certain things. Like, we were allowed to be around when there was a movie on the TV that my parents normally would not let us watch at home simply because it was just in the general living area where we were all eating. My parents couldn't have kept us away from that. But there were certain rules, certain times when we weren't allowed to go into different areas of the house where my parents weren't.

So just think about what are some healthy boundaries around what your children can and cannot do in these situations, and then make sure that you establish those boundaries very clearly with your children before you get in that situation.

Also, set healthy boundaries around how much time you will spend at such gatherings. Now, there could be situations where it's wise not to limit the amount of time you spend at such gatherings at all. It might be wise to just engage as you would at any other time. However, depending on the situation and what the relationship looks like, it might be wiser to set some boundaries where you're not spending hours and hours at these gatherings. I don't know because I don't know the specifics of your situation, but I just think these are healthy things to think through.

3. Bring Questions Back to God's Good Design

As your children get older, I think they will probably naturally start to ask more questions about what's going on. A two-year-old is probably not going to notice that Auntie So-and-So's fiancé is actually a man or is actually a female but is dressed as a male. A two-year-old probably isn't going to notice that. A four-year-old might start to notice that.

So it's at this time, as your children are asking questions, that you're always making sure that you're bringing everything back to the goodness of God's design.

For example, for this questioner, let's say after next Christmas your four-year-old—let's say your four-year-old's five by then—and your four-year-old is like, "Mommy, why does Auntie Maria's fiancé—why does she look like a girl, but she's dressed like a boy?"

Bring it back to the goodness of God's design and say, "Okay, how did we learn that God designed men and women? That's right. God designed us in his image as male or female. And how do we discover whether we are male or whether we are female? That's right, by the private parts of our body that God designed. As soon as you were born, we knew that you were a boy because you were born with a penis." Or, "As soon as you were born, we knew that you were a girl because you were born with a vagina." And then talk about how God's design is so good.

Then after you have grounded, started the conversation in the goodness of God's design, then you can say, "Do you remember how we learned that sin corrupts God's good design? Yeah, it does, because we're fallen, because we're sinful. Sin has corrupted God's good design."

Then if you've taken your kids through our God's Good Design curriculum, you can just anchor it back in that truth. Say, "Remember, we learned that because of sin, what can happen to our feelings? That's right. Because of sin, sometimes feelings trick us."

So you can say, "Whoever this person's name is looks like a girl but is dressed as a boy because God designed her as a girl image-bearer. God designed her wonderfully in his image, but because of sin, her feelings are tricking her into believing that she is a boy. But what do we know the truth is?" And then talk through the truth: that God designed her in his image as a female.

Then if you've taken your kids through the God's Good Design curriculum, that's where you can also bring in, "But remember, what are we supposed to do when we see someone who is not following God's good design? Right, we're supposed to love others even when they don't follow God's good design."

Talk through how, just like we talked about in that curriculum, with your child at their age, it's not their job to go around pointing out other people's sins. So say, "The next time we see so-and-so, are we going to say, 'Hey, you're not really a boy. God designed you as a girl'? No, we're not going to do that. What are we going to do? We're going to love others. First, we're going to recognize this isn't God's good design. We're going to love others, and we're going to be kind." And so just walk them through how to wisely navigate that situation.

Again, I highly recommend that you check out The Talk Made Easy series and our God's Good Design curriculum because if you go through those materials with your children, they are already going to have this framework to be able to have these conversations whenever you encounter a situation like this.

4. Pray Daily About the Situation

My final recommendation would be to make sure that you are praying daily about the situation. Pray for your sister. Pray that God would convict her of her sin and that he would show her that she is designed well, that she's designed in his image, and that she would choose to turn from her sin and trust in Christ, that she would be reconciled in her relationship with him.

Pray also for her fiancé, that God would do the same for her fiancé. Pray for your children. Pray that God would be at work in their hearts, that he would convict them of their sin and call them to him at a young age. Pray that they would be able to think clearly, that they would be able to love others.

Then pray for yourself. Pray that you would have a humble, loving heart towards your sister and her fiancé. Pray that God would give you the moment-by-moment wisdom that you need in this situation.

Final Thoughts

As I said again at the beginning of this podcast, regarding the specifics of the situation and how to navigate family gatherings, I highly recommend that you talk to someone in your local church who can ask you good questions and can offer you specific guidance.

But I think this general framework of starting off by talking with our kids about God's good design, then explaining how sin has corrupted it and how God's plan for redemption is to rescue us from our sin—and then seeking wisdom as you're walking through these day-to-day situations and seeking to love these family members, setting healthy boundaries, and then praying—I think this framework can really help guide you.

Take the Next Step

If today's conversation has been helpful, I want to encourage you to take the next step in equipping your children with a biblical understanding of gender, sexuality, and identity. The resources we discussed today—"The Talk"...Made Easy series and our God's Good Design curriculum—are specifically designed to give you the tools and language you need to have these important conversations with confidence.

Don't wait until you're caught off guard by a difficult situation. Visit FoundationWorldview.com today to access these resources and subscribe to our email list, where you'll receive regular encouragement, practical tips, and biblically grounded guidance for navigating today's cultural challenges with your children. Together, we can help the next generation understand and embrace God's beautiful design.

Well, that's a wrap for this episode. But if you have a question that you would like for me to answer on a future Foundation Worldview podcast, you can submit that question by going to FoundationWorldview.com/podcast.

As we leave our time together, my prayer for you is that no matter the situation in which you and the children that God has placed in your care find yourselves, you would trust that God is working all things together for your good by using all things to conform you more into the image of his Son.