Holding Two True Things at Once
I can hold two true things at the same time. My children can love who they love and still know what they know.
Have you been asked, in subtle and unsubtle ways, to make your child choose? You do not have to. Two true things can live in the same room — gently, without one canceling the other. Your child is allowed to love the people they love, in the imperfect, complicated way that real love works. They are also allowed to notice what they notice, and to feel what they feel, and to know what they know in their own small honest knowing.
You do not have to teach your child to dislike anyone. The work of seeing other people clearly is theirs to do, in their own time, at their own pace. Your work is something else. Your work is to be the parent who does not require them to share your view in order to be loved by you. You can love whoever you love. I will love you the same. That sentence, lived rather than only spoken, is one of the most stabilizing sentences a child can grow up inside.
This does not mean denying their experience. If your child notices something hard and brings it to you, you can be honest with them about what they noticed. Yes, that sounds like a hard moment. Yes, that sounds confusing. Yes, your feelings about it make sense. The honesty respects what they saw. The not-poisoning respects who they are still allowed to love.
The work of holding both at once is hard for adults. It is even harder when you are inside the kind of season you are inside. But your child watches you do it, and from watching, they learn that it is possible. First the loving. Then the noticing. Then, slowly, the steady adult who can carry both without forcing the child to.
You do not have to be perfect at this. You only have to keep trying. The trying itself becomes the lesson.