As parents, we hold our children's hands as they navigate the world, hoping they will be safe, loved, and valued. We send them to school expecting a safe community to support their academic journey.

Nex Benedict, a 16-year-old non-binary student, attended Owasso High School in Oklahoma, where instead of being received by a safe and welcoming community, their family says they were relentlessly bullied for months over their gender identity.

On February 7, during an altercation with three other students in the bathroom, Benedict reportedly blacked out while they were beaten on the bathroom floor. They died the following day.

Nineteen days later, the Associated Press reports more than a dozen Owasso students walked out of class in protest. They say they want action against discrimination and bullying of transgender and nonbinary students. There have been vigils held in Oklahoma and across the country.

Hate and bigotry apparently don't just trickle down, they can rise up as well. Tianna Bastien, a mom and TikTok-er under the handle @thecuratedlobe, lives just outside of Toronto. She recently shared with Parents that the ongoing escalation of anti-LGBTQIA+ legislation and the anti-gay climate rising in the states have had the impact of empowering bigoted voices and are increasing hateful anti-gay sentiments and rhetoric in Canada.

Bastien's newest TikTok features her children and a friend attending the Drag and Brunch show at CommunityResto. "I decided that the voiceover that I was going to do for the video was going to take a sarcastic tone to highlight how ridiculous people who are against drag queens are actually sounding."

On February 13, 2022, South Dakota became the latest state to ban gender-affirming care for transgender youth. Governor Kristi Noem signed HB1080 into law, making the South Dakota bill the first legislation passed in the country that calls for forced medical detransition of trans youth currently receiving care. Taking effect on July 1, medical practitioners providing hormone therapy to minors will have to terminate care immediately or systematically reduce all care to end no later than December 31. If they don't comply, they risk getting their professional license revoked.

This law places trans youth at risk for both self-harm, as shown by record high rates of suicide, as well as abuse or assault from others. The Trevor Project reports nearly 1 in 5 transgender and nonbinary youth attempted suicide. And according to the Human Rights Campaign, at least 34 transgender and gender non-conforming people were killed in the U.S. in 2022.

The Florida High School Athletic Association (FHSAA) held an emergency meeting Thursday, Feb 9, after receiving significant public blowback to their considerations of making students' menstrual cycle information mandatory on athlete eligibility paperwork. The FHSAA oversees interscholastic athletic programs across the state of Florida and had been considering adopting a form that would have made these previously optional questions mandatory.

The questions, masked under a concern for students' health, would have forced athletes to disclose personal, private medical information about whether the student had a menstrual cycle, when their first menstrual period was, the dates of their most recent period, and the number of periods they had in the previous 12 months. This data would have conceivably been accessible by coaches, school districts, and third-party digital platforms.

A 2019 petition "Demand a same-sex parent family on Peppa Pig" has finally come to fruition, as this week in Britain the episode "Families" aired the first "two Mummy" household on Peppa Pig. This is a first for the popular children's TV show that for over 18 years, 6 series and 250 episodes has largely centered around Peppa Pig's four-person, heteronormative family.

As parents, we want our children to have healthy and happy friendships. We spend so much time driving around to drop off and pick up, coordinating countless playdates, and we even hang out with other adult parents (that sometimes we don't even like) in order to facilitate our children's friendships. We support our children through disagreements, hurt feelings and all the issues that come from hard-to-grasp concepts such as sharing and jealousy. We try to do it all. But sometimes people's biases get in the way.

Grandma gets an important lesson on how to love kids for exactly who they are and how they want to express themselves.

In a world of mixed messages ranging from peer acceptance to political hate, LGBTQIA+ youth are finding ways to celebrate who they are.

Pride 2022 starts as ongoing anti-LGBTQIA+ legislation continues across states, yet queer resilience, as always, rages on no matter the time of year. In Florida, Zander Moricz, the first openly gay class president at his Sarasota high school, is the youngest public plaintiff in a federal lawsuit against the state of Florida to strike down the Don't Say Gay Bill. "All of me is threatened by this legislation," Moricz testified at the state senate

Librarians, guardians of the people's freedom to read, have come to the rescue in response to the rise of censorship via book challenges across the country. The Brooklyn Public Library recently announced Books Unbanned, their new program focused on combating censorship and suppression. Through Books Unbanned, anyone in the United States between the ages of 13 and 21 can apply for a free Brooklyn Public Library (BPL) eCard. The BPL database will give teens access to 350,000 ebooks and 200,000 audiobooks, along with numerous online databases.

Kate McKinnon joined Colin Jost on Weekend Update to comment on Florida's 'Don't Say Gay' Bill, HB1557, as it passed its final state Senate committee last week.

McKinnon sets up the segment with blissful ignorance, "I heard about this law, and I think it's amazing!" She spins to her middle school experience and the impact of hearing "that's so gay" or "ew, you're gay," exclaiming how wonderful it is that Ron Desantis has taken a stand to say "No, you cannot say gay in school anymore."

For many of us parents, the pandemic forced us to face our children's relationships with math by addressing our own. From collective Google searching of "what in the hell is common core" to seeking out ways to make math fun, we have had to ask, "Is math just a drag?"

Now, it really is. Meet Kyne, the world-class drag queen math communicator. Kyne (the creation of Kyne Santos) began her drag career while studying Mathematics at the University of Waterloo, completing her major in Mathematical Finance, all while appearing on the wildly popular Canada's Drag Race. The idea to finally bridge her two loves of math and drag came to her when the global pandemic swept us all into many hours stuck in our homes.

"There's a natural similarity between reproductive rights and transgender rights," said Mercedes Sanchez, director of development and community education at Cedar River Clinics in Washington State. "It's all about autonomy, bodily autonomy, and being able to make the choices for ourselves." Sanchez sees the fight for reproductive rights and transgender rights as intertwined. And, in fact, they are.

It is essential for healthcare providers to be aware of intersections of oppressions from race, socioeconomic status, sex assigned at birth and current gender status, so patients can potentially feel safe and included in these spaces. By stating that abortion services are cis people's health concern are excluding trans and nonbinary people's experience.

We put our toddler to bed and cozied up alongside the fireplace illuminating our small trailer in the woods. If you aren’t ready to have another child, then we have to change what we are doing. You can’t keep coming inside of me. He had protested the idea of a vasectomy (too emasculating). I tried an IUD, but the pain and heavy bleeding following its insertion led to its removal. My period had been irregular since giving birth, and between taking care of a toddler and healing from postpartum depression, I was never successful at tracking my cycle.