Queer and Neurodivergent Inclusive Sex Ed

On this week’s episode of In the Den, Jen visits with TikTok mother/daughter duo Monica Gupta Mehta and Asha Lily Mehta about a range of topics from how to maintain good parent/child communication to understanding gender, neurodiversity, and queer sexuality. It’s a conversation you won’t want to miss!

Special Guest: Monica Gupta Mehta

Monica (she/her) is a teacher, educational psychologist, author, nonprofit director, mom, and now an artist! She started teaching 20 years ago in a very progressive classroom, where she taught social emotional learning and sex education along with her humanities course. Monica took time off to raise her children, all of whom are autistic and queer, requiring extremely dedicated parenting and putting them at high risk for mental health struggles. Monica then went back to earn her master's degree in educational psychology, which she put to use creating educational content that she has taught over TikTok, Instagram, in her Normalizers podcast, and in her co-authored book, It’s Totally Normal! An LGBTQIA+ Inclusive Guide to Puberty, Sex, and Gender.

Special Guest: Asha Lily Mehta

Asha (she/her) is a freshman at Northwestern University, currently studying physics and dark matter. As a neurodivergent minority lesbian, Asha has had to deal with microaggressions and outright bigotry for most of her life. In addition, the Covid-19 pandemic separated Asha from her peers during a critical phase of social development. Recognizing a similar combination of mental health, support, education, and socialization needs in teens around the world, Asha decided to join Monica, her mom, in creating online safe spaces. Asha helped create a community that has helped over 100,000 LGBTQIA+ and neurodivergent teens around the world.

Links from the Show: 

• Asha and Monica’s non-profit website: https://www.kindnessproject.love/ 
• The Kindness Project on IG: https://www.instagram.com/kindnessproject.love/ 
• The Normalizers Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/3lzQmBuZNpnSkAaCJtC9dr?si=8dfd115abc7640fc&nd=1&dlsi=b10a090c73394e07 
• Monica and Asha on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@monicatheteacher 
• Buy It’s Totally Normal on Amazon here: https://www.amazon.com/Its-Totally-Normal-Lgbtqia-Puberty/dp/1839973552 
• Join Mama Dragons today: www.mamadragons.org 

In the Den is made possible by generous donors like you. Help us continue to deliver quality content by becoming a donor today at mamadragons.org. 

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Transcript

JEN: Hello and welcome to In The Den with Mama Dragons. I’m your host, Jen. This podcast was created to walk and talk with you through this journey of raising happy, healthy, and productive LGBTQ humans. Thanks for listening. We’re glad you’re here. 

Today we are going to be talking to a mom and one of her children. They have been on quite an adventure together over the past few years and I think it will be interesting for us to learn all that they can teach us from their journey. I have a lot of questions for them and after watching their TikTok channel, I feel like this conversation could go in a million different directions. I’m kind of excited to see how it unfolds. But, let me start off by introducing both of them. 

First, Asha Lily Mehta (she/her) is a freshman at Northwestern University, currently studying physics and dark matter. As a neurodivergent minority lesbian, Asha has had to deal with microaggressions and outright bigotry for most of her life. In addition, the Covid 19 pandemic separated Asha from her peers during a critical phase of social development. Recognizing a similar combination of mental health, support, education, and socialization needs in teens around the world, Asha decided to join Monica, her mom, in creating online safe spaces. Asha helped create a community that has helped over 100,000 LGBTQIA+ and neurodivergent teens around the world. Welcome, welcome Asha!!

ASHA: Hi.

JEN: And next we have Monica Gupta Mehta (she/her) is a teacher and educational psychologist, author, nonprofit director, mom, and now an artist! She started teaching 20 years ago in a very progressive classroom, where she taught social emotional learning and sex education along with her humanities courses. Monica took time off to raise her children, all of whom are autistic and queer, requiring extremely dedicated parenting and putting them all at high risk for mental health struggles. Monica then went back to earn her master’s degree in educational psychology, which she put to use in creating educational content that she has taught over TikTok, Instagram, and in her Normalizers podcast, and in her co-authored book, “It’s Totally Normal! An LGBTQIA+ Inclusive Guide to Puberty, Sex, and Gender." Welcome Monica!!

MONICA: Thank you. It’s great to be here.

JEN: All right. So when we originally looked to have Monica and Asha come as quests, we primarily wanted to talk to them about their most recent book. But as I took a little bit of a deep dive into their story, I decided I absolutely want to start with their personal narrative before we even started talking about the book. So I’m going to ask each of you if you can share a brief history of who you are and how you reached this phase of life? I apologize in advance if I interrupt for details. I’m just very curious about it all. Who wants to go first?

ASHA: I can.

MONICA: Asha’s going to go for it.

JEN: All right, Asha.

ASHA: Hi, my name’s Asha. I use she/her pronouns. And how I got to where I am in my stage of life, so I grew up in the Bay area. We’ve lived in a couple of different houses, a couple of different cities, but always the same general region. And in terms of sexuality, I realized that I identified as some sort of LGBTQ+ actually very early on, around age 9 when I started to have crushes on girls. I wasn’t experiencing any physical attraction but more romantic attraction sort of crushes that you have when you’re in elementary school. Everyone was having the sorts of crushes like bringing people they found pretty flowers and stuff. I was just feeling that more towards girls. And I had a pretty happy childhood. And once I was 12 I felt more solidified in my identity. Solidified enough to tell my mom and my cousin were the first two people that I told. But then I pretty quickly told most of the people in my life, nearly everyone.

JEN: Talk to me about how that coming out process went with your mom.

MONICA: Did you say you told me, or I pulled it out of you?

ASHA: I did a thing. I like to do discussion questions with my friends and family. So I was with my cousin and my mom because it was the night of my 13th birthday, so 12. It was the night before. We were the only three people who were up at 11 o’clock at night. And I was like, “I have a discussion question for everyone. Why don’t we all tell each other something we’ve been wanting to tell each other but have been too nervous to tell each other.” Because I wanted to come out, but I wanted to frame it. And I was like, “You guys go first.”

JEN: I actually love that. “Let’s all share a secret.”

ASHA: I often ask discussion questions that I know what I want to answer as a way of not just saying things.

JEN: That’s sort of genius.

ASHA: So, eventually, I got to it. And I actually was kind of nervous. So then I said I’ll write it on my notes app. And then I, you know the thing where you can shake your phone to undo what you wrote because I was like, “Never mind.”

JEN: Were you scared during all of this?

MONICA: Yeah.

ASHA: Yeah. I was very scared because I knew that my mom . . .

JEN: No. I meant mom.

ASHA: Oh, mom.

MONICA: No. I knew what was coming.

JEN: All right. Sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt you, Asha, go back.

MONICA: I wasn’t scared but Asha was nervous which I think is amazing. Coming out is so difficult that my kids were scared to come out to me and I’m a huge LGBTQIA advocate and supporter, like very verbally, noticeably and still they were nervous because coming out is just that difficult.

ASHA: I mean, I think my entire childhood, I don’t know how intentionally you were doing it, but you were doing a lot of things to make me feel very much like it would be okay if I was queer or I was trans. Like, you’d tell me about your librarian friend who is gay when you were teaching. Or you would tell me about your bisexual friend now. You’d tell me about all these people.

MONICA: It was intentional because I had a suspicion that you liked girls.

ASHA: Yeah.

MONICA: Yeah.

ASHA: So, anyways, my mom said, “Does it have anything to do with you being gay?” And I was like, “Yeah.” And then I told her that at the time I was identifying as pansexual which means sort of an attraction to all genders. It’s not the same as being bisexual. What I was feeling at the time was that gender wasn’t really a factor in my attraction, it was more about the person. There’s a character played by, what’s his name?

MONICA: In the TV Show Schitt’s Creek, there’s David.

JEN: Yeah, when we’re talking about the Rose.

ASHA: And they’re like, I like the wine, not the label. It’s sort of like, I didn’t consider someone’s gender identity when figuring out if I was attracted to them.

MONICA: Yeah. Just to correct that just in case anybody’s curious. I would probably say pansexual is a type of bisexual, not . . . 

ASHA: Yeah.

MONICA: Because you said it’s not the same as being bisexual. But I think it’s just a more defined. . .

ASHA: It’s a more specific way to express it because at the time that specificity was really helping me figure out who I was. And as I got older, I started to realize, I started to go beyond elementary school crushes and have middle school and high school crushes which are different than when you’re a kid and I see a person on the playground and they’re nice to me. And then I slowly realized that I was lesbian.

MONICA: Were you confused at all about your early crushes on boys when you realized you were a lesbian?

ASHA: Yeah. I kind of wondered where those had come from. Part of it, I think in elementary school, was that – to be honest, I don’t know how much of elementary school crushes are reflective – I think that who you’re attracted to in elementary school can definitely be fluid. It can change over the years. I think I was a little bit like I did have crushes on boys in elementary school because the people you’re attracted to, the genders you’re attracted to, it doesn’t have to stay stagnant. However, I was confused about sometimes even when I came out as lesbian, sometimes I would still feel a bit of butterflies when I saw, I don’t know – the example that I always give is ridiculous. But I did and still do have a celebrity crush on Michael Cera for some reason. But the way it is, is sort of the way I was raised by media is that, of course, every girl is going to have crushes on guys. So I was like, I’m a girl. I’m going to have crushes on guys. So then I would go about it as, “That guy is pretty, like, I like to look at him.” Because they’re still guys. I could tell when a guy is pretty even if I’m not attracted to him. Just the same way that a straight girl can tell if another straight girl is pretty. And so I’d be like, “That guy’s pretty and he’s nice. So that’s probably what people mean when they say that girls will have crushes on guys.” So that’s a thing called comp-het. I experienced a lot of that. It means compulsory heterosexuality. But people usually just call it comp-het because they don’t want to say all of that. And that’s a thing that I experienced a lot. So that’s part of the reason I didn’t realize I was lesbian until later because I was like, ‘Well, I’m supposed to be attracted to guys and there are guys that I like, you know, not like in a crush way but I like them as friends and I like looking at them. And maybe that’s what a crush is.” So, yeah, that’s why it took me a while to come out as lesbian.

JEN: So when were you, in this narrative timeline, when were you diagnosed as neurodivergent?

ASHA: So, for neurodivergence . . .

MONICA: We didn’t even test Asha for neurodivergence until . . .

ASHA: I was like 13, 14.

JEN: So you were doing all the coming out part long before you figured out the neurodiversity.

ASHA: Yeah. So when I was younger, in elementary school, I did have friends but the way I interacted with my friends was different than my peers definitely. I was really socially awkward. And I played with people differently. I played with my peers differently than my peers played with each other. I didn’t always want to just, I remember asking my mom – I don’t know if you remember this – “When do we stop just running around and start actually talking to each other?” And I was like, I want to actually be talking to my friends. I want to be having emotionally intelligent conversations with them. I enjoyed hanging out with older teens and adults because they actually want to talk to me about stuff. So I was always interacting with people a little differently. My mom and I are similar in the way we get to know people is to really get to know them on an emotional level.

MONICA: I find a lot of autistic kids relate more in the earlier years to older people or just find those interactions sometimes more satisfying. And that’s how Asha was.

ASHA: And then because of the fact that I knew I was different, my self-esteem socially got very poor. In middle school I, even though there were people who enjoyed hanging out with me and interacting with me, I wouldn’t let myself believe that they enjoyed being with me. This led me to become very depressed. I was like, “Oh, am I just so different? Do people not want to be with me? Do people not like me? Is there something wrong with me?” And I was also like, I had friends who were starting to come out as queer and the queer and neurodivergent communities, which we can talk more about later, actually they have an overlap because they both are groups of people who feel like they’re fundamentally different for whatever reason, who might feel ostracized for that fundamental difference.

MONICA: Yeah. And I think Asha, even more than that, a lot of autistic people reject gender norms because they just don’t make sense. Like, our gender roles in our society oftentimes don’t make sense on a purely logical basis.

JEN: We did a whole episode on that intersection between Autism and Gender Diversity. And the statistics are stunning, just stunning at the amount of overlap.

MONICA: And I understand it because I see my own kids as they go through their identity exploration and they look at what society tells them girls have to be like, boys have to be like, and they know they don’t have to conform to that and they can still be a girl or a boy. But they just reject the rules entirely. I think that overlap is strong for that reason too.

ASHA: So I was getting exposure to that. And I did start to wonder, occasionally, if I might be some form of neurodivergent even through middle school because I felt like, “What’s wrong with me?” I really felt like there was something broken about me. And during the pandemic, I think a lot of people realized they were neurodivergent. What I did often, what a lot of neurodivergent people do, is called masking. It’s sort of hiding your neurodivergence or concealing your neurodivergent qualities, stims, and expressions, and everything to fit in more. I think the pandemic made me realize who I was outside of that conformity.

MONICA: Because you didn’t have to blend in.

ASHA: I didn’t have to blend in. I was home and it was just me. It was mostly me with myself. Or me with my siblings, like my sister who had already gotten diagnosed as autistic. I was like, I can actually be me. Throughout the pandemic, I was like, “There has to be something going on. And so I’m still on a journey of figuring it out, what labels suit me beyond neurodivergent because neurodivergent is an umbrella term. It encompasses – autism and ADHD are the most well known ones – but it encompasses a bunch of different things. But I went in for an initial autism evaluation and they told me that – so autism has a bunch of different spectrums with sensory issues, gross motor skills, one of them social skills. I didn’t have a deficit on social skills

 MONICA: No, you were on the borderline.

ASHA: A borderline of a deficit in social skills. Everything else was a heavy deficit.

MONICA: Clear deficit.

ASHA: So they were like, “We’re not going to give you an autism diagnosis. However, check back in a few years, the criteria might have changed.”

MONICA: And they also acknowledge that girls tend to perform differently on the exams because the exams tend to reflect how males portray autism, I guess – or whatever the wording would be – moreso than how females do.

JEN: We had a great time with those tests in my family. My kids on the spectrum and those who have ADHD and those who weren’t on the spectrum ever. And even the questions are challenging because you read these questions, these different types of brains are hearing the question and interpreting the question itself differently which is so fascinating.

ASHA: They asked me a question, “Do you enjoy loud parties?” And I’m like, “Yes. I enjoy parties of all kinds because I get to see the people that I like. And the people I like go to parties. However, I would rather them not be loud.”

MONICA: So how do you answer that?

ASHA: So I like loud parties because they’re parties that I get to see people and I’m a social person. I was so confused on that question. I was like, “I get exhausted after loud parties but I will go to them because they’re fun. I like parties doesn’t mean I like loud parties.” The way that there’s a thing in my family, I can’t answer a hypothetical without knowing the exact specifics. Someone will be like, “Would you rather do this or this?” And I’ll be like, “Well, in what circumstances? Am I me now? The me now can’t become invisible. In what circumstances have I started to gain this power of invisibility?” And they’re like, “Just would you rather?” I’m like, “I don’t know. Am I still me?”

MONICA: I need more information.

ASHA: Yeah. I need more information.

JEN: Let me interrupt you again, Asha. I apologize. How old are you now? I know you’re in college, but are you. . .

AHSA: I’m 18

JEN: You’re 18 exactly, OK.

ASHA: My birthday was on Tuesday.

JEN: Oh, barely 18, OK.

ASHA: Yeah.

JEN: So, you’re 13, you get tested and you’re kind of in the maybe-ish/maybe not-ish category. But you know that you’re neurodivergent of some sort.

ASHA: My therapist did not think that I was autistic at all. She kind of laughed when I brought it up. But then my next therapist was like. So the place I’ve been in since I’ve gotten an ADHD diagnosis which seems to actually fit me. There’s some contention. I find it’s interesting that certain people in my life think that it doesn’t fit me well. Certain people think it fits me very well. I don’t know. I’ve been diagnosed, so yeah. Probably. But the way I present is so different around different people. It’s just interesting. But the way I’ve been talking with my psychiatrist and my therapist is, they’re like, “Well, you fit the criteria for ADHD. You fit the criteria for autism. You fit the criteria for all these other different things. You don’t really fit cleanly in any of them.” Basically the way they said it is “You fit most of the criteria for a lot of things and you don’t fit all of the criteria for anything.” And so I will refer to myself as autistic because recently my therapist said, “Yes, I would definitely consider you autistic and would be willing to recommend you for a diagnosis.” I was like, “I don’t want to go through that process again.” I will consider myself autistic and ADHD because those labels both mostly fit me and do a good job at conveying to other people what struggles I face. But I don’t, like, when I think of myself, I don’t necessarily – like I’ll use autism and ADHD to describe myself like when in my introduction to people I know to describe myself. But when I’m personally describing myself, I don’t actually really like either label. I’m like, they fit well enough. But I just prefer being me and I don’t feel like I fit cleanly enough into any label to really on the inside feel strongly autistic or feel strongly ADHD. I find it much more freeing to just be me and neurodivergent.

JEN: Perfect. How about you, Monica. Can you take us through a brief biography of you?

MONICA: OK. Let’s see. I’m Indian. My parents came from India. But I was born in Pennsylvania. I grew up on the east coast. And when I was growing up, as most people probably listening to this, it wasn’t generally okay to be gay or – transgender people didn’t even understand at all. It was like, “Are transgender people just drag queens?” That was my basic understanding of being transgender. And then being gay, it just felt like very few people are gay and it’s unlikely you’ll be gay and not really worth considering for most people. So I had crushes on guys, but I could feel how forced they were. I would just choose a guy and be like, “Okay. I have a crush on that guy.” And then I would just try to force the crush. But, on my husband, I really did have a crush. And my husband and I grew up together. And so I think that it came more from. I guess, a closeness emotionally than from anything to do with gender. And so I was very attached to my husband emotionally. And so that developed into a crush. And then I didn’t think anything more of it until I had all of these wonderful, varied, queer and neurodivergent kids. Although, that’s not exactly true. I would think about it from time to time when we were younger and we would go dancing and would go out. I would notice that, there was one time that a woman very heavily flirted with me and I enjoyed it, definitely enjoyed the feeling of that. And I would find women very attractive and very pretty and not really men for the most part. And so I did wonder in the back of my mind “Am I bisexual? I guess it doesn’t really matter because I’m married already. So what’s the point of even thinking about this?” And then Asha came out. And Asha came out as pansexual and this was a word that I had never heard in my life. I was expecting Asha to say that she was gay because I had felt pretty confident that Asha was just by observing her. I know, I tend to know my kids really, really well. And so I think I knew for at least two years before Asha told me that likely Asha would come out as gay.

ASHA: It wasn’t all so subtle. There was one time I was filling out a form and there was one question. It was, “Have you ever questioned your sexuality, or do you identify as LGBTQ?” And I was like, “Mom, can you leave the room while I answer this one question?”

JEN: That is subtle.

MONICA: Yeah. So I was expecting that. I was expecting Asha to say that she was gay or, you know, that she’s a lesbian. I got pansexual and I had to go look it up in the dictionary and understand it better. And so that actually got me interested in getting more up-to-date with terminology today because I wanted to be there for my kids. and I was like, I clearly don’t know the newest things about just sex ed in general about understanding sexuality and gender in a modern context. And so I started learning and my kids were great teachers because I was really open to hearing what they had to say. So they loved telling me all the newest things. And I would say I learned from them far more than they learned from me in those years, those early years of learning about gender and sexuality. And the interesting thing was I heard more and more about pansexual and started feeling like, “Well, all of this describes me.” And so I actually, we have a joke where Asha came out as pansexual and outed me, essentially, as pansexual.

JEN: To yourself, outed you to yourself, right?

MONICA: To myself. And then Asha’s not even pansexual. She’s a lesbian. So it was kind of fortuitous that that happened because it helped me understand myself. And then I learned more about some of these microlabels that people use today. And I came across the label demisexual. And demisexual means that you generally only have a sexual interest in somebody if you have a romantic interest, if you have an emotional attachment. And I was like, that makes so much sense because more than anything, that’s how I feel, is I need to have an emotional connection to somebody to have any kind of other feelings. And so that helped me a lot actually. Understanding myself as demisexual helped me more than understanding myself as pansexual.

JEN: And how was your husband with this journey? You’re exploring yourself and finding this stuff and is he like, “Go”? Or was he kind of like, “Whoa, we’re married. Put this back in the bottle.”

MONICA: Yeah. He said that he was always scared that someday I would realize that I’m a lesbian and leave him. He was not the keenest on me finding these new labels for myself.

JEN: How was he about Asha exploring labels? Was that different because he wasn’t married to her?

MONICA: Yeah. He was really good about Asha being gay, if I remember correctly. He had a harder time with – so then my daughter came out as trans soon after that.

JEN: And how old was she when she came out as trans?

MONICA: Well, she came out as nonbinary first at 11.

ASHA: She came out as nonbinary in October of 2020 which she was, 10, 11.

JEN: All right. So Asha’s the one with the memory for dates.

MONICA: Clearly. So she was 11 when she said she was nonbinary. And then we started, what did we do when she said she was nonbinary? Did she use they pronouns?

ASHA: She used they/them then she/they.

MONICA: Okay. So she started with they/them pronouns. And that was when I really started understanding nonbinary. I wasn’t something that I really understood until my second child came out. And that was actually much harder for me to grasp than anything to do with sexuality.

ASHA: It’s like you guys grew up with – dad was like, “I mean I have plenty of gay coworkers.”

MONICA: Yeah. And by, at least, by this age, more people in our lives had come out as gay. But we really didn’t know any transgender people. I think I knew one. And I feel like my understanding of what it means to be transgender, binary transgender, was so little. And then understanding nonbinary on top of that was a lot of work. So my approach to these things is always just to have my kids keep teaching me until I get it. And that’s what they did.

JEN: So I was actually going to ask about that. Obviously there’s very clear and open communication with the two of you. And we’ll see even more of that, I think, when we start talking about your book. But, how did you get to this point? Asha, how do you bring these things up with your mom? And Monica, how do you get your kids to talk to you like this?

ASHA: My mom, there has never been one point in my entire life when my mom has judged a life decision or a personality trait of mine. I think, from what you’ve described, you’ve embraced completely radically nonjudgmental parenting.

MONICA: Well, I don’t judge my friends either. I just don’t like judgements because there’s so much about each person’s experience that only they will ever understand about themselves.

ASHA: And also, I knew that my mom, she would keep my secrets. She wouldn’t rant about me to her friends. Even when I was little, at least from what I’m told, she would never complain about me. Plenty of parents are like, “My kid’s such a nightmare right now.” My mom would never ever tell people that. And I could pick up on that because I was always an eavesdropper. I’ve always been an eavesdropper. And so I could hear my mom just talking positive about me over and over and over again. And I was like, My mom just loves me.

MONICA: That feels so good to me.

JEN: So you just genuinely felt like every crazy idea you tossed at your mom would not impact your relationship at all?

ASHA: Yeah. I felt like I could say something like, “Oh, I’m going to, like, I don't know. . .

JEN: “I’ve decided to eat puppies.”

ASHA: And that would be out of character for me. I’m a dog person. If I’d said that, my mom would’ve said, “Oh, can we sit down and talk about that? I want to understand this better.” She wouldn’t've been, she would’ve not said something like, “Oh, that’s wrong. You’re just not thinking.”

MONICA: I’d probably be like, “You want to what?”

JEN: I picked the most extreme example I could think of, the most out of the box thing I could think of.

MONICA: I love hearing that from Asha. That feels so validating and good as a mom. But I think that’s pretty accurate. I didn’t ever like to put down my kids. If I had a genuine struggle, I would ask for advice. I might ask my sister, “This is what’s going on with Asha, and I don’t really know what to do and do you have any advice for me?” But I wouldn’t’ complain about it. There’s a different tone and feeling, I feel like, when you just complain about your kids. And so I definitely never did that. I think I’m neurodivergent myself. So I don’t really follow social norms. And one of them is that “just sit around and complain about your kids” thing when they’re little. And I never liked it. And I know I don’t like to be judged. And so, why would I judge my kids? I kind of treated them much more like equals than I think most people do. From the time they were very little, I would have discussions with them as if they could understand a lot more than their age. And generally, they could. And so I think it’s a reciprocal thing because I was doing that for Asha and Asha was also open to discussing things with me before making decisions for herself.

JEN: So what about advice? Maybe, if there’s another parent listening who did not do that so well, maybe that ship has sort of sailed and they’ve been complaining and doing a lot of judging and they need to make a big switch. Do you have advice? You have these years of professional experience. What can people do to change it, to mix it up? Or the kid, Asha, what can the kid do to get your parent to stop judging you and just hear you?

MONICA: Well, from the parents’ perspective, I think you can always change how you talk about your kids. That is something that, even no matter what you’ve done, whatever damage you’ve done, you can change how you talk about your kids. And kids are very, very hyper aware of how you talk about them. So it makes an impact. Just having a different attitude with other people about how you talk about your kids with your partner, with your other kids, just not putting down your kids or judging them or complaining about them. And then I think the other thing is go straight to the kid and apologize. I will apologize to my kids if I wrong them. And I think a lot of people don’t do that because they think, you know, they’re the parent, they shouldn’t be apologizing to their kid. But if I was in the position, I would go to the child and say, “Look, I know that we haven’t gotten along the best and I’ve been judgmental and I don’t want to be judgmental anymore. And so I’m going to try my best to change how I treat you.” And then I think that would have a big impact on a child, just hearing those words from a parent.

ASHA: And then from a kid’s perspective. I know one of the worst feelings as a kid is being talked over or interrupted. And so I know that, at least from my friends who have more judgmental parents, what they say is, “I try to talk to my parents but they just interrupt me or talk over me and then it makes me not want to be open.” I mean, it’s not just the parents, it’s like with anyone. If I’m trying to open up and talk, like I’m just starting to open up and someone goes in with their own opinion and I’m talking, then I don’t want to talk anymore, or open up.  I think, a big way, if your parents are the sort to talk over you or be quick to judge what you’re saying before letting you finish, one big piece of advice I have is to write a letter and say, “Hey, I’m writing this letter to you because I find it easier to write this down. I want to clearly articulate my thoughts.”

JEN: That is brilliant advice.

MONICA: And I often tell people who are nervous about talking to their parents to do the same. This is the advice Asha and I have given a lot of people because it allows for two things. It allows the person to say everything they need to say, uninterrupted. And then it also allows the receiver to have their gut reaction emotions away from the child. And then pull themselves together and have a different reaction for the child. Just basically gives processing time and I think that’s really important.

JEN: We say that a lot to kids who are coming out around our house. Remember the first reaction isn’t always the real reaction. The first reaction, making space for that is awesome. Talk to me really fast before I move on about the rest of your family. There’s other kids. We’ve talked a little bit about the husband. How do they feed, because you guys have a pretty charismatic dynamic between the two of you. How does everyone else fit into that?

MONICA: So I am very close to all of my kids. That’s just who I try to be. And so I have Asha is my firstborn. And Asha made it easy to parent her. I don’t think I ever had to discipline Asha, even as a child because Asha was always so responsible and so communicative. Asha’s giving me a look because grounded Asha about a week before Asha finished high school, just so that I could say I grounded Asha once.

JEN: Let’s try it out. Here’s something we haven’t tried before. . .

MONICA: And then Summer is my next child. So Summer is 15. And she’s the one that she came out as nonbinary and then she told us when she was 13 that she was transgender. And she was terrified to tell us that one. That was way different than coming out as gay in any way. I could see the complete terror. And she took a long time to tell us. She knew that she wanted to tell us and then took months before she worked up the courage. And so there’s things we could talk about there about transitioning that I think would be helpful. But then the next child is Leo and Leo is 11 and uses they/them pronouns and sometimes they/he pronouns. Leo is gender fluid. And that’s been new learning for me. Every child is new learning for me because gender fluid was something that I understood in abstract. But to actually see somebody live a gender fluid life has been really interesting. And then I actually have kind of a bonus child. I have a child who has her own parents and who had a really traumatic childhood and needed a safe home, a safe place and kind of came into our lives at, when Asha was 14, I guess, at 16.

ASHA: Yeah.

MONICA: And so this child’s older than the rest but actually in many ways younger because having such a traumatic childhood you have to kind of go back and reparent the child all the way from the young years and bring them back up to where they are at in terms of age. And so Mars lives with us and treats me like a parent but has her own other parents as well.

JEN: Okay. And do you have passion projects with all of them like this? Are you writing six books right now?

MONICA: I’m writing another book. And the book that I’m writing is about autism. So they’re all included in it.

JEN: Are they all helping to write it?

MONICA: Well, they’re all giving me stories to put in it to make the book more personal. And I’m having everybody read it because I feel like that’s four different autistic experiences and maybe five. I don’t know. I’m actually getting assessed right now for autism myself. And so it gives it authenticity but also it kind of checks me in case I say anything that’s going to offend anybody or feel wrong to somebody’s lived experience. It gives me a good variety of readers. So they’re all going to help read it. They’re all getting me stories for it. And so I have that. I didn’t feel like anybody else could handle the pressure of being on social media because of their own fragility with mental health.

JEN: It’s like the wild west out there.

MONICA: Yeah. Asha could handle the fact that we would get horribly trolled and bullied in our comments. And some people would say hateful things. And once in a while it would get to Asha, but most of the time, it wouldn’t. But I can’t see Summer or Leo or Mars handling the hate that comes your way when you’re social.

ASHA: We tried. They wanted to.

MONICA: Oh, they wanted to, yeah. For a little while, we did include them.

ASHA: They wanted to be included, they got so much hate and it just made them both so sad, like really, deeply, hurt their mental health.

JEN: Well, if anyone who’s listening who’s interested, both Monica and Asha are very open and interested in education. So if you tap into their TikTok account, you’ll find contact about chronic illness, eating disorders, neurodivergence, queerness, parenting and actually just a lot of fun. Is that how you are in real life?

MONICA: Yeah.

JEN: You’re kind of just a little bit goofy, just in general, with each other.

MONICA: I think we heavily relate to the Gilmore girls, to Loralie and Rory.

ASHA: People come into our house and say that our entire family is – like they could just sit and watch our family interact and feel good and be amused.

MONICA: They call our family a sitcom. They’ll literally come and sit on our kitchen island and just watch the chaos happen around them and just sit back and enjoy the show. I mean, if you can imagine an entire family of neurodivergent people who are all very loving and caring with each other. It’s just a lot of teasing and a lot of everything. But, yeah, it’s a great dynamic. And that’s pretty much the dynamic we have across our household.

JEN: You guys have been busy since COVID. A lot of us it turned down during COVID. And the last four years, you guys have created a non-profit, you’ve published a book, you’ve launched this presence on social media, you have a podcast. Talk to me about how all of that came into fruition?

MONICA: I got interested in TikTok just because I love knowing what the kids are doing. And that’s one of the ways that I stay close to my kids is I just throw myself into their world a lot. People tease me and say I act like a teenager because I really am going to do whatever the kids are doing so that I understand them better. So I saw them all on TikTok and the pandemic hit. And I was like, “I’ve got this free time, let me get on TikTok and see if I can use it as a teaching tool.” And I had so many failed accounts. So many attempts to get on TikTok that didn’t go anywhere. And then I’d delete the account and then I’d lay on my floor for a day and say, “This is not working out. And I don’t know what to do or how to make this happen.” And then I would pick myself up the next day and try again. And it occurred to me at some point to have Asha join me on the TikToks because I saw somebody else do a two-person TikTok account and it was really engaging. And so Asha joined me. And we didn’t really know what niche we would end up in. We just got on there as this mother/daughter dynamic. And people loved how we talk to each other, just like our openness with each other and the way that we talk about all kinds of topics. And they loved that we were Indian and willing to be open to ideas of sexuality and gender. And what eventually ended up happening is we definitely fell into that niche of the queer TikTok niche. And a lot of people asked us for more. So we would go on live and we would have a lot of people join our lives. And they would say, “You guys are amazing and are building this community on TikTok, but we want a full community. Like we want something that we can throw ourselves into more.” And I think what I realized is that because of the pandemic, all of these people who didn’t feel safe in their homes were suddenly stuck at home and they needed an escape and they couldn’t. So there are so many people who are trans or who are gay and who are in unaccepting households. And they were used to just leaving home and finding somewhere else to be safe, you know, a friend's house or wherever. And during that first part of the pandemic, they couldn’t do that. And so they were stuck at home and feeling very unsafe and needing an escape. And so Asha and I built a Discord community, an online community. And some people just lived there. I swear they spent like every minute there that they were awake and called that their home, their real home.

ASHA: It was, especially in the earlier stages, it was really just like a community of friends, a community of online friends. And it was so nice. We weren’t distanced from it. We were the opposite of distanced from it. A lot of my friends moved away during the pandemic. All of my friends moved away during the pandemic and so I lost touch with them. And it was hard to make new friends when I saw people as boxes on a screen on half a screen while the other half of the screen was video games. Because I was not good at paying attention online. And so these were my friends for the . . .

MONICA: These became each other’s closest people.

ASHA: I knew them all by name. It was like, yeah.

MONICA: And what I had been dedicated to from the beginning was that whatever spaces we create will feel like safe spaces in which people don’t worry about being trolled, in which they can be themselves. And so I actually had to set up the Discord server very carefully because there’s a lot of hate that happens across Discord, across these online communities where people come in and raid them and they just post horrible homophobic and transphobic comments and images and they just destroy your server by doing that. And so we made it really difficult to get in so the people who got in were the ones that really, really wanted to, the people who really cared.

ASHA: It was a whole long process. It was like a form.

MONICA: So we made it a safe space. And that lasted for a while. I started our nonprofit because we needed to fund some things. For example, somebody to help us watch the server 24/7. And so we started the nonprofit there. And it also just kind of helped us focus in terms of, these are the education projects that we want to take on and put them all into one location and one place. And then we got asked to write the book. So we started our podcast and somebody discovered the podcast and was like, “You would be the perfect people to write this book that we’re looking for which an LGBTQ inclusive sex ed book.” And so that one, somebody approached us and asked us to write and I said, “Yeah. Absolutely. We’d love to write that.”

JEN: So I want to make sure we take just a couple of minutes to dive into the book. Now that I’ve dissected your entire lives. A really interesting thing I think about it is it’s kind of a questioning format, like questions and answers. But you’ve infused a lot of sweet anecdotes that normalize how awkward puberty and dating and things are. I love the way you’ve turned away from this unrealistic version of dating that exists in the media. But I think the thing about this book that’s kind of unique or special is that it’s written with the sorts of questions that teenagers have. These are teenager-based questions. Some of the adult’s questions, I was reading through going, “Oh, yeah. I did worry about that.” Or, “That is something I thought about when I was 15.” But, sometimes when we get old we think about different questions than teenagers think about. So I was impressed with that approach. Talk to me, just for like a minute, about where you found these questions.

MONICA: So we actually, when we decided to write this book, we put an anonymous question box out there on our website. And we talked about it on our TikToks and in our Discord community. And we asked for people to leave questions. So this is actually when I was teaching sex ed way back when, when I was teaching in the physical classroom. We always had an anonymous question box because it’s so difficult for people to ask these questions face to face and put their name to them. And so I liked that concept. So I put an anonymous question box online and people could ask whatever they wanted and I wouldn’t know who asked it from all around the world. And we have over 100,000 followers on TikTok. So we got a lot of questions. And we answered – what I promised people is that every single question that is asked in our anonymous question box, I will answer in this book. And so I answered as many as I could in the writing. And then the ones that didn’t naturally flow with the writing, we put as a question and answer format. And we answered over a thousand questions that came in through this anonymous question box. And I loved the questions because they were coming from actual teenagers. So, like you said, they’re the things that teens actually worry about and think about.

JEN: So I’m hoping each of you will take a minute and talk to me about what the most important parts of the book are. If somebody decides not to read the book, they’re not going to buy the book, what do you hope that they’ll learn, the essential information.

ASHA: One important thing, so a large section of the book is about transgender, like about being transgender. And I think one of the most important take-aways from the book, especially with today's political climate with a lot of legislation being [inaudible] against trans health care, is that dysphoria is something that transgender people experience. It’s like their body does not match their brain and their internal feelings. And their expression of their gender doesn’t, and their physical characteristics of their sex does not match the way they feel inside. And I think the most important takeaway from this book is that that dysphoria is life threatening and it is so harmful and it is causing kids to die. It is really deeply harmful and that trans health care is so important because it can remedy that.

MONICA: A lot of people struggle with gender affirming care because they rightfully say, “Well, these kids' brains aren’t even fully developed. How could they be making these choices that might impact their life?” But the counterpoint to that is: How do we keep them alive? And so that is tough. It’s a tough choice that every parent of a transgender kid goes through. And so we talk a lot about that. I would say, from my perspective, just how incredibly important it is to be accessible and nonjudgmental as the adult in your child’s life because you want them to have trusted adults. You want them to have people that they can go to so they’re not just going to random places on the internet or getting all their answers from friends. You want them to have a safe space in you. And so a lot of the book just normalizes how many crazy different forms of gender expression, for example, people might go through. And just not judging your kids so harshly for that identity exploration they’re going through, being there for them.

JEN: When you were writing the book, were you kind of picturing teenagers who were gifted the book from their parents? Are you writing to kids? Are you hoping parents will read the book and teach the information to their kid? What kind of was your target demographic?

MONICA: Yeah, definitely teenagers themselves could be the ones reading the book. It’s not a book that a parent has to read and explain it to their child. It’s a book that a child could read themselves, a tween or a teen, an older child. That’s who we were picturing. We were picturing that parents would buy this book and give it to their teenager to read.

JEN: Okay.

MONICA: But, what I’m finding, is parents themselves are reading it because they want to understand what’s going on in their kids' lives. And healthcare professionals and teachers and all of these other people who want to get more up-to-date on gender terminology are reading the book because everything that they learned was outdated now and they want to understand their students, or the people who are coming through their offices as doctors and nurses. So that’s really neat.

JEN: We’ve had a couple of episodes on the topic of the surge of book bans. Is that kind of your goal at this point? Are you hoping to get banned from all the libraries?

ASHA: Yeah. That’s one of the first things mom said, “If this book gets banned, then it’s successful.”

MONICA: Yeah. We’ll know we were successful.

JEN: You know you did it right, because you’re talking about the things that nobody else is talking about, but information that is needed.

MONICA: Yeah. We’re waiting to get banned by a couple of states out there.

JEN: Okay. I flipped through your book and it would be definitely banned here. It would be on the list if they were working on that.

MONICA: But it’s actually all written from a very educational perspective. So it’s sad to me that books like this get banned because sex ed doesn’t even exist in so many states and so many classrooms. And then the sex ed that does exist, even here in the Bay area, everybody just learned the basic heteronormative sex ed and not much more. So, if you’re a lesbian sitting there listening to everything about safe sex with a male and woman, it’s not really that helpful for you.

JEN: And I can’t let you leave before I make you speak to my most passionate topics in the world of sex education. And that’s consent and safety.

ASHA: Yes.

MONICA: Yes.

JEN: What sort of stuff do you have, both of you, that you want to emphasize for our listeners about consent and safety?

ASHA: I think that there’s plenty of great acronyms out there for consent. But I think something that’s super important to teach your kids and teach your kids from a young age, is that their body is their own. Nobody else should be able to – obviously there’s cases where with a young child you need to pick them up and take them somewhere to make them safe. But generally, so their body is their own. Nobody else should be able to touch it without them being comfortable with it. Relatives shouldn’t be able to kiss them on the cheek and then pinch their cheeks if the kid is really uncomfortable with that. You should want everything.

MONICA: We don’t force our kids to hug people, even their grandparents and things if they’re not feeling it at that moment. And we explained to them, my parents, instead why. But I would say also the acronym we use in the book is the one from Planned Parenthood. It's FRIES: Consent has to be Freely given, Reversible, Informed, Enthusiastic and Specific. And we talk a lot about those in our book. And we break it down for the teenage audience. Like, “How do I actually do that and have it not kill the mood. So how do I actually ask for consent without stopping everything that’s happening and making it less romantic?” and “How do I say no?” and those kinds of things. And “What should l do if I don’t feel like I gave consent?” So we talk about all of that in our book. But what’s really telling is the questions that came in from teenagers around the topic of consent, about relatives that were being inappropriate with them. About being drunk and having sex and not feeling like they really gave consent but it was their boyfriend. Things like that. So I would say that. And I always tell parents of boys, please, please, please teach your boys about consent just as much as you teach your girls about how to properly ask for consent and not accidentally end up taking advantage of somebody because you haven’t asked properly.

JEN: I love all of this. You’re both delightful. It’s been such a joy to talk to you today. Our listeners did not learn very much about sex. But they know where to go.

MONICA: Yes.

JEN: They know where to go now. And we will link to your book, to your website, to your podcast, all of those things in the show notes for people who are interested. Thank you so much, both, for joining us in the den.

ASHA: Thank you for having us.

MONICA: Yeah. Thank you. It was fun.

ASHA: I really enjoyed that.

JEN: Thanks for joining us here In the Den. If you enjoyed this episode, please tell your friends, and take a minute to leave a positive rating and review wherever you listen. Good reviews make us more visible and help us reach more folks who could benefit from listening. And if you’d like to help Mama Dragons in our mission to support, educate, and empower the parents of LGBTQ children, please donate at mamadragons.org or click the donate link in the show notes. For more information on Mama Dragons and the podcast, you can follow us on Instagram or Facebook or visit our website at mamadragons.org.