My Six-Year-Old Added Avril Lavigne to His Playlist and It's Complicated
- Gay Moms Club
- Mar 10
- 3 min read
Updated: 1 day ago
Complicated came on shuffle while I was making my son dinner last week, and before I even registered what song it was, he said, "Can you add this to my playlist?"
He has had an evolving playlist since birth. It’s very important to him. It’s also important to me.
So, I added it. For a moment, as I stood there, I felt sixteen again…a feeling I hadn’t planned for on a Wednesday night.
Back then, we all thought it was a breakup song. A boy-was-fake-at-parties. Now, I don’t think that's actually what it's about.
It's about the exhausting performance of being whoever the room needs you to be. And how simple it sounds to just... not do that.
That's the whole song.
And now, I realize, that's also the entire job of being a parent.
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My wife and I have different parenting styles in exactly one way that matters: she is a natural rule-follower, of her own rules, and I am a "let's think about the spirit of the rule" person. This works fine until it doesn't, which is regularly.
Our son has learned to read the room. He knows which one of us will tolerate a long explanation about Minecraft. He knows who will negotiate where we sit when we eat. He knows who will not. He is six years old and already performing slightly different versions of himself depending on the audience. This is developmentally normal and also sometimes makes me want to sit down on the kitchen floor.
I was sixteen when that song came out, with feelings I had zero vocabulary for. I just knew something about Avril Lavigne felt important in a way I couldn't explain.
The gay community has since done a lot of work on this.
Anyway, here’s my journey with Complicated:
Listening to Complicated at 16:
It was about a boy. Obviously. A boy who acted different around his friends and I deserved better. I did not question this reading at all. I was very busy not questioning things.
Listening to Complicated at 17:
It was about being the kind of cool girl who didn't need to try. Effortless. I tried very hard to seem like I wasn't trying. Did not work. Did not stop trying.
Listening to Complicated at 20:
I was Avril Lavigne in a sorority recruitment skit. Chose it specifically. Thought nothing of it. Looking back, the song was trying to tell me something I wasn't ready to hear. I came out three years later.
Listening to Complicated at 23, freshly out:
I went back through everything from that era with new gay ears and had several realizations I won’t fully get into here. Let's just say the skinny tie was doing a lot of heavy lifting and I had simply not been ready to receive it.
Listening to Complicated at 33, pregnant:
It came on in a coffee shop and I cried a little. Hormones, probably. Also, grief for myself in the slow realization that I had spent my twenties thinking coming out was the finish line… the final room. And now, there was an entirely new room coming, with an entirely new audience, and I had no idea who I was going to be in it.
Now, watching my kid mouth the words from the backseat:
It's about him. It's about the version of him that's going to be sixteen someday, performing whoever he thinks he's supposed to be in whatever room he's standing in. I can’t protect him from that part. Nobody can. You just have to do it and come out the other side knowing yourself a little better.
That's the whole song, I think. It just took me twenty-four years and a lot of different rooms to get there.
You’re never done. Life changes, and you figure it out again. You become a parent and start from scratch, because now there's a person watching you be a person all day, taking notes.
My son is always taking notes.
So, the performance I'm most worried about now isn't his. It's mine. Am I being the same person in every room? Am I showing him what that looks like?
I genuinely don't know, Avril.
JOIN GAY MOMS CLUB
Gay Moms Club is a welcoming online community for LGBTQ+ moms who want real connection, honest conversations, and friendships that fit into real life.
You shouldn’t have to explain your family before you can make a friend.
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