Dd ran away to be with trans lover and refuses to return

I agree with PP that throwing out her stuff is the worst idea. You need to be the refuge she can always come back to.

Not at all! I've been watching this thread and thinking of you and your family. I know it's anonymous here, but we care and are wishing you well and want to be supportive. Very happy you shared and I hope it helps.

I have 2 DDs similar ages and i know that deep mother ache when you worry for them and when things aren't going well for them. You love the little wins and good times and dread the worry when things seem to turn.

@Moomoola episode on the Parent’s experience

MumOfYoungTransAdult · Today 14:57
🤞

@ScrollingLeaves Sure - he's applying for sperm freezing through a fertility clinic. The NHS will even pay though I'm not sure if that's the same everywhere . He had to go through several hours of watching information videos and signing consent forms, and the clinic also has to agree he'd be a suitable parent in future. Fertility treatment seems to be very tightly regulated - contrast to gender affirming care

I expect it's less straightforward for girls. And it may not be that simple for DS either because he is already taking hormones, but fingers crossed.

@Moomoola Your DH sounds like he is panicking and trying to force a reaction from your DD. Dumping her stuff would be one of the worst things you could do, the other girl and her parents would see that as evidence you don’t care. I can’t imagine the stress you and DH are going through. Can the 3 of you take a proper holiday at Easter? Go somewhere hot where there will be lots for your DS to do?

Don’t beat yourself up about not taking DS somewhere, you sound so overwhelmed and you are going through a very traumatic time. It’s very hard to get anything else done when your DD’s behavior is so disruptive and putting you in a state of limbo.

Is there anyway you could go to your brother’s on your own for a weekend just to talk to him and get some emotion out away from the family? This experience is horrendous and please don’t beat yourself up when your whole family is in a new country without a map.

Do you listen to “Gender the Wider Lens”? Maybe you are sick to death of gender bollox but your husband in particular might benefit from listening because their stance is therapeutic and therefore calm and rational and not in the polarizing place that most of us find ourselves because of this ideology. genspect.org/widerlens/

MumOfYoungTransAdult · Today 09:51
DS is seriously considering an important mitigation that we've advised. It wont stop his transition but might at least maintain his fertility.

That is interesting, and well done for having managed to get him to listen. Would you be willing to say what it was you advised?

Brilliant post from @CryptoFascistMadameCholet

Are the other family financially supporting your DD? Covering electricity, food etc ...? Are they well off?

Dumping DD’s stuff sounds like a stupid idea to me - remember the push and pull aspects from my posts upthread (new name!) - you’d literally be pushing her into the arms of the other family and giving her no reason to come home (even just coming back to collect bits here and there keeps that invisible thread between home and DD intact).

A gender distressed child (of any age) can destroy a marriage so a) you are not alone in feeling the pressures and b) your husband needs to sort his own shit out.

Big question and not one you need to answer to us, but - do you think it’s possible that your DD has left because of negative undercurrents in her relationship with dad? I think there can be some quite complex things in the father-daughter relationship that mums cannot stage-manage away no matter how hard we try. There doesn’t have to be actual abuse for the relationship to be complex, btw.

I think one of the parents on the LGBT children section might be a dad of a natal daughter - will investigate and see if I’m right and if so, if he has any possible insights or resources that your husband can investigate.

There are dads in the gender skeptical parent groups but the vast majority of members are mothers - I expect that’s the same across parental support groups for all sorts of paediatric and adolescent disorders though (most of my kiddy cancer/hospital parent friends are mums).
Of course, that’s at least partly to do with much bigger societal issues around household labour & paid work so an observation rather than a criticism.

Once upon a time dads expected to hand their daughter over to a pre-vetted young man who had to ask dad’s permission to marry her. There was a literal responsibility contract signed - from Miss to Mrs.
Obvs very few people want to return to the days of women as property of men, at least not rationally, intellectually… but emotionally I suspect there are quite a number of dads who really do struggle with the loss of any say over their daughter’s decision making and autonomy.

(it’s hard for mums too, but we tend to react with worry and internalised blame rather than anger or pushing a DD further away).

your husband needs to wind his neck in a bit - either he’s handed this job to you, in which case he needs to respect your decision making and back you up, or he needs to stop running away and take on more of the emotional labour/research and engagement with other parents & professionals.
He can’t give you all the work and then complain about what you are doing - you aren’t his employee, you are your DC’s mum.

Re: not just staying home and self isolating - I expect you’d be surprised at how many in your friend networks are either going through similar or know other parents who are.
My best friend is a childless man in his early 50s and he’s started to notice loads of his same age friends suddenly talking of NB or transman teens instead of daughters - the sheer numbers in this age group don’t make any sense.

(I think my DD might be the school
year below yours? Mine is current year 12 - there is a big ol’ spike in her cohort that drops away afterwards. Does your DS go to the same school as DD? If so, what does he observe? Perhaps you could talk about the phenomenon without directly talking about your DD)

Oh, and forcing a teen to help with a chore with a promised treat after can be a way to coax them from a bedroom - got any wallpaper to strip? Or maybe some pruning/tidying in the yard? A big pizza as the prize (eat in the restaurant to avoid the box being snaffled away to eat in front of a computer screen).

FWIW I think you are coping admirably and I wish your DH would stop eating into your self confidence and trust your judgement better. Does he do similar to DD?

Your husband isn't accepting his daughter is now 17. He doesn't get to make her decisions for her any more. My son (Scotland) was at university age 17. Your husband sounds a self obsessed pain in the bum. You need to keep the door open for your daughter to return. Rejecting her because she makes poor decisions won't help. Focus more on your son and the stuff you can control. Does your husband have any good qualities?

Honestly, you have a DH problem. It's good he's agreed to go to family therapy but it sounds like he's got a lot of work to do on himself. He sounds quite abusive, tbh.

Maybe go without DS to the first session so that you can tell him what to expect if he comes with you to the next one.

Actually, you were very articulate.

My child is old enough to make his own decisions, however unwise or self destructive. All I can do is be there to support and care for DC, and to advise and to mitigate when DC allows me to. DC is a responsbile adult (well all right he's a bit bonkers too!)

Two images - one for you and one about your husband. What you are doing for DD is throwing out a lifeline to her, which she can grab or not. You can't make her grab it, you're just letting her know it's always there. If she swims away, you throw it again, just so it's always close enough to grab. So if she sinks she can always pull herself back up.

It might be a bit different for your DH. His relationship with DD sounds more difficult, he swings from absent to obsessed, and I guess there's a long history behind that. I think he needs to build a more solid foundation to his relationship with DD. He needs time with his DD, shared, positive. That's what you are already trying to build, but is he? That's the foundation under the building and without that he's not going to achieve anything. The trans stuff is only the roof of the building. Anything he tries to build without that foundation of enjoyable relaxed time spent together will collapse.

And you can't build his foundation for him. Either he does it himself, or it doesn't exist.

I realised that DH and I had let DS drift off from us. DS didn't run away he left home in the usual way of things, but he can be quite emotionally closed and we didn't make enough effort to visit him and keep contact. We only realised when he told us about the decision to transition. So we have to rebuild the connection. Yes DH and I are panicking like fuck about it, and yes it's a strain on our
relationship (I'm GC, DH is more .... um trans positive ... though he's equally horrifed about DS(!)) We are both trying to strengthen the foundations of our relationship with DS, and keep our lifeline out. And apart from the closeness itself, another payoff so far is that DS is seriously considering an important mitigation that we've advised. It wont stop his transition but might at least maintain his fertility.

he says we are being too passive and being loving to DD isn’t working.

Then DH is being impatient and rather foolish. What doe he think "working" would like? DD coming home with her tail between her legs? And is that at all realistic?

It's natural to feel adrift and miserable. We're in uncharted waters. You said you were seeing a counsellor yourself? If you are, then keep going, it's good to have someone who's there just for you. And honestly - you're doing a great job.

DH suggests dumping all our daughters stuff at their flat, to scare the mum ( it’s small) and scare DD. Maybe?

No, I wouldn't. Because how would DD interpret that? "Fuck off then, and live with these people"? Just because DH is upseet and angry, he doesn't get to lash out at DD.

The last thing on earth you want to do is scare DD. She's scared enough already. Her behaviour screams "anxiety" to me. She needs to see home and parents as safe, loving, accepting, calm. Yes I know we have to fake the "calm" bit but that's why a counsellor is great, I don't have one at the moment but in the past I've used counselling as a safe place to fall apart, rage, vent, grieve, say horrible things, knowing it wont hurt anyone else. And came through to find a way forward that helped me and my family.

You must be living your worst nightmare. I think many teens are going through this social contagion of thinking they are opposite sex. It is madness. I don't believe people can change sex. I think they can dress up as opposite sex but many look like drag queens with Adams apples. I'd be texting your dd that her home is waiting for her whenever she wants to come home. I'd not be calling her he or by a boys name as it would be hypocritical. Some people who go through this trans nonsense and later see sense are often critical of parents who called them opposite pronouns and opposite sex name as they say it added to normality of situation if even their parents in agreement. Keep stressing surgery and hormones will affect their whole lives.

If it wasn’t clear, this famous dancer is one of the competitors on the show. She is bound to recognize him. It’s also good for her to see that “Korean man” is an extremely diverse category, not just the carefully developed and chosen androgynous KPop Star.

@Moomoola if your dd is into Korean pop culture, she may be interested to see a famous Korean dancer who was on Single’s Inferno & went viral with a one-on-one dance with a famous KPop female singer (My dd explained this all to me, can’t remember his name or her name). But he wins rounds due to sheer physical strength as well as speed , flexibility etc. So if she is trying to model herself on the androgynous kpop stars, they are extremely talented physically and have tremendous physical stamina (often passing auditions at 14/15 and then intensively training for years before being launched). It’s a highly, highly competitive and stressful world. They sign contracts where they aren’t allowed to date etc too.
I think the male kpop stars that are groomed and manufactured for a teen girl market worldwide have and project an unthreatening masculinity. This Phsyical 100 show has a range of very different male body types, wiry, slim to very muscular but they are NOTHING like the “transman” aesthetic which is a very chronically online phenomenon of a romanticized, very young male, often twinkish masculinity that doesn’t last with age.

Sorry I muddled your brother with DS your DD’s brother.

Brother said if she wants to be a bloke he’d stuff a pillow up her jumper then take her to the footy for a beer and a fart.😀

I must say DS sounds very amusing and witty.

Would it be too late, or wrong, to text DD to say you and DS are just going to visit your brother but won’t interfere with her and X / unless she wants to meet up.

Followed by "let's give it a shot, I bet they have cake". Think Marvin the Paranoid Android - "Don't try to engage my enthusiasm because I haven't got one".

Oh god, I've just realised this is my technique for getting DP to do anything.

Good thing I quite like cake.

As for the visit to your brother - you aren't following DD. You're taking DS to see your bro as planned. Whatever DD does, is up to her.