CAHMS/SEN workshop worries. (TW)

The capturing of CAHMS has put me off contacting them for ds. The last thing he needs is someone suggesting life would be easier if he were a girl

And that's such a shame. When DS was referred to CAMHS ten(!) years ago, one of the many things in his referral was that he had expressed a wish that he was a girl, wrote stories in which he featured as a girl with long flowing hair, danced in long silky skirts at home, and was terrified to go through puberty and grow a beard.

The counsellor listened to him and said to us, 'He doesn't have a gender identity problem. He has a school bullying problem.' And they were absolutely right. He 'wished he was a girl' so that he could be himself, as in do the things he liked without being picked on or punched or have drinks thrown at him for it.

He changed schools, not gender.

It frankly horrifies me that so few years later, he might have been seen as a classic case of gender dysphoria, with no one allowed to suggest anything else.

Definitely a lot of brain power @crunchermuncher !

It was always my intention to use our family's experience (and my brain power) to help others who may find themselves in a similar position and this thread has given me an opportunity to explore that further.

@BreadMeUp I've been considering starting a new thread so that I don't take over from your original purpose but on balance, I think this belongs with the conversation that you opened up. I hope you don't mind.

To that end, I'd like to share an article that I wrote a few months ago which gives a little bit more information about our experience. In particular, it explores what happened when I challenged CAMHS and was able to find a pathway through it all, ultimately working alongside them after what initially seemed like a impassable deadlock. The school (and EHCP) side of things is covered in pretty minimal detail, but at the time I wrote it there was no media focus in this area at all. Hence the primary focus of the article being mental health care. Thanks to Miriam Cates in particular (in addition to the sustained work of Safe Schools Alliance and Transgender Trend), the focus on schools is changing and the impact of RHSE lesson content and social contagion among classmates and friendship groups is becoming more widely recognised.

To be clear: I absolutely value the rights of any person to have a belief in the concept of gender identity and to modify their body to support that belief, should this be the best approach for them. I also believe that the distress caused by gender dysphoria and gender incongruence is real. However, I believe that autistic adolescent girls (amongst others) are particularly vulnerable to forming a fixed opinion about a treatment path that, in the vast majority of cases, is not appropriate for them. Furthermore, that this inappropriate treatment path is supported by our current health care system and underpinned as valid by the education system. For this reason, I am speaking out.
Published article

Well done OP and bonfirelady, I can only imagine how much brainpower and emotional energy this has taken to fight at the same time as trying to get the help your kids need, which can be a nightmare in itself.

The capturing of CAHMS has put me off contacting them for ds. The last thing he needs is someone suggesting life would be easier if he were a girl 🙄

Reading the excellent Time to Think by Hannah Barnes has shocked me at how deep the ideology has seeped into child mental health services, and how it has turned into an additional hurdle for vulnerable young people to negotiate, rather than just one option to consider as a possible diagnosis. It would make me very wary and carefully check out any help he may access.

To OP, Are you going to name and shame the charity and workshop they are doing?

I wasn’t interested in sex or relationships. I wasn’t interested in make up or hair. Or socialising, or drinking. If I could have found a label to express how different I felt and that conventional standards didn’t apply to me, I would have grabbed it with both hands.

@Jellycats4life I think you've captured the essence of what many autistic girls would say perfectly here. And all it really takes at this point is for someone to ask "what pronouns do you use?" and the door to a world of opting out of being a girl/adult is opened.

And @MagicSpring it sounds like you would have been in a similar position.

One thing that I found in my research added even more weight to the idea of vulnerability when it comes to autistic girls being drawn to the idea that they may be in the wrong body. Although the Cass Review states that more than one third of cases in the Tavistock also had autism, two of the clinicians there submitted a research paper which estimated that 48% of the referrals there were autistic. This is because many of those who showed autistic traits did not have an autism diagnosis - and it is a known fact supported by evidence that autistic girls tend to be diagnosed much later in life than boys.

Here is a link to the research paper

Thanks — interesting!

What made you decide to find out, Jellycats? And has it been helpful?

So many reasons @MagicSpring

I felt that I sort of owed it to my children to get diagnosed, primarily so I can be a better parent to them. So I can joke with my daughter about how bad we are at auditory processing, and sympathise with my son when it comes to hating dancing and parties.

I’m being glib but it goes so much deeper than that. I just need to be able to say to them both that I know how they feel as autistic kids, because I’m autistic too and felt the same, but unlike them I didn’t even know it at the time.

But I also did it for myself. I’d known in my gut I was autistic for years but I needed the closure of an official diagnosis. It’s really helped me to reframe my entire life. I had a lot of self-loathing to shrug off (for being shit at friendships and socialising, for being nerdy and weird, never quite fitting in anywhere) and it’s really helped me to offload a lot of emotional baggage.

I spent my adolescence baffled by femininity and frequently being told that I should have been born a boy (this was at an all girls’ school). Glad no one took it seriously.

Given that I was selectively mute at school and that two of my own children are autistic (as in, early childhood diagnosis and special ed unit, rather than internet self-ID-with-added-manga), I wouldn’t be too surprised to find I’m ND. But I’ve never put it to the test. What made you decide to find out, Jellycats? And has it been helpful?

Thanks for your advice @BonfireLady

On the plus side I’ve been solidly gender critical for the past five years or so, so understand the ideology pretty well. I’ve also recently got my own autism diagnosis to match my children, so I feel like I understand the autistic teen experience pretty well too!

That’s why I’m so scared - I understand perfectly well what sucks autistic girls in. If this ideology had been around when I was a teen, I would have been non-binary, no doubt about it. As @MagicSpring says, I didn’t want to be an adult. I wasn’t interested in sex or relationships. I wasn’t interested in make up or hair. Or socialising, or drinking. If I could have found a label to express how different I felt and that conventional standards didn’t apply to me, I would have grabbed it with both hands.

assumption that autistic girls who are experiencing this distress are trying to communicate that they don't want to be girls

I think they're often trying to communicate that they don't yet want to be adults.

*my own thoughts on gender identity

My suggestion would be to get ahead of it and do some research in to autism and gender identity specifically (the link I've put above from Transgender Trend is where I started), then think about what you know already about autism.

My approach was to focus on my daughter's distress at her changing body as it was happening. I was totally unaware of gender identity when she first came and asked us for puberty blockers so it was an intense period of research to say the least. In parallel, I explored the LGBTQ+ world through discussion with some fantastic people from the LGBTQ+ community. Although I came to realise that I didn't share the same beliefs, I still value the conversations that I had and listening to their thoughts.

When it came to conversations with my daughter, all I said about gender identity was that I was learning about it all. We discussed a few aspects of it but our conversation naturally centred itself instead on her changing body. By contrast, @BreadMeUp shared above about a direct conversation which was really successful.

Either way I'd say preparation is key. Given the prevalence in teenage girls' conversations, I'd say it's a "when" not "if". Although interestingly, I've seen a few indications that it might be waning as a topic. That said, I should imagine the autistic population will hang on to it for longer.

It took me so long to understand my own on gender identity. Forums like this helped a lot too.

As a mum of an autistic girl entering secondary school this year, this absolutely terrifies me. I already know she doesn’t feel “like the other girls” and sensory issues means she prefers loose, comfortable clothing. I have tried to casually speak to her about gender ideology but am nervous about saying the wrong thing. Thankfully she is blissfully unaware of the concept of kids identifying as different genders, but that’s going to change.

Thank you ❤️

Yes absolutely, I agree re the sensory impact.

I remember from both literature and a parenting course a one liner that "autistic girls can experience puberty as trauma". It went on to talk about issues with change (the changing body) and sensory difficulties.

It feels like this knowledge has been somewhat lost or substituted with a working assumption that autistic girls who are experiencing this distress are trying to communicate that they don't want to be girls.

I would love to say that I'm shocked that a mental health professional asked your daughter if she felt like a boy. It comes from a well meaning place but is a massive conflation of two things that should never automatically be put together.

I would like to think that the body of research will grow in the co-morbiditity of autism and gender dysphoria but at the moment it's still relatively small.
Transgender Trend has a great set of references of the available research at the back of its Autism and Gender Identity guide:

https://www.transgendertrend.com/product/autism-gender-identity/

@BonfireLady
Your thinking about this issue is so fair and enquiring, but clear and logical at the same time. I think the safeguarding guidance you have thought out for your child, and so bravely taken on the professionals about, is one of the most admirable examples of helping your child in a difficult world that I have ever seen.

@BonfireLady what you have said is brilliant and im just bookmarking to be able to refer back to what you have done. I'm a Foster carer and you never know when I'll need it.

I also think there is a sensory thing with girls with autism. My autistic daughter wears boys clothes because she can't bear the feel of girls clothes, which is the reason why many autistic girls also wear short hairstyles.

The problem is that schools/ camhs look at kids like my daughter in their boys clothes and think this must be a 'gender identity thing'. My daughter was actually asked by CAMHs if she felt like a boy. Add that on to peer pressure and trans being cool and it's a perfect storm for vulnerable kids.

In our local SEN Support group EVERY autistic girl bar my daughter identifies as trans.

I suspect, but don't know, that there has been a bit of a vested interest in CAMHs pinning anxiety and sensory issues on gender ID. If they can signpost to gender services they are freeing up some pretty lengthy waitlists. But maybe I'm just being cynical.

@dimorphism I totally get your point about the language and how people talk about "preferred pronouns".

For me it simply comes down to whether I believe in the concept of an inate gender identity or not. As I don't, the question has no meaning for me. So if anyone were to ask me directly, my answer would be "I don't know". It hasn't happened yet but that's what I've prepared in advance as an answer.

My concern centres around everyone who is vulnerable when they hear that question. It effectively asks "would you like to opt out of the gender/sex I can see that you are?" (I'm using gender/sex as the same thing there deliberately because the conflation is already there in the question and the implied idea that gender is real).

And thank you to the people who said some lovely comments above.

It's such a difficult journey to navigate.
And yes, absolutely @MagicSpring , autistic children are particularly prevalent in the current trans-identified population. One theory that I've heard is that it becomes an obsession/passion, similar to other autistic obsessions. Interestingly from what I've read early on in our journey of autism understanding, well before I was aware of gender identity, girls' obsessions are more likely to be concepts (e.g. Greta Thunberg and the environment) whereas boys' obsessions are more likely to be tangible things (e.g. collecting a particular toy or remembering the names of types of cars). Gender identity is the perfect fit for a concept to obsess over, particularly if a girl is finding her changing body distressing and already feels androgenous.

This is fantastic news @BreadMeUp

It's such a minefield of a topic and, as per my comments above, we've not actually explored gender identity together because our conversation took us in a different direction. It's so great to hear that you and she were able to explore this directly together.

But yes, writing to the school absolutely sounds like the best approach. Belt and braces, particularly given the vulnerability of autistic children.

It saddens me to hear that a teacher automatically asked her if she was happy with female pronouns just because of the nickname. That is exactly what happens in our experience too, which is what prompted me to write the safeguarding document in the first place.

Interestingly, my daughter also said "because I like it" when a mental health professional (who had agreed to the principles in the document but was unable to sign it, due to their protocols - we discussed and agreed the approach in advance before I said yes to the appointment) asked her why she had chosen her nickname without the pronouns question. Nothing about gender identity at all.

'I don't see any reason to discuss anything lgbt related because it has nothing to do with SEND. Which means they likely won't bring it up.'

0Oo, I do think you may be being naive. DH, initially cynical, has taking to bringing me examples of his colleagues' trans-kids, accompanied by 'Yes, guess what, it's the autistic one/the one with ADHD'.

There's a correlation between SEND and a tendency to identify as a different gender, probably because adolescence is even more baffling than usual if you are already different.

I really don't understand why it's ok to demand that those around you totally upend the rules of English. It's exclusionary to non native English speakers (and anyone who follows the rules of grammar).

Dyslexics don't get to demand that everyone do away with punctuation because they find it difficult - and frankly that seems like a more reasonable demand than 'preferred pronouns'. What if other people don't prefer them.

Did they explain what this had to do with SEND? If anything at all?