How do you support other siblings when a teen decides they are trans

Saltysandysea, I have been wondering whether some of the methods which have been used historically to extricate people could help here

Re finding therapists that don't jump straight to affirmation, there's the Thoughtful Therapists network that aims for neutral exploratory therapy. I don't know if any of them have specific expertise in sibling support.

Oh my god, that's so painful 💔@MumOfYoungTransAdult I'm so sorry.

We all pussyfoot around talk about childhood around my trans child because we're so afraid of saying the wrong thing and upsetting "him". Which of course is distressing to my DD2, their twin, it's her childhood too.

Not only is my trans child denying reality, they are denying the rest of the family our history. It's similar to infidelity, betrayal, because you're made to doubt the past and the version you knew is taken away from you.

I was also shocked recently when a new acquaintance referred to my "son" 💔 The power of this ideology to enforce such dishonesty and lies!

Absoluetely. We are talking about teenage kids in a lot of cases. Not adults.

There was a lot about pesticides, water pollution, additives etc etc when my brother came out. This was something potentially relevant to my Dad's career.

This is also overlooked - this concept that you were a major contributing factor in what was making them unhappy and not fitting in, even within the family unit.

As a mum you get used to that 🙂 but I hadn't considered what that might do to a brother or sister.

The blame thing, especially when aimed at mothers, is another aspect of the unacknowledged misogyny of this issue. As the parent of a child with ASD/ADHD or anything really, you spend years worrying that you did something wrong - did you have a glass of wine before you knew you were pregnant, were you too old, should you NOT have vaccinated them and all that social media guff directed at you.

So when the ‘born in the wrong body’ thing started and I was told ‘my brain is male but my body is female so you grew me wrong’ [and yes, I was given that spiel some years ago] I flipped. It weaponises all of this.

Fortunately I was able to give her a TedTalk (informed by a neuroscience heavy Psychology degree I took when she was small) explaining that the male/female brain is a load of outdated theoretical bollocks: that changes in the brain during the lifetime occur in response to a huge number of environmental - and latterly hormonal - stimuli and are not because I was a deficient baby incubator. I made it very fucking clear that anything she had read from someone holding a PhD in gender & genetics from the University of TicTok was a steaming pile of crap and would not be entertained in my home, especially if she wanted to continue living in it.

Tense times, but it’s never been raised again… and it marked the point at which I moved from #BeKind and compassionate to expressly non-affirming.

Its also the guilt thats layered on in terms of you being 'to blame' for 'not treating them right' and recognising their 'true authentic self' and that this contributed to the misery they've felt their whole life.

This is also overlooked - this concept that you were a major contributing factor in what was making them unhappy and not fitting in, even within the family unit.

Its the whole process of what Kalalily says here:
I have spent months now searching for signs of a child having been born into the wrong body but there is nothing. We have asked family friends and school friends’ parents if they have seen anything but they haven’t.

For me it was also the worry of what being trans is. Especially since in my case way back in the late 2000s that there was a group of three who lived locally who all transitioned at the same time. Was it social contagion and the social circles I was in? Was it something in the local environment? Was it genetic? And what are the implications of this not just for my brother - but also potentially for me? (I don't live too far away from where I grew up).

What about when I had kids? What did/does this mean?

And actually I don't feel this question really has been resolved. Especially when it seems that neurodiversity seems to be a contributing factor, my own gender questioning and the fact DS now has a diagnosis of ADHD.

The questions being asked throughout this by people in positions of power as so unbeleivably fucked in the head and have lost all sense of whats most crucial.

The prospect of this changing and being in place in the next few years still don't seem any where close. Not with the conversion therapy bill still hanging over this parliamentary session... And CAHMS and mental health services in this country are not going to miraculously turn around in the next 5 years are they?

We've forgotten ethics whilst trying to blabber on about human rights etc. 'Human rights' without an understanding of unpinning ethical practise just becomes a meaningless phrase thrown about without comprehesion of the WHY we do this or that or WHY human rights came about in the first place.

@Kalalily I think that it is a crying shame that many psychologists have distanced themselves from gender, although I fully understand why they would as to do any exploration is considered transphobic. As parents, we have to be the adults in the room but we need help with this.

I listened to Dr Cass on Woman's Hour and she said it's coming but slowly. Maybe too slowly to help our own children. But she said that more mental health professionals are starting to feel more confidence that they can apply the skills and knowledge they have already to children with gender issues and this is part of taking a whole-child approach instead of a gender-only sidetrack. So I have hope.

@DeanElderberry @MumOfYoungTransAdult
This is exactly how I feel. Grief when I look at old photos because my child has rewritten their past. I have spent months now searching for signs of a child having been born into the wrong body but there is nothing. We have asked family friends and school friends’ parents if they have seen anything but they haven’t. Our psychiatrist, who diagnosed autism and PTSD does not believe they are trans. However, my child has self diagnosed. How have we come to a point where it is possible for a young person with autism and trauma to be able to self diagnose and be only able to access medical care which is either affirmative or critical. Where is the holistic care for this group of vulnerable young adults and their families? Some of the siblings in these situations will also be teenagers building their own sense of self in a time of increased and sustained stress and anxiety in the family home. They must also be at risk of poor mental health in the same way that a sibling of someone with anorexia is affected. Although I would argue that it is worse for the sibling of a ROGD youth* because it is not considered an illness and consequently there is no treatment plan.
We all know that the digital footprint of this cohort is toxic but by the time we came to this realisation our children were already young adults There was nothing we could do about it, particularly if they had already left the family home to go to uni.

• Please note, I distinguish between rapid onset gender dysphoria and early childhood gender dysphoria and I believe both groups should be treated very differently.

I think that it is a crying shame that many psychologists have distanced themselves from gender, although I fully understand why they would as to do any exploration is considered transphobic. As parents, we have to be the adults in the room but we need help with this.

I think most of us are suspicious only of people who have posted here but not engaged with the actual point of the thread but, instead, chosen to lecture people they refer to as ‘GC posters’ (and be rude/abusive about them). And also the lurkers who read, scroll, report and don’t post.

Your posts have been really valuable and the reference to underlying significant mental illness rings true for many of us or chimes with our underlying concerns that affirmation means this is missed and our trans IDing relative is failed by not getting the help, and differential diagnosis, that they need - or the right help.

Please continue to share with us. We appreciate your input.

And even grandparents. My in-laws had two grandsons and a granddaughter. They now apparently have three grandsons and need to forget all the history, from birth, of that family dynamic.

That's 'gender', I suppose, in the sense that their experience of interacting with a grandchild shouldn't be much different whether the child is a boy or a girl, but I know they were knocked sideways by the loss.

I was thinking exactly the same. It's worse than bereavement in a way. At least if they had died no one would try to stop you talking about them, having photos of them on display or even so much as mentioning their name. I don't mean to minimise the sibling experience. I realise (now) that it's been much less discussed.

Just wanted to say I'm not someone who has been reporting posts - some wording in a post upthread made me think that perhaps someone thought I was. I prob misunderstood but another post mentioning me has been deleted so the thread has become confusing.

No I don't think anyone thinks it's you.

Of course, and see also trans widows, but a person who has lived for 40 or 50 years has had a lot of time, much of it spent in the wider world, to build their sense of reality, and of self.

A person who has only lived 15 or 20 years, most of it within the family, is even more vulnerable to that damage.

I'm beginning to see why 'frnh not bearing false witness was one of the big rules.

But if I don't feed the cat my posts will get very odd.

And I don't think this necessarily reflects a deepseated belief on DC's part. It's more like the kind of verbal logic DC follows - if I am a woman now then I was a little girl in the past. I associate that kind of verbal logic with DC's autism.

But very difficult for other family members to navigate. We have our own deep feelings about what these words mean.

Just wanted to say I'm not someone who has been reporting posts - some wording in a post upthread made me think that perhaps someone thought I was. I prob misunderstood but another post mentioning me has been deleted so the thread has become confusing.

I have nothing but awed respect for RedToothbrush, for all siblings placed in this disastrous position with no acknowledgement of their own needs, and for the strong and intelligent feminist mothers on this thread.

I do think that because my family difficulties turned in a different direction after just a couple of months (son with psychosis desisted from a delusion that led him to identify as trans and then progressed through years of paranoid schizophrenia) I perhaps shouldn't have engaged here as much as I have. It's just that it has been such a deeply moving thread and I carry intensely traumatic memories of that period. It makes me an Ancient Mariner, who grabs the lapels of potential listeners. I haven't come across any other MN thread where I could even begin to do that.

I only posted initially to mention that psychosis can often be somewhat hidden, especially to family members who have become familiar with a child's differences over a long period, and is therefore worth considering (if only to rapidly dismiss) when there is a sudden trans id. Then I got a bit sucked in, but should have bowed out.

I don't understand at all why the c word is a cause for deletion. People may or may not agree with it but it is clearly a framing that is legitimate to discuss. I also don't think that people posting about their own traumatic experiences should have to police their wording, certainly not to the same extent as may be thought to be required in a thread oriented to debate rather than support.

@DeanElderberry what you say of sibs is equally true of parents who have raised a girl or boy and are expected to lose or even rewrite their own history and life experience.

One unexpected shock was having my DC ask me about something they did "when I was little girl". My DC was born a boy and grew up as a boy with no gender questioning until early adulthood. My experience was parenting a boy.

Anyone looking for elegant writing will note that I used the term 'life experience' too often in that post, but I feel so strongly that people, particularly young people, have a right not to be gaslighted into doubting all their memories and senses and - yes - their whole life experience.

Again, respect and sympathy to all of you going through this.

The thing that struck me was how hard it is for a teenager who has grown up with eg a sister, whose entire childhood life experience was interacting with her - playing, fighting, sharing books, telling stories, comparing experiences - to suddenly be told, no, I'm not your sister, you never had a sister. Is appalling.

Almost worse than losing that sister to death, because at least after bereavement the life experience of that sister's existence is left intact, if wrapped in grief and loss and regret.

But this way leaves the survivor doubting their own whole life experience.

A culture that enforces affirmation of that psychological undermining of a child or teenager is wicked. Schools that enforce affirmation of that are abusive. Survivors need to support each other.

THATS the 'c' word that = deletion?! With all the deletions I thought it was the 'other one
AT people!

I agree with your point about women having access to things that were traditionally labeled as "men's" and vice versa.

The rhetoric that appropriately describes the extent of sexual violence women face would be closer to "many men are rapists and do not face adequate consequences, and women are disproportionately impacted".

"Men are evil rapists" can be a oversimplification tactic employed by those seeking to muddy the waters and dismiss women's safety issues to paint concerned women as man-haters, as in "women think men are evil rapists, they just hate men, I'm a man but not a rapist!"

This point escapes the minds of a lot of boys and younger men, and it appears that some of them turn to overt misogyny and the other (including those seemingly mild-mannered and gravitating towards conventional norms of femininity) disavowal of their biological sex justified by their aversion to conventional norms of masculinity and male-pattern criminality.

In the age of social media in which reactionary misogyny easily propagates, it's increasingly important to point out to them both approaches are harmful; more positive male role models may help in this regard, the ones who understand that women cannot and should not stop raising awareness of the VWG issue worldwide but that doesn't mean men have to hate women.

There is no acknowledgement of the impact or potential distress this may cause on (often younger) siblings, the displacement when a trans sibling assumes their sexual identity and position in the family hierarchy. No compassion even in passing for people who have shared their experiences on this thread as siblings or for the children like my son. Nothing, just a ‘you need to focus on the trans child/help him with his makeup/blah blah’.

This is because if they show compassion, if they acknowledge the harm caused, then they necessarily have to allow for the dysfunctionality of the act of coming out as trans. Instead they have straw-manned: all families have tensions, require compromise, no-one should have to conform to the will of other family members (by not divorcing or providing grandchildren) etc. Ie the trans child/person should be allowed to be themselves without constraint but, simultaneously, their siblings must suck it up and reframe their bigotry/overcome their discomfort.

This. Even children must take second place to the "trans" person.

Adding to the disgust at deleting the cult word and I've wondered how to report it. I actually know quite a lot about cults so the deletions piss me off, including my own where I outlined very clearly the similarities.