Friends child and gender change!

[Namechangeforthis44]

Don't know if this is the right place to post, but just need some input.
Meeting up with a friend soon, whose child has changed gender. I have no issues with that, live and let live.
BUT
Friend has indicated that we not reminisce about kids childhood as this will trigger her child.
As we have moved away, we only see them every few years, so the one thing we do chat about is their childhood memories.
I think it's unreasonable to tell my kids we can't talk about their memories while we meet up with them.
How do I tackle this?

I have teen children at highschool, work with teens and volunteer with teens. None of them are eye-rolley, and all incredibly understanding, supportive and so much less rude and entitled than their parents.

Like I say, the current crop of teens truly gives me hope for a better future for our country.

I refer to all my friends by their current name, even if I knew them before their first or second (or even third) marriage.

If I know Jane Smith, who used to be married to John Brown, I'd never call her Jane Brown, even if I was talking about an event that happened while she was married to John. To do so would be odd

They should accept that they chose to change.
Not everyone surrounding them and I think it is ignorant to expect you to be careful of what you talk about.
I do not understand why not talking when the best transition is to openly talk about anything and everything seems to be a no-win situation with this.
My friend has no issues talking, laughing, and certainly having an opinion pre transition but I guess that maturity and acceptance.

I'm saddened & shocked by so many of the spiteful & intolerable responses here.

No wonder society is fucked.

I have friends with transgender kids. I love my friends & would only want to support them so of course I would help in any way I could. If that means not saying 'oh well remember when the girls did x or y' & changing that to 'the kids' it's hardly impacting me but it is potentially making things a bit easier for my friend.

I have seen these parents deal with sad, hurting, sekf harming & at times suicidal kids. They're in survival mode as parents & the focus is do what ever is necessary to keep these kids alive & safe. Who the hell am I to trample over all that deliberately because I 'won't be told what to say'.
You don't have to agree with it but surely as a friend you would want to make her life a little bit easier & meet up with her? She's likely been through turmoil with all of it already (& ongoing)

As I said, as a friend I support the people I love not walk away from then when it gets a bit tough.

Are you going to tell your friend this, beforehand? I think you should. Then they can call off the visit, should they wish to do so.

If that means not saying 'oh well remember when the girls did x or y' & changing that to 'the kids' it's hardly impacting me but it is potentially making things a bit easier for my friend.

That's not the same as being asked not to mention the past at all. Of course the kids might say 'remember when we did this ..

@HereComesEverybody the point is that you don't have friends with 'transgender kids'. Even the experts at the Tavistock can't tell which are the tiny minority of confused kids will go on to be trans and which are the vast majority who will desist.

It's perfectly normal for kids to explore their identity as they get older, and it's vital that the adults around them help them to understand that it's ok to be curious. What's not helpful is to lock them into an identity that the vast majority of them will grow out of with love, support and patience.

Read the Cass review. It's not a neutral act to 'affirm' kids. You could be inadvertently pushing them towards a medical pathway that can have disastrous consequences for their health.

I wouldn't be asking my children to entertain this nonsense, and police what they talk about. How old is this child anyway? If very young then this clearly is a very confused child. And I thought this fad was dying out amongst teens? Anyway you could mention it to your children but whatever they speak about then that's not on you and your kids.

How is talking about presumingly positive or at least not negative experiences from the shared past comparable to discussing abusive relationships?
My kids have friends they haven’t seen for several years, of course it’s likely they might mention past events/ shared memories if they meet up again!
Nothing unusual about it. OP is not insisting on spending the whole afternoon talking about the past.

If you care about your friend, you could respect that some topics are off limits for now.

I wouldn't purposely bring my children around that nonsense. Protect their minds FFS.

In what other situation might a friend expect you to erase their previous identity from your mind?
I’m not talking about a request not to mention their previous abusive relationship, a death of a loved one or some other traumatic event, but their whole identity?

There are plenty of instances I could think of where a subject or time period should not be discussed. I have ancestors who were Holocaust victims and have been finding out more about them over recent years. One family member does not want to discuss this and so it is never mentioned to them.

Are you saying the holocaust is in any way shape or form comparable to a child who has had their mind filled with crap and is doing the cool thing socially at the minute? Wow.

Exactly. Are people seriously comparing a presumingly normal childhood with abusive relationships, death and now even the Holocaust?

Where does it stop though?

I've had tragic bereavements but would never expect people not to talk about their family members because mine are no longer here.

By all means don't discuss their specific childhood but they are absolutely free to talk about their own.

This.

I work with children. The amount of power and control over peers and adults alike that a trans identity offers a certain kind of kid is undoubtedly attractive and in the very very short term might even seem to work in their best interests.

In the long term it's not mentally or physically healthy to locate the body as the cause of all unhappiness and it's deeply irresponsible of the parents to suggest to their child that they will be harmed by other people's perception of reality.

It's not sustainable. Adults will teeter on egg shells afraid of losing friendships and jobs but friends and peers will fade away once they're sick of their natural kindness being abused. Yes the young tend to lean towards tolerance, but they also lean towards fun, mutual social experiences and freedom of thought.

Re your specific dilemma OP, you stated a perfectly reasonable value of live and let live. Presumably you offer that to your friend and family in the expectation she offers the same in return. If your friend honours "let live" for you, she will understand that you won't be policing your children's speech. However I suspect your children will have received enough training in school to understand gender id is a dangerous topic. You probably won't need to say anything to them but don't be surprised if they're less than enthusiastic about continued contact.

@heathspeedwell I absolutely do have friends with transgender children. I have not given any indication of ages in my post. In some instances these are kinds who have transitioned years ago & are happy living in their new identity.

In other instances its a more recent transition & in some cases it is immensely traumatic for all involved, including suicide attempts, hospitalisation & a hell of a lot of worry for the parents who ate my friends. In all cases I absolutely do not see it as my role to have any input other than being a supportive safe place for those parents trying to navigate a v tricky situation. Honestly it doesn't matter a fig to me if the transition lasts a year or a life time. It does not personally impact me whatsoever. But the wellbeing & happiness of my friends & by extension their children does. So, when I see a friend struggling I don't go out of my way to shove a differing ideology in their face. Nor do I abandon them or cut them loose because I don't want to be told what to say....

I meet them, message them, listen to them express their core & fundamental worries about the actual survival of their troubled kids & I hope for the very best for them all. And I quietly thank my lucky stars that I am not having to figure out how to deal with it personally..

It's all v well saying all this hard line stuff on line here but really - you'd not accept your own child if they opened up to you about this? You'd stand by armed with your reports as your kid was self harming or attempting suicide due to unhappiness over gender?

I guess I’d ask your children how they feel about it - they may, like you, have not issues with it and be totally down with this stuff, so take it in their stride. But if not, I’d revisit the idea of taking them and just go to see your friend alone. Your friend’s child needs to understand that they can’t control what your kids say/do so if they inadvertently reference a past event and use the wrong name/pronouns, then your friend needs to have a strategy in place to manage that with her child. It’s not your responsibility.

My child trans ID’d at 12, but begun socially desisting recently - 7 years on. We tiptoed around pronouns/names etc, initially at least, but I drew the line at dictating to aunts/grandparents about ‘dear granddaughter/niece’ cards and I refused to hide family photos showing her young/female. I gave birth to and raised a girl, and decided that I would not have my life/our family’s experiences revised or my memories edited.

But this is one afternoon/day for you and your children - and you may find your kids will be okay with it as it’s much discussed and explored at school now. I’d speak to them first.

Tell your children to not talk about this subject and they'll be itching to talk about nothing else.

Not necessarily a bad thing as the best person to explain this is the teen themself. And why can't you talk about such a big thing? Shouldn't this be something that should be spoken about? Or is it more important that your friend has the kudos of a special child?

This. FFS. Why the hell is the mother pandering to this nonsense. Hasn’t she heard of the Cass report? And as for dictating what you can talk about … fuck that.

Most teens I know are GC but are used to trying to use others preferred pronouns and avoiding certain topics to save getting into it. They see kids who have fallen for this ideology as victims, so yes, they’d be empathetic to what they see as a mental health issue.

As to what I’d do about the visit, I’d try to stay off the issue, but no doubt you may end up using the correct sex based pronoun, mentioning something that you ‘shouldn’t’ or using the child’s previous name that you’ve known them by their whole life. It would be easily done. Do you really want to feel on edge by doing something ‘wrong’?

I think if my friend was fully believing in gender and believing TWAW and TWAM, I’d have to step away from the friendship as I’d see it as harmful to her child and our views would be too different. I don’t want to spend my time avoiding shared history and having to change correct sex based pronouns. I think my kids would want to give the visit a miss.

Conversation with friends is natural and organic.

Absolutely we can say in the moment "actually don't go there" or a sensitive friend might pick up my body language and not need it saying.

These are some contentious issues affecting people in my life: bereavement, still birth, infertility, infidelity, depression, mania, psychosis, child abuse, drugs, alcohol, cancer, degenerative illness, fraud, unemployment, gay parenting, suicidal ideation, religion, rape, trauma, disability.

Nobody has ever needed to issue a statement prior to meeting up that we may not discuss a certain topic or timeframe.

My children learn to be compassionate to others from experiencing my compassion towards them. I want them to learn to hear "actually don't go there" and learn to detect social cues and body language.

Saying "never speak of anything before gender identity" is purely about control and the dangerous fallacy that not sharing beliefs = hatred. It prevents natural mutual interactions, genuine compassion, reading social cues etc and ultimately will isolate the child in question from genuine friendships. #bekind it ain't.

What a bizarre situation. I absolutely wouldn't be telling my children what they can and can't discuss. You can't erase the past and you certainly can't change a sex or the gender you are born into.

If you wish to change your previous name to a male or female name feel free. But I certainly wouldn't be policing what my children talk about. If the child gets upset about their past self then they certainly aren't ready to be changing genders they need to be seen by a therapist.

@HereComesEverybody again you are so busy talking about how kind and helpful you are that you haven't realised that 'affirming' vulnerable kids isn't kind or helpful. You seem very behind on the latest medical advice.

You can be supportive and helpful to your friends and their kids without pushing them onto a path to transition. We've done it in my own family and the young people have happily desisted.

You might also want to consider that your repeated focus on suicide is misplaced and alarmist. The latest Finnish study has made it clear that kids who are confused about their gender are no more likely to feel suicidal than any other young people with the same co morbidities.

You might find this recent article in the BMJ interesting: Medical institutions must treat the Cass review as a significant event and act upon it | The BMJ