13 yr old Teenage daughter thinks she might be Transgender

[Trufflesmolly]

My beautiful, long haired 13yr old (about to be 14) daughter has suddenly asked if she can buy and wear a 'binder' because she thinks she might be transgender. She attends a good grammar school but they appear to be educating the girls about all possibilities of sex and gender that exist within their personal development lessons. Two of my daughters' closest friends at school have come out as transgender - one has just changed school, having changed her name to a boys one and is taking hormone blocking medication, whilst the second is still at school but is now known by a non gender name. My daughter has just gone on a 3 day school trip and has written her rambling thoughts down for me to read, whilst away - she's not sure if she is transgender, wonders if it's just in response to her friends declaring they are, but doesn't like being judged as a girl and thinks life might be easier if she looked like a boy and had short hair. Most days she's happy being a girl and with her body but some days wakes up wishing she could dress like a boy. She has been going onto transgender sites and researching binding, which terrifies me, as it all signals that it's unhealthy and yet she doesn't want to talk to our GP as she isn't interested in taking any medication or changing her sex and she hates having these feelings. Her knowledge of all of these terms have all come from her personal development classes in school, which really concerns me. She admits she's confused and just feels life will be easier if she was more androgynous. She was in tears begging me to buy her a binder and whilst I kept calm and asked her about her feelings and expressed my concerns about wearing a binder. I've also done online research and read posts by other girls who thought they were transgender, as young teenagers, who went onto take hormone therapy and now are reversing it and advise parents to unplug their children and block access to such sites to allow them to reconnect with friends and family and to have time to develop naturally, off line. The transgender girls now reversing the steps they were allowed to take as young teenagers, posted that they spent their time online finding these community websites which, of course, promoted these thoughts, provided the information, provided online friends who encouraged these thoughts and actions to go on to purchase such binders etc. with all of these interactions happening secretly, online. All of this happened only two days ago, the night before she left for her school trip and so I'm desperate to ensure that we continue to talk about how she's feeling in a normal, supportive way, which is what we have been able to do since this revelation. Does anyone have any experience or advice about all of this?

It's horrifying. Most of us appreciate life would be easier as a man but we're not. It sounds like she has a lovely supportive mum which is a good thing

It does sound to me like she is being confused and influenced by her friends experiences and what she is reading online. Is there anyway you could give her a break from the Internet and her trans friends so she can have space to figure it out for herself? With the school summer holiday coming up it might be the perfect time to extract her from that confusing environment and just let her have some space.

Being androgynous is fine. You can be an androgynous girl. Obviously she isn't, and cannot become a boy.

I can't see any reason why she shouldn't cut her hair short. Like you, I'd be against a binder - how about a heavy duty sports bra as a compromise as they tend to have quite a flattening effect?

There is a support forum for parents here:

gendercriticalresources.com/Support/

Lots of good resources on

4thwavenow.com
www.transgendertrend.com

Try and keep an eye on what she is doing on the internet, a lot of grooming goes on.

Thanks for your kind words and advice - all of which I'll use. On the Transgender.com in schools support, I think, I found a lecture/ presentation on You Tube that explains that the percentage of teenage girls now declaring as transgender has gone through the roof, since the 80's when, before that 90% were men. They think it's a reaction to the increased sexualisation of women being published everywhere and the survey revealed that almost all of these girls underlying issues, most of them were suffering from anxiety or depression ( although there were others such as bullying, sexual abuse, disruptive home life etc.) and instead of treating the underlying problem, they're being told they're really transgender and if they go down that path, they won't feel bad anymore, which seems crazy to me. I don't think my daughter is depressed but she has been suffering from what we and our GP think are stress headaches and last year she had a bout of bad tummy cramps which went on for some weeks and both kept her away from school for a few days a week over a period of 3/4 months - they would come and go. She's finally been diagnosed as having mild dyspraxia and mild visual dyslexia through a private assessment with a Educational Pschologist, who carried out the dyslexia test confirming she is a high achiever. Her school have been v supportive re missed days and arranged an initial dyslexia test but that didn't deliver the level of detail we needed, to see why my daughter was struggling to process some information in some classes - it's taken a year to get through those assessments from when first discovered because bright girls are good at covering up their struggles and find coping strategies, until the work becomes harder, which is usually year 8/9/10. So, having trouble capturing and processing information in some classes had proved really difficult for her and this, with puberty and lessons detailing and discussing what sex you might be and how to have it, just might have been the trigger to make any sensible girl want to become something else! Once school ends tomorrow lunchtime, my daughter and I are going to spend the afternoon talking through everything - I'll share my new understanding and perspective and will listen to her to try and understand when and from where this all began, in the hope that we can walk it back to enable her to feel OK with being confused ( we've all been on a teen emotional roller coaster) and get her looking forward to a busy summer we have planned with the family. I'm also going to limit any time on her laptop and phone, unplug the wi-fi and am going to discuss the possibility of talking therapy with our GP, as well as try to identify a good psychiatrist via my Paed. Consultant sister, in case it would be helpful to guide her and we through this, in that way.