Another teenage girl who want to be a boy

[allatsea123]

This is my first post on mumsnet! I have read and reread other post on girls with gender dysphoria and have gained a lot of support, so here goes! Our daughter told us about 6 months ago that she felt she should be a boy and the only way forward was to transition fully. She was 14 then, now 15. I was totally devastated and utterly lost. I had felt that something was on the horizon as she had asked for a hair cut and started wearing boyish clothes a few months previous. We didn't know what to do so suggested she give herself 6 months to think about things. We did take her to the GP though as I thought counselling might help. She was referred to CAMHS and the psychologist told us that she wasn't convinced by our daughter and that we should come back to her in a year or so. Thank god for the voice of reason, I thought! We did get referred for counselling which was not helpful because she wasn't given any strategies to help deal with her feelings. The last six months have seen her become socially isolated, depressed and she has developed an eating disorder. We are now back at CAMHS with the eating disorder nurse and hopefully soon for a more thorough assessment of her mood, OCD behaviours etc. I completely fell apart at the beginning but seem to have convinced myself that this, although very real for her at the moment, won't persist and so am better able to cope. I believe this is sudden onset gender dysphoria, she never showed any discomfort with being a girl until a few months before she told us. as a small child she was very girly, she became a tom boy for a while a primary school but never asked for boys clothes. As soon as she left primary school it was earrings, make up, hair styles etc. She embraced puberty and it doesn't seem long ago she was moaning that I wouldn't buy underwired bras. I feel as if she was struck with a thought one day that has taken hold and drawn her in. She is sad, lonely and lost and so are we. We still use her name and refer to her as she because although we know she doesn't like this she won't let us tell anyone, even her siblings so we have no choice. I know that she is totally convinced that the only way to be happy is if someone can wave a magic wand and she can leave the house tomorrow a boy. How that would help I have no idea as she would then be a girl in a boys body! She has never had any typically male interests, has an older brother but never shown an interest in his things and all her friends are girls, how could she relate to people if she was a boy? I don't know how to help her though this. We have said that we will support if she still feels this way as an adult but I can't give permission for any medical interventions when I am not convinced that this is a permanent thing. She has always been one to reinvent herself every now and then and I suppose that is what I am hoping for, that she finds a way back to being happy being herself. But how???

Interesting article about the Tavistock here

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/nov/19/nhs-clinic-trans-rights-storm-gender-identity-specialist-centre-transgender?CMP=ShareiOSAppp_Other

Thank you for sharing this, it is good to read of the careful considered approach by the Tavistock , the one of watchful waiting and tolerating uncertainty rather than rushing into hormone etc. I feel a bit more hopeful that when we eventually get an appointment it might help my daughter unravel her thoughts a bit.

Interesting article here for parents of children and teens with gender difficulties:
4thwavenow.com/2017/12/07/gender-dysphoria-is-not-one-thing/

Very interesting and written by extremely experienced professionals. My daughter ticks all the boxes for sudden onset gender dysphoria except her peer group at school aren't aware so probably haven't influenced her but she is influenced by online experiences, which is so hard to stop. How do you stop a 15 year old accessing YouTube?
Hope everyone is having a peaceful lead up to Christmas so far. My dd is happier in herself and virtually never mentions her gender but I am sure if asked she would say she still feels the same dysphoria. I am just hoping that as she interacts more with friends she will feel more comfortable in herself.

Also meant to add, thank you stopmakinggsense for your contributions, you are the one helping me to stay sane, very much appreciated. 💐

I think my daughter might be building up to telling us she wants to start college in September as a boy. So far in this journey we have kept her feelings about her gender amongst ourselves ( not even siblings) it has been her choice. She hasn't told friends for fear of losing them and she finds it hard to make new friends. Should I encourage her to take the bull by the horns and tell everyone? College might be the time to see if this is what she really wants. On the other hand there will be a lot of people she has known previously there who know her as a girl. It will be an ideal time for current friends to drift away from her if they can't understand her situation and she could be very alone. Also recently she has said she still feels as dysphoric but is better able to deal with it. My thinking then is that maybe if she continues to cope her feelings will alleviate and a natural time of change and progression might help this and she may come to terms with herself more. I am not ready for the next step which is another factor. I still feel that she will one day be ok being who she is and any road to transition either socially or physically will make this harder. Any advice?

My experience has been that friends are pretty supportive of being trans, and kind of take her as she (or he) comes. So I don't think there was any need to for new start where no one knew her before.

My DD has fallen out with a couple of friends, but that is more to do with her autism than anything else. The others, including siblings, just adopted new name, new pronouns and carried on as normal. I do think she has found it harder to make new friends, but again I am not sure this is entirely to do with the fact that she presents as a boy per se; more likely to her other social difficulties. She hasn't experienced bullying, for which I am grateful. To that extent I am glad of the increased level of awareness generally. I would much rather, however, that gender non-conformity was encouraged and applauded (rather than the born in the wrong body narrative).

If it were me, and my DD were asking for advice (which she isn't) I would not encourage her to come out if she can be comfortable enough without doing it. I think your gut feeling that further steps along the path will make it harder to desist is a good one.

If she does want to do it, then perhaps you can get across the message that medical transitioning is not inevitable, that people do come to different conclusions over time, and perhaps she could treat it like a scientific experiment, and use the time to weigh up the pros and cons. You will not think any less of her if she does desist, nor will you take away your support if she carries on. To lessen the chance of social transitioning making her less likely to pursue medical transition, you could just say something along the lines of "you are the same person, no matter what your name or pronoun, and we will love you no matter what, and changing your name or pronouns does no permanent physical harm, unlike taking artificial hormones and having surgery. We don't think anyone should take decisions that have permanent physical effects until they are much older, so if this a way of you living more comfortably until that point, then we will support you".

All this is what I wish I could have said to my DD, who unfortunately presented us with a fait accompli at age 18.

Thank you, I do feel grateful to have time to consider my approach to whatever next steps she wants to take. I think that if she could carry on developing her coping skills she will be ok in time. Or maybe she will just keep wondering if this is what she wants and needs to explore that. I do know and I am sure it's the same for all of us parents it rules my waking thoughts and seems to give my child a huge amount of passive control over our lives.

Well also reflect on this, Allatsea - I am paraphrasing, and have no medical training, but anorexia is quite a lot about control, OCD is about control, many mental health difficulties stem from anxiety, and the control is a way of trying to manage the anxiety.
Any other difficulty, apart from gender difficulties, are treated by methods such as CBT which try and change unhelpful thoughts.
Gender difficulties, however, are treated with affirmation, so that the whole world has to be changed to conform to an individual's thoughts, in other words, they are handed over all the control. So parents who have given birth to and brought up a daughter, have to now believe they have a son who was born into the wrong body. That is the looking glass world we are in.

It isn't possible let for anyone to change their biological sex- your daughter will always be a girl. As a girl she can have any style if hair and clothing she wants, be girly, butch or anything in between. Perhaps she is struggling with confusion about her sexual orientation,or perhapsjust struggling with the enormous and ridiculous pressure of gender stereotypical expectations. Whatever the underlying causes,stand strong OP- there is no magic wand that can turn her into a boy

You are so right, stopmakinggsense , she is massively controlling about everything in her life, food, exercise, music practice, school work and her counselling is helping her to manage some of these anxieties, still very OCD about things though. This is why I want to keep the foot on the brakes as long as possible because I am convinced she will work it out in the end, once the intensity of being a teenager has been diluted by life, age and experience. it is the only situation that I can think of where self diagnosis is accepted and treatment not questioned. Although I am hoping that if we do go to the Tavistock they will be true to their interview in the press and be a "gender identity disorder service , not a gender transition service". I know she wasn't born in the wrong body, I keep going back to the fact that she was really happy in her own skin until this thought entered her head and ever since she has been miserable. whatever steps she takes to appear more masculine only seem to make her more miserable. It is because she is so controlling that she is determined to stick to this path whether it is right or not, the same determination that enables her to have an eating disorder and excell at something once she has decided to. And CAMHS won't even look at ASD!!
Joystir, if I did have a magic wand and turn her into a boy overnight she would be totally like a fish out of water, I have no idea how she would relate to anyone, she has no history of even behaving like a boy. I don't want to stereotype males and females but I would at least expect that she might have a male friend she could relate if we had the said magic wand but she doesn't and never has had. She thinks it would solve all problems, I doubt it very much.

Its heartbreaking, isn't it. I am actually living in fear of my daughter getting treatment by a specialist NHS service. A service (the adult one) which relies on self-diagnosis and where the treatment protocol excludes looking at alternative explanations. And where the treatment has, according to their own service specification:
"Overall, there is only limited evidence to demonstrate the efficacy of hormonal therapy or gender reassignment surgery with regard to long-term complications or physical functional status. There is no available evidence regarding cost-effectiveness of the treatment".

Similarly my daughter, now at uni, all her problems are still there, or in fact worse.

Are you able to afford a private asd assessment? We paid 1200 for one for ds which was mainly covered by dhs work health insurance.

I think that you have to take consolation from the fact that she could have already persued this and hasn't yet. There must be something in what you have said to her and/or her own deep feelings which have stopped her going to a clinic so far. Understanding her autism must be part of the debate for her and knowing that obsessions can last for years and then be replaced by something else. It is mental torture trying everyday to remain hopeful that things will eventually resolve themselves for our daughters and that they will stay safe but it's what we have. I hope that you are able to have some good times for yourself, you need it 💐

AllAtSea your DD sounds so like mine - however we were fortunate that CAMHS did agree to ASD assessment and she has 18 months later got the "diagnosis" of being on the autistic spectrum, with anxiety/OCD which they are working on - we may well be going down the medication route but had a bad experience at Christmas after she was on sertraline for a fortnight so taking it slowly with possibly trying fluoxetine.
CAMHS have referred her to Tavistock, thankfully their waiting time is a year! I am really hoping that she will grow a little and realise that this is not the be all and end all. Already her interests are changing a bit and we haven't had quite so much trans info being shoved at us. I will use they pronouns, I call the kids downstairs by saying "guys" or "kids" rather than "girls". I can't bring myself to call her he/son - up until 18 months ago she was still trying to make me buy inappropriately short tops and asked for more make up for Christmas! (She is nearly 15 now). As a child her view is that she always played with boy things so has always been a boy - my view is that I gave plenty of non-gender-specific toys as when I grew up I resented the fact that trains/Scalextric were "boys' toys"!! So the dressing up clothes had police/fire/builder outfits as much as princess stuff, no wonder she played with it. Looking at pictures, there are far more of her dressed up in dresses/wings/scarves/jewellery. She has tons of teddies and teddy outfits (mostly female).

At the moment she is beginning an obsession with paganism thanks to a friend (of course, to her mind she thought of it all by herself it's just coincidence her friend did just before...) - I'm actually far happier with the concept of her damaging her eternal soul than the idea of her mutilating her body chemically or surgically!! (She is at a church school!!)

Hi housemum, have you recently been referred to the Tavistock? We were referred in August so think the appointment might come through around March ( then we were told the wait was 8 months) I will be glad if it is delayed to be honest. Sometimes I feel we desperately need to go as maybe they can unravel this and sometimes I am terrified that this will only affirm her thoughts. The whole thing is a nightmare isn't it?

Hi Allatsea - we were referred in the summer, they received it in October and we had a letter saying that the waiting list was about 12 months - it can be forever in my view! Have been reading this site and almost in tears at some of the stories on there :(
www.parentsofrogdkids.com/parents-stories

(I was trying to work out why frogs in the web address then realised its ROGD Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria!)

Housemum there is a great forum you can join here
gendercriticalresources.com/Support/forumdisplay.php?fid=1

This is an interesting article which was posted on the lgbt children section in case you missed it, here is the link:

Gender dysphoria and Children: An Endocrinologist's Evaluation of I am Jazz

anglicanmainstream.org/gender-dysphoria-and-children-an-endocrinologists-evaluation-of-i-am-jazz/

It is on an American Anglican website but it is scientific and if factually correct then very alarming and confirms my thoughts that children should be treated for their mental health issues, not told they are transgender but they have gender dysphoria which sometimes resolves and if it doesn't medical intervention can be a treatment as fully mature adults.