trans daughter / gender dysporia - how to support without affirming?

[whoshouldItalkto]

For the last year my 13-year-old daughter has been saying she is trans and has gender dysphoria. She says she does not feel her body and voice belong to her, and she should have a male physique.

I want to take a watchful waiting approach and do not want an affirmative approach or for her to socially or medically transition at this stage. However, her distress is real, and she needs support. There seems to be a real gap for this. I have read helpful advice from the Bayswater group and Transgender Trend, but there seem very few professionals that will work with a child without affirming - I was recommended one but they were £200 / hour and made it clear it was a long term commitment! She spoke to a non-specialist counsellor for a while but did not find it useful.

I keep the lines of communication open, talk to her, discuss things, try to build her confidence etc. but really feel she needs more. She's not particularly unhappy a lot of the time (has good friends, we have a good relationship, doing well at school etc.) but the gender dysphoria is definitely bubbling under and can cause her acute distress.

Has anyone got any other ideas of how I can support her, or could suggest a more affordable counselling option that would be suitable? Does anyone acknowledge and support gender dysphoria without the assumption that the treatment is transitioning?

I'm in a similar position.
I rarely post on trans threads these days after being told I was damaging my dd.

I have 2 dds, one non binary, one saying she is trans.
It has been the hardest thing I have done as parent, the last 3 years have been emotionally raw.

dd2 sees a counsellor every week, £45 a pop, paind for by grandparents.
On the subject of school. They wrote and asked if they could use a new name and genders.
I said no, as the current best practice is a low key wait and see approach, and she would not be transitioning in school. They have been very good and have stuck to that firmly. But we are working with them over ASD diagnosis too.

I've pm'd you OP

@oxalisRed

In the interest of clarity, I'm pasting the summary Result and full Conclusion from your cited report Shizuku:

"Results
Transgender children reported depression and self-worth that did not differ from their matched-control or sibling peers (p = .311), and they reported marginally higher anxiety (p = .076). Compared with national averages, transgender children showed typical rates of depression (p = .290) and marginally higher rates of anxiety (p = .096). Parents similarly reported that their transgender children experienced more anxiety than children in the control groups (p = .002) and rated their transgender children as having equivalent levels of depression (p = .728).
Conclusion
These findings are in striking contrast to previous work with gender-nonconforming children who had not socially transitioned, which found very high rates of depression and anxiety. These findings lessen concerns from previous work that parents of socially transitioned children could be systematically underreporting mental health problems."

I understand the Conclusion to be saying there is a "striking contrast to previous work" which had found very high rates of depression and anxiety, whereas in this report "Transgender children reported depression and self-worth that did not differ from their matched-control or sibling peers".

So previous work suggested not socially transitioned children experienced high levels of depression and anxiety, but this report finds that there's no actual difference in depression against their peers.

So whether a child socially transitions or not makes no difference to their levels of depression.

But Shizuku says
"The report finds that affirming a trans child's gender identity with social transition has beneficial effects on their mental health"

Are we reading the same summary? Perhaps the full report does contain information contrary to their summary which supports your claim?

It is unethical to join a support thread with false information to what, guilt? parents into acting against their parental instincts and against what they believe is right for their child?

This is not a discussion sub forum, it is a support sub forum. The OP asked specifically for help, not a debate. On that note, this is my last interaction with that particular poster.

"So previous work suggested not socially transitioned children experienced high levels of depression and anxiety, but this report finds that there's no actual difference in depression against their peers."

The "controls", including the trans children's siblings are not trans. If they were, they wouldn't be controls.

In other words, trans children who haven't socially transitioned have "very high rates of depression and anxiety" whilst socially transitioned trans children have levels of anxiety and depression similar to cis kids.

This is obviously important information for anyone trying to stop their trans child from socially transitioning.

Similarly, chosen name use is linked to reduced depressive symptoms, suicidal ideation, and suicidal behaviour among trans kids:

www.jahonline.org/article/S1054-139X(18)30085-5/fulltext

"For transgender youth who choose a name different from the one given at birth, use of their chosen name in multiple contexts affirms their gender identity and reduces mental health risks known to be high in this group."

Some more science here:

pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/137/3/e20153223

"CONCLUSIONS: Socially transitioned transgender children who are supported in their gender identity have developmentally normative levels of depression and only minimal elevations in anxiety, suggesting that psychopathology is not inevitable within this group. Especially striking is the comparison with reports of children with GID; socially transitioned transgender children have notably lower rates of internalizing psychopathology than previously reported among children with GID living as their natal sex."

Shizuku

this thread is for support.

Go away.

You are not wanted here.

Why is it that when parents try and get support about how to sensibly support their kids, there is always one person who thinks they need to educate.

We don't need education, we are quite as well educated as you thank you. We need support.

no, it is not the best approach.

as to the person pursuing an agenda, that would not be me, that would be you.

As I said, as parents, we don't need 'educating' by you thank you.
We are quite well educated on the subject. Funnily enough, that is what you do when it affects your kids, you educate yourself.

as I said, on every thread, people like you come on and try and bully parents instead of supporting them.

Agree steppemum.

Could we try to stay on topic and not derail this support thread with "scientific evidence" please?

Shame on you @Shizuku I am so so sick of being told my child is at increased risk of suicide when it's not true. It's massively triggering for me and it's a lie. I will continue to love and support my child, as I have done for their whole life. This is my child, not yours, you do not know her, so stop projecting your preferred approach onto my family. My life would be so much easier if I gave up and agreed with my teenage daughters views on everything. But I don't, and will continue to do what I believe is best for the long term, not the short term. I'm going to delete the Mumsnet app for a while, I'm so sick of your biased interventions on every single thread I try to read. This is not a place for support while you are around.

@oxalisRed

Agree steppemum.

Could we try to stay on topic and not derail this support thread with "scientific evidence" please?

Mumsnet summed up in a single sentence. Well done.

No ... all the science doesn't show that.
Stop derailing and go back to Feminisim chat if you want to discuss this further.

We have been in your position OP - our child is 17 now. It's is really difficult to find the right person to talk to - our experience has been that there is much anxiety amongst mental healthcare professionals when dealing with transgender issues, to the point where it is very difficult to have an open exploration of your child's mental health issues.

Our child had multiple mental health issues and was suicidal and anorexic. He also happened to identify as male and had gender dysphoria.

There was a tendency amongst the CAMHS councillors early on to latch onto the gender identity issues as if physical transition would make everything else fall into place. We were pushed to go on the waiting list for GIDS and, on CAMHS advice, changed our child's name and pronoun.

Things did not get any better, but discussion of any other causes of his unhappiness such as autism, or expression of fear of having your mentally vulnerable child sped down the track to transition was described as 'unhelpful'. As in this thread, we were told we needed to be 'educated'. It was actually terrifying.

Two years later, after much effort on our part, we finally got a diagnosis of autism from the Tavistock Autism Team. We now understand that our child was overwhelmed by everyday situations and terrified of change but was unable to verbalise it. The effort of masking was destroying him.

More importantly, with the diagnosis of autism we started to get appropriate support. The self-destructive behaviour has all but gone.

Our child is 17 and still uses the male pronoun, but that screaming drive to move straight to transition, encouraged by CAMHS staff, is just not there anymore. He has a boyfriend and no longer talks about gender dysphoria. He is changing, when we were told he would not and that physical transition was the only option.

We are still on the waiting list for GIDS. I do not know what the future will bring, but at least now we are being been given the breathing space for our child to grow and mature and explore how he feels. There is a bit of me regrets being pushed into making changes before he had had a proper chance to explore why he felt as he did.

I think that what I trying to say is that our children need time to grow without people pushing a certain narrative on them. I would personally run a mile from anyone who has an agenda either one way or the other. It may take you a while to find the right person.

The Tavistock Autism Team is excellent, but the queue is huge (two years just for diagnosis) and we really had to fight for counselling. Being in the same building as GIDS they are on the frontline when it comes to the the autism/gender issue, and genuinely explore the issue with an open mind (at least our counsellor did).

Thanks workingtorwards- I’m glad the situation looks a bit more hopeful and your dc is getting the support he needs. We will need to go private if we want our dd diagnosed with autism due to waiting lists - it really shouldn’t be like this.

Hi hope its ok to join. I'm back on this rollercoaster after with my youngest daughter after going through it with my eldest. I posted on this topic at the time. Thankfully, after 3 long years, my eldest decided she was no longer trans and was diagnosed with autism.

We had a 2 year respite and then my youngest announced she was trans. She also says she is autistic although i couldn't think of one trait to tell camhs so we were referred to the ymca counselling service.

I am trying to be supportive without affirming just as i was with my oldest but today i found her wearing a binder and I've just crumbled.

Hello Moom. I didn’t want to leave your post unanswered. The idea of going through the same journey twice must be exhausting. How old is your youngest? Autistic girls hide their stress, so it is good that she is talking to you and it is not surprising that there are no clear signals. I wouldn’t panic too much about the binder, it is an expression of unhappiness, but maybe your child is just reaching out to you in an non verbal way. Having an older sibling who has been through the same thing may be helpful. X

Thanks @workingtowards. She's nearly 13. I feel broken by it all to be honest. I guess i know that they do come out the other side and if she gets to 18 and still feels the same then i will 100% support them. Its just the knowledge that i have to fight for non-affirming support yet again.

*nearly 14

You are not alone Moom. I think we are being let down by a mental health system that is scared to challenge the dogma. We shouldn’t have to be fighting to protect autistic girls who are traumatised by adolescent change against unnecessary medical and hormonal intervention. X

Thoughtful therapists on Twitter as someone else suggested upthread might be able to point you in the right direction. In the meantime, can I share this petition with you all?
petition.parliament.uk/petitions/582083

@whoshouldItalkto

Thanks for the responses - the school would be very happy to affirm and have suggested all sorts of things such as going to a LGBT youth group run by an organisation with a strong Trans rights agenda (and that is also for ages 12-21, which seems pretty inappropriate in terms of age range!). Luckily everything went on hold due to COVID, but the school really won't be on side.

I thought that the current DfE guidance is NOT to affirm.

Irreversible Damage by Abigail Shriver is an absolute eye-opener on this issue - I recommend reading it.

Shrier

@WithLargeTableMouse petition signed.

@oxalisRed would you mind pm-ing me the details also?

Hi Moon. Sorry to hear you’re going through this a second time. It must be completely exhausting. I’ve been seeing faint signs of progress with DD - she has discovered feminism! I think it might strangely help her to see herself as an oppressed minority if she stays as a woman and to have some sort of communions cause to fight for as I think with her a lot is about the need to belong.

Community and cause - not communion

Yes we were discussing feminism yesterday! I think with dd its definitely a need to belong. She has no friends at school and her best friend is a trans boy living miles away - i imagine the pair of them are egging each other on.