Secretly trans DS?

[AreTheyOrArentThey]

have name changed for this

Confession time first, I massively messed up. We have an agreement with 13yo DS that we only check his phone messages in front of him. Do it randomly and honestly not very often because though quiet he’s always been trustworthy. Except apparently because I broke his trust and now I know something I wish I didn’t.

I asked to check his messages a few days ago and he handed it over straight away and as I was looking he asked me not to look at the messages between him and GirlA and him and GirlB (who I know and know their parents well too) because someone had come out who wasn’t ready to share it further yet so out of respect could I not look. I agreed.

then yesterday I decided to look at the messages. He never hides his phone, charges it in the kitchen with the others, I know his password etc so he does trust me. I only read the thread between him and GirlA in which she asks him if he wants her to call him X (insert really frou frou old lady name) in front of GirlB and he says he hasn’t told her he is trans - then a few messages later says he has told GirlB he is trans and is sad to have done it over text.

I am beside myself with guilt for betraying his trust but also wracked with fear due to finding this out. I’m swinging between utter denial and making up stories in my head he’s only saying it for attention from these two girls, and being devastated because it has changed everything about him and us and our relationship.

I noticed a few extra things the last few days - he has as his WhatsApp photo the trans logo and I did ask him (before I found out about the messages) why he had that, I stupidly answered the question for him and asked was it as an ally and he shrugged yes. He has as his avatar on something else (can’t remember what) a female animated face with a Scorpio hairstyle.

I don’t know what to do. I haven’t told anyone else, least of all DH because there is no way we would have guessed this and as I said it has changed everything for me. A huge part of me is hoping it’s a phase he’s exploring with friends and he’ll get over it and never feel the need to tell us.

I don’t know what to do. A lot of my very close friends are gay, I have a few peripheral trans friends and I see how hard the world is for those who identify that way. I am terrified for him and for us - he is 6’2” and still growing, he hit puberty early AND we’ve just done a major move literally thousands of miles away from where he has spent the last 10years. Could this be a way of his anxieties about the move coming out?

Seriously though what do I do? I can’t tell him I broke his trust, he will never tell me anything ever again but then he isn’t telling me this huge thing anyway so is our whole relationship not at all the close one I thought it was?!

He is an introvert who struggles to show his feelings at the best of times, we’ve been looking into a therapist anyway to help navigate this as well as have support during the move.

My 10yo DD told us a few months ago she was bi and then she was gay and honestly my reaction was ok cool, I mean she’s 10 but I honestly couldn’t care less and wouldn’t be worried in the same way if she did turn out to be gay. But trans?! Especially as a very tall MtF? She is all over Pride and rainbows and reading experiences and heavily identifying, maybe she’s gay maybe she isn’t but maybe this is impacting my DS who if this is a true identification probabLy feels she’s taking over and therefore will bury his feelings even more.

sorry for the incredibly long post, I just really don’t know where to turn

@rattlemehearties

Oh for goodness sake. You are overly sexualising bisexuality in this little girl.

My sil always asks my grandkids (age 7 & 8) in a fun way "do you have a boyfriend" and they ususlaly giggle and say yes so and so

I always add in "or girlfriend" because my daughter is a lesbian & Frankly hedgemonic heteronormativity is damaging & makes it much harder to come out for many.

Wee kids know who they fancy abd it's harmless fun when they're all
The same age. A wee crush or Valentine's card.

Thankyou again for all the responses and support, I really do appreciate it.

it’s so hard not to spiral in one direction or another and I sometimes just wish I didn’t know - he is still engaging and loving and funny and makes jokes and gives hugs and says he loves us all the time. He’s obviously so so good at keeping his anguish hidden and that frightens me because I kept my teen depression hidden from my parents for 6 years before they realised I’d been self harming and they still don’t know I was out taking every drug invented to numb the mental pain.

it’s hard to wait for him to talk, there’s just a limit to how much support I can give.

i think instead of asking outright if he does identify with the LGBTQ+ community I’ll find a way to say he’s talked about it a lot recently and to know that if he does, and when he is ready to talk, I will always love and support him.

every day is a rollercoaster and we aren’t even properly dealing with it yet.

the goal posts just keep changing on me

so DS came home from school and DH engineered an ice cream date with DD so it would just be us. I tell him that we’ve noticed him mention LGBT+ A lot and if he does identify with the community in any way but he’s not ready to share it just to know that we will always love him and however he identifies today, next week, in 5 years or 50years and one of the joys of parenting is getting to know the person you are bringing up in their own right.

true to form absolutely no response whatsoever (we always get this when we bring up anything awkward or difficult, he just doesn’t engage)

I move the topic on and there’s a message I need to send him, he asks if I can WhatsApp rather than message. I haven’t sent him a WhatsApp in over a week. He has changed his profile picture to an image off the internet which says “There’s this idea that if you’re straight you HAVE to tell all your friends and family immediately, like you owe it to them. But you don’t. You don’t have to do anything until you are ready.” And his status update is a phrase in mandarin, I put it through Google translate and it says “I am transgender! I am female!”

this is not hiding away, this is public for anyone to see - and he communicates on WhatsApp with his friends from home but also his grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins (including one grandparent I am 98% would cut us off for this).

But then the others come home and he and his sister go outside to play. They come in 20mins later for snacks and I ask him to come upstairs. I tell him when he told me to WhatsApp him I saw his profile pic (he spluttered something about it being from Heartstopper), and his status update and I ran it through Google translate and I know what it says. Again brick wall. I tell him again I love him and if this is how he currently identifies and he wants it to be public he needs to know that it is public. I give him a huge hug (multiple ones) and reiterate I love him, I want to support him, I want to make sure he has support from multiple places, again that I love him and all I want is his long term happiness.

Brick wall. Nothing. No tears, not even blushing, holds my eye contact the whole time.

I offer that if he can’t talk to me face to face then we can message but by making it public he has opened the conversation and it’s one I want to have with him. I ask him if I can message him later and he says yes.

He doesn’t try to get out of the room, just brick wall again until I finally change the subject and he snaps back into himself.

REALLY?! Just no acknowledgement at all. I feel awful I couldn’t bring myself to say the word Trans at all, but with no response at all it didn’t feel right to name it.

what now?! How come everyone who has answers this thread has these conversations with their children, how do I convince him to do anything but stare at me in stony silence? He’s obviously all over the internet like a rash.

fuck me, I just don’t know what else I can be doing??? Does he have alternate personality disorder and living this alternate person only through his phone? It would have been fucking weird for me to have seen his WhatsApp picture and status and NOT brought it up….

Is he autistic?

I only ask as I am and there is a huge overlap with gender issues and autism. I have shut downs where I literally cannot speak when I'm emotionally overwhelmed.

I couldn't come out to my Mum when I had a girlfriend. She had to say the words for me.

He might be trying out his identity online for now. It is possible that this is only online for now and not in 'real life'. A lot of these kids are choosing identities like they're picking a Fortnite skin and perhaps don't fully embody it.

@IdisagreeMrHochhauser i don’t think so. He has a touch of awkwardness to him, is quite geeky and quirky and does do this emotional shut down thing so maybe on the spectrum somewhere but I don’t think he would be diagnosable. I’ve been through all the ASD symptoms and there’s very little correlation so I don’t think he’d even qualify for an assessment.

I’m worried, he went right back to being his normal self, we had a lovely family dinner and played goodminton altogether then watched telly and then he snuggled up while I read to him. When I tucked him I asked where his phone was and for the first time ever he asked me why rather than just telling me - I always check they don’t have their tech in their rooms when they go to bed - but he did also hand it over and left me with it earlier when I needed the IMEI or whatever it is number to get it unlocked. I followed through on the trust and did not look at anything else.

Is he genuinely just trying this persona out in a safe online space even though that includes through texts with his friends in our old country? Or is he compartmentalising doing brilliantly it’s literally like he’s two people?

I guess I’ll message him but honestly I don’t know what to say, I can’t force him to talk

This is my son/transdaughter - we are about a year on. Please be gentle. Mine also does the shutting down thing due to emotional overload. Mine is also very likely asd, confirmed by a pyschotherapist but without going through the diagnostic procedure. Your son will be processing this all away from the conversation, but possibly at a more immature level than you are gauging - mine is both very intelligent and unexpectedly immature (very asd). At the same time they are striving for independence due to age - you will have to separate out the changes over the next year between age (14/15 is mind blowing anyway) and trans issues. Two years ago my son left all his devices downstairs as asked - this got messed up over the next year, but this was a mixture of age (rightly pushing for privacy) and pandemic (5 hours of @#&@* zoom lessons a day, tech went upstairs). I have so much to say.

It all happened in the seemingly instant timeframe for us too - I can see in retrospect that 3 lockdowns broke them, and the new LGBT friends were much wanted (they lost friends due to a breakdown after three lockdowns, then had the 13 year olds horror of not having a strong friendship group, then found the LGBT friends, who have been great, and there will obviously be a neuro diverse crossover there).

I can’t add more to the PP who recommended Bayswater society and Genspect but I always recommend talking to kids when you are in the car. The facing forwards next to each other does allow for more open conversations, we do a lot of trips to McDonald’s or Starbucks when there are things we need to talk about.

My child is also very much like me but asd wasn't really diagnosed then - I could never understand when my mum seemed to be walking on eggshells around me, even though I can now clearly see I could be very difficult to be around (I thought I wasn't a difficult teen then as I was quiet and good, but crikey I was odd). You have said you can remember being a teen with difficulties, I remember knowing when my parents felt awkward around me. It's hard to do, but try to take it slowly and balance the well timed questions with not thinking about the elephant in the room at all. My person is lovely (also often a bit more aloof and awkward these days due to age) but I have no idea where we're going.

This is the phenomenon that's sweeping through the autistic community. Just so happens that it came up on Glinner's substack today.

https://grahamlinehan.substack.com/p/crazy-like-a-transgay-fox-girl?r=12v8w2&s=r&utmcampaign=post&utmm_medium=email

@beanieBE thankyou for replying, it does sound very similar so I do appreciate your thoughts and sharing your experiences.

is your child still in therapy at all? We were wondering about a psychotherapist instead of a counsellor in case they did recommend going down a diagnosis route but again I’d just be very surprised if they would bother and also what good it would do anyway? Did you go to a psychotherapist when this all came out or were you on that path in any case and has it made any difference to them or to your approach?

DH has some ASD traits too - different ones to DS and they center around sensory issues to do with noise more than emotional shut downs (he has no problem being emotional!) - in this way they are much more alike that DS and I.

Clearly we should leave it be for now, he doesn’t want to talk to us, I just wish I could give even a little advice like don’t do any kind of social transitioning until you know it’s safe to do so. Maybe I need to talk to the school. This is totally unchartered territory for us.

My ds came out at 12, I would 'forget' you have ever seen the message.

It makes me wonder if some of the kids now identifying as trans would have once upon a time identified as gay. I would probably take that road with him initially. See if he would be willing to investigate that fully and go from there.

They have only been in proper therapy for a few weeks, after a worse than useless experience with camhs following the breakdown. They were desperate to talk to a psychiatrist (their words) as they were experiencing derealization - the brain doing an extreme form of the shut down as a coping mechanism, very scary for them, but not shared with me until they were terrified.
So it worked that I found this brilliant lady who will talk through everything (and sometimes sees the shut down when it gets difficult); my child loves seeing her. And what is important is that the sessions weren't originally about being trans or asd and that would have been rejected. They will see her for as long as they want - so yes maybe find a psychotherapist while you can say it's to help cope with the move, THEN they cover everything.
The social transitioning will take on an engine of its own - it is easier to think of it like the punk phenomenon - they have found their social tribe and it will mean a huge amount to them.
My child isn't gay so now identifies as lesbian (which fits the search term you found also).

As in if he likes lesbians, he likes women!

@beanieBE how did you find your child’s therapist? We can go private (fortunately for us) but struggling to find people taking on clients let alone then trying to make sure they aren’t going to immediately affirm but instead explore the reasons behind this anxiety.

Your mention of derealization rings alarm bells for me

@beanieBE I don’t think he is gay - he (hasn’t said this to me but I’ve discovered) he identifies as a lesbian girl….

I’ve read a bit into AG as well. So many potential diagnoses it’s hard to know what path to take but I do feel a professional would be a good starting point

My daughter went through it in year 8.

A phase. She grew out of it, thankfully.

Went from wanting to change her name, pronouns, whole wardrobe etc... To a new obsession, a comic book.

Hopefully it will be the same for you.

Shes not mentioned dit in 2 years now

Are you in the UK? I can post some resources of therapists who don't automatically affirm.

I am and yes please @IdisagreeMrHochhauser

can-sg.org/about-us/

thoughtfultherapists.org/about-us/

I would contact these two organisations in the first instance. If they don't have anyone in their memberships, they should be able to point you in the right direction.

I'm glad you have those links as I just got lucky googling teen psychotherapists in our area - the last time I looked there wasn't anyone (more about young child development and huge waiting lists), but this person just jumped out at me and her careful approach to untangling everything that's going on and gently challenging things I can't is pure luck.

I should say the therapy is not slowing the momentum of what's happening, but it's all about having a team to try to keep my child safe, which luckily seems to include their new friends too.

Yes absolutely @beanieBE my child may well turn out to be trans and if so I will continue to love and support him but I really want to make sure there isn’t some underlying issue for which this is a symptom rather than the actual problem - especially considering our move and his age

thanks @IdisagreeMrHochhauser I’d already contacted thoughtful therapists but will also try the other link

Yes exactly, even though I feel this is something that makes sense to them in response to puberty, the pandemic, fear and feeling different, (rather than always being there) that doesn't ultimately tell me where we will end up.