My 10 year old son thinks he is trans.

[Onelovemumma]

Please don't give me any hate, I just need advice on how to approach this situation.

Yesterday I found out that my 10 year old son has tiktok. I went through all of his videos, lots of homemade stop motion dinosaur videos, him being silly with his boy mates, typical 10 year old boy videos.

Then I see two videos that say he is Trans and he wants to be a girl.

I am totally confused and just in shock.

Never ever had he given us an idea he might feel that way.
He loves everything that you would expect a young boy to love and always has.
He's a typical lad.

I called him upstairs and said I had seen his tiktok and he burst into tears and ran and locked himself in the bathroom.
I just sat and waited in his room till he was ready.
I asked him if he knew what videos I had looked at and wanted to talk about and he said yes then hid under the covers.

I said to we need to talk about it, asked how he felt and why, how long and who knows.

He said he has felt like it for a long time, but never said because he doesn't want to upset me and his dad's (real dad and step-dad)

He said he knew he could talk to me but his dad's would be angry.

He also said most of his class at school knows as he told a couple of people who then told everyone else. I have never heard of a rumour of this though. He always has girlfriends (even though I think it's too young)

I just don't get it.
I don't know if it's just because he is online and seen things, he has always been very easily led.

The only thing typically fem that I have seen is he has asked to have his nails painted and absolutely nothing else.

How do I deal with this. Do I leave it alone and see what happens? I truly don't think he feels this way.
I said to him what he is saying he feels is very extreme, I asked him if he wanted to have his bits off and made into a vagina and want breasts and he said he didn't want to talk about that now.

I don't think he knows fully what it entails.

I feel really bad writing that part but it wasn't said in a horrible way just trying to understand his thought process.

Help

Other people agreeing to be kind and go along with it is literally the only way anything at all changes.

Hiya, trans young person here who can hopefully be of some help. The most important thing to do is keep an open dialogue with them and make sure they know they can express their feelings around you. It seems like you've been doing a good job of that already!! It could be worth talking to their dads, without telling them what happened with your child since they (child) don't seem ready to talk to them about it, and ask them to be mindful of transphobic commentary and similar around them since "you don't want him to grow up with biases".

Explain to them that questioning their gender is healthy and that liking or doing certain things doesn't necessarily make them a girl, but if that's a label they want to try out then they're welcome to.

Your kid is young, they're exploring their identity and that's super healthy. They may change their mind along the way and they may not, no matter what happens, your unwavering support will be so important for your relationship and their mental health. Nothing drastic needs to happen right now.

Also 10 is too young to be on tiktok but making your kid feel like they've done something wrong won't help the situation. Try to have a conversation about how to manage screentime and the dangers of social media. If they want to make dinosaur stop motion, suggest using iMovie or capcut and not uploading, or maybe another platform like youtube. This can be a collaboration with the two of you.

Take away his telephone or at least delete these apps and restrict its use. Get him living a real life playing outside, being with animals, doing hobbies, talking and playing with actual children.

Sorry, I see this was a thread that finished a while ago.

Social media is exactly where all of this comes from.

No ten year old should have TikTok (or YouTube etc.); and nobody should be getting their parenting advice from Facebook.

OP: remove his internet access. A ten year old has no business on TikTok; and pretty much all social media is full of absolute 100% cast-iron brainrot.

MN is the one place where there’s a bit that (occasionally) isn’t.

In my DD’s school all the kids aged around 11 downwards are all super-critical about trans, nonbinary discourse etc. and say it’s really cringe. It’s really going out of fashion for that age group so I’m sceptical that they’re all nonbinary at your kid’s school.

Remove his internet, get him out to a playground to have some exercise with some other kids and stop talking about it to him. Job done.

How can you not know he has TikTok? Does this mean he has a phone?! And that you don’t have controls and haven’t been checking it?

I will tell you what happened: He is 10 and in social media. Tik Tok is extremely bad for kids brains and I would take away social media at this age. You are setting him up for feeling unhappy and insecure - it actually affects the chemicals in the brain.

Imagine if it were a thin young girl who believed she was fat and was watching image related content and obsessing over her body at 10 years old. You would not entertain a delusion that there is something wrong with the body she was born in. You would see this is not healthy.

At 10 he is being inundated with trans stuff from everywhere. Kids don’t just come up with this on their own. It’s being pushed on them from media and culture.

My son wanted to be a girl when he was 2 (this is actually normal) and my response: you are a boy, being a boy is good, love the body you have, and although I didn’t shame him for wanting to wear the dresses I made an extra effort to instill in him self love and appreciation for masculine.

3rd : your son is only exposed to one side. Expose him to the other side of this issue and his own truth may resonate . Google “de transition stories” for example. A lot of it just isn’t even appropriate for 10 year olds so that is just one thing not good about the trans movement. It’s not appropriate for children who are still developing their identity and sex hormones! Let them be kids, play dress up, not adopting labels and treating them like mini adults.

School may not think it’s necessary, but they are probably not seeing the full picture because he’s not a ‘problem child’. Go to your GP and ask for a direct referral to paediatrics for assessment. Tell school you need their support so that your son isn’t ignored just because he isn’t disruptive, yet.