Therian

[Jellybellyniki]

Has anyone heard of this term?
it’s supposedly a reference to identifying as an animal or enjoy dressing and acting like one according to my almost 12 year old.
Well she is suddenly into this phase after watching videos on tik tok and I’m quite concerned about the obsession she now has over it.
for the past 3 months she spends the majority of her days making animal costumes to wear around the house while making the sounds of the animal. Each week will be a different animal. Admittedly at times I have snapped and told her to stop being silly. I guess I’m concerned she will be bullied for it as she begins secondary school next week.
her primary school queried if she may be autistic before this phase appeared, but I had no support from anyone and my gp wouldn’t refer as in their words it would take until adulthood to diagnosis! I do wonder if there is a connection.
ive Never heard of this before or where to even begin working out what to do. She keeps it secret at home, doesn’t do it in public and hides it from extended family by choice.
do I let her carry on and hope it fades out eventually? My husband thinks it could be the start of a mental health issue but I don’t want to assume this at a young age.
any advice would be appreciated.

I'd get your daughter off tiktok and youtube. Even youtube kids is full of nonsensical stuff.

Also, I’m not advocating being therian. Just sharing how I have dealt with it with my child and how I understand it coming from how she explains it.

I too was shaken to my core because the stuff I was seeing was rather dark and alot seems very isolating to me. However what I suggest is talk to your daughter and try and reframe from using the I feel or I think sentences. Ask questions about it to get them to talk. To begin with if I even tried to show an interest and if I asked a question that so much was not inline with what my daughter wanted to hear she would shut me off so I left it for a while. Then one night she was watching a YouTube video from a creator called therian territory so I sat and watched it with her and was asking questions and we had a really good conversation and it turned out she was questioning whether she was because she thought she may have had some experiences but it happened a long time ago and was like stuff young kids would normally do so I said that. She also said she was just wanting to explore herself and who is going to be etc it also came out that it’s something that is going through her school at the moment. We discussed videos about them being told parents wouldn’t understand and all the red flag things and I said to her anyone telling you not trust your parents is a person you cannot trust. Because parents will always understand and support their kids and if they don’t understand they will try and do their best as all we want is happy and safe kids and that unfortunately there is a lot of misinformation on social media and she will learn how to pick the fact from fiction in time as long as she stays open with us as parents. This conversation made the world of difference for her and for how I felt about it

Cool, thanks. Do you have a pre teen? Seems unlikely or you'd know that banning them from YouTube is as impossible an idea as banning them from breathing. Unfortunately, because I bloody hate YouTube.

Yes, I have one pre- teen and two in their early teens.

I also have years of experience of teaching and safeguarding. Parents have to take responsibility for what their kids are consuming on social media. It’s not beyond parental control. You have control here.

Accessing things you know are not good for them? Set boundaries and enforce them! Don’t give them phones and access to social media unless they are supervised.

It’s much harder work but these are choices. Unsupervised access to social media is causing issues for thousands of children, from poor mental health and nonsense like this seen in this thread to eating disorders and extremism. The solution is to parent, not to shrug and say “it’s too hard”.

I am genuinely interested in how I can possibly limit access to it. Ban it in the house altogether? Because there's no halfway house of supervised access - I'm not bloody watching it! If I ban it altogether, isn't that the equivalent of growing up with no TV in your house when we were kids? There's no tiktok, no Snapchat etc. but there's no way of removing Whatsapp which I don't think many parents realise is just as bad as Snapchat and some evil twin version of early Facebook with their status updates that you can set who sees - so a recipe for bullying...

The videos that seem to have lead to this nonsense are actually really creative. She spends ages crafting these masks and I believe they were actually totally innocent. Until the hashtags lead you somewhere darker. So if I ban access to the creative stuff I'm also banning her from doing the creative stuff she gets pleasure and relaxation from. Which is basically exactly what these Internet freaks have told her would happen. All roads lead to the same place.

So I resent being told it's because I can't be arsed to parent. That's not fair. I genuinely don't see how I parent my way through this sort of thing so all thoughts are welcome because I am truly at a loss.

Wow, I didn’t realise it was such a big thing!
my daughter is 12, she is autistic and has a special interest in cats. She’s said she is a therian for a few years now. The way she explains it is that she feels like she is drawn to animals and her spirit is cat like even though she is physically human. She makes masks daily. They are beautiful and so creative. With fur and clay and paint. Just amazing. She gallops around the house on all fours (only tends to do this at home) and has a collection of tails that clip on her clothes. I can’t see the harm in it. She uses you tube and TikTok to follow mask tutorials and to watch other teens galloping around wearing masks but I’ve never seen anything dodgy in what she watches. She spends most of her time creating the masks rather than on her phone so I see no harm at all. She is happy. It seems a common interest for young autistic girls so I’m ok with it.

@Hermanfromguesswho That’s just like my autistic daughter! I totally understand this as my daughter is the same just no tik tok. Also I am a teacher of 17 years and senco trained so I do have understanding of this @LunaLovegoodsLeftEyebrow.

I’ve also worked in education for many years and currently work with vulnerable teenagers. I feel very strongly that we (as parents and teachers) shouldn’t just ban things we are scared of because we don’t understand them well. I believe it’s so important to teach our young people to use them safely instead. Ask questions, not accusingly but in a curious way about what they are doing and how it all works and ‘I wonder if…’ type thoughts out loud about things that might go wrong. Give them tools to help them navigate the tricky parts while still getting the positive things they crave from it. I’d rather my kids have TikTok and talk to me about it openly knowing I won’t judge, than to ban it and them explore it secretly.

I completely agree for many things, @Hermanfromguesswho . But without supervision, parents cannot know by whom their children are being influenced and guided, at least until the child is of an age or maturity to make sensible considered choices themselves.

But I disagree about TikTok 😉. Nobody needs that toxic shit, least of all young people. The damage social media is doing to mental health is now well documented, especially in the US.

I do agree on supervision and keeping it all in the open. We still have restrictions on phones too (they lock overnight and after a set time) just nothing is banned outright

@Hermanfromguesswho it’s really reassuring to read that your daughter and my daughter are very similar. Mine also has a real love of the Warrior cats book series and will draw them for hours.

I agree with @LunaLovegoodsLeftEyebrow

And I say that as the parent of 1 diagnosed autistic 12 year old boy, and 1 probably autistic 22 year old daughter! So yeah, I know about parenting pre teens and about parenting autistic children.

Get them the fuck off YouTube and TikTok. If they really want to watch special interest stuff on YouTube, make a playlist for them and allow access only on the family TV in a shared area of the house. End of.

I completely agree. Our generation cannot just hark back to our own childhoods and attempt to ban technology that is woven into our current society. Look around every day and you see adults as well as young people glued to their phones on social media. I resent that my pre teen is being told that there is no place for her and her friends, all young girls finding their identities, on platforms like YouTube because of predators. Is that not the same as telling women to stay off the streets at night for their own good? My controls, for what is it worth, are- no WhatsApp or TikTok. All devices stay downstairs and do not go into the bedroom. My email is linked to her YouTube account so I can monitor all comments/subscriptions. I feel fairly comfortable with this but we are all in uncharted territory here!

I just found some videos on my daughter's history and she loves craft, but has been making cat masks and adapting slippers to be like animal feet. I googled therian and some other related terms and I'm disturbed to say the least. I was a little shocked to find this thread with so many parents having the same experience right now in these last few weeks. The fact that there are so many other parents seeing similar-aged children (mostly girls) all watching YouTube tells me this is not something our kids are 'born' with like the Therian websites She is now angry at me because I restricted her access to YouTube. I didn't block it, just limited it. If anyone comes out the other side of this, I'd love to hear their experience. This is really crazy stuff.

Just wandering how everyone’s going and if anyone has any success. I thought we had success and that this interest was becoming a thing of the past but nope it’s just rared its head again. Why is this so appealing to these young kids? What about it has such a strong hold over them?

new videos are appearing and the messages seem to be getting darker one of them talking about mental health and sucide because therians aren’t allowed to expressed their true selves. Now I know this can be a very real issue. But how is this stuff allowed on YouTube and this is reaching young impressionable kids. This is scary and there’s got to be a way to stop this content being uploaded

I wouldn’t be concerned really. It seems completely non-sinister to me and sounds more like an autistic special interest. If that’s the case, you shouldn’t limit it, she needs it like she needs air.

I’m concerned about your worry that she will ‘mark herself out as odd’ - you’re essentially asking her to mask, which is dreadful for autistic people’s mental health. She needs to feel accepted by you above all else, not pressured to fit in. If she’s autistic she will feel different anyway, she needs you to teach her that her difference is ok.

It sounds as though her special interest is the animal and the costume. It’s also giving her a way to relate to others. It doesn’t sound remotely like the furries, or sexual, or that she believes she is the animal. I would support her. And I do have an autistic pre-teen dd who doesn’t use TikTok or YouTube.

The suicide and mental health thing I would deal with by talking openly - that people can feel isolated and even think of suicide when they’re not accepted, but that she is always completely accepted for who she is so never needs to feel that way?

My daughter is not autistic, I do see through this thread there is a few whose children are autistic however my daughter isn’t.

I couldn’t really care less about the desire to wear and create masks and wear the other gear, that to me is self expression and I am all for that and her masks and tail have been made by her and I actually think they are extremely clever. I have discussed with her that home is her safe place and we do not judge and support her interests. We have also discussed that other people may have opinions about it and that as much as they should keep there opinions to themselves it’s not likely to happen and people can be mean.

she talks a lot about the fact that there are a lot of “fakes” out there. I have said to her that she shouldn’t comment on others being “fake” as they could be like her and exploring the identity itself and it’s not nice to call others names like that. We spoken about the fact that most of the videos online are made from people who have seen a side of therians that they like but might not be a therian and that it is okay to like aspects of a community and take part in the things they enjoy without being a “therian”.

my concern mostly comes from the amount of hate and negativity generated by the videos being posted online and some are of a very grooming nature.

I do feel my daughter has been influenced so to speak. She said her animal was a cat but then because someone said on a video that cats and wolves are used by “fakes” all of a sudden she is no longer feels a cat is the animal she identifies with because cats are an animal that are picked not a true therian. I really do feel her head is pumped full of so much trash information and contradicting information it’s not funny. If I try and talk about it using the research I have found, she tells me that those who are not therians shouldn’t speak about it because that’s where the misinformation is coming from.

the community that has been built on social media for therians sounds utterly toxic to me and it’s not something I want her involved with. But here lies the issue, I don’t want to stop her from being herself and I do support her.

Anyat24 you sound extremely sensible and supportive. I have a feeling that your child will be ok with your support and guidance.

At the moment my focus is on encouraging other interests and especially those that aren’t online.

She needs to feel accepted by you above all else

Hmm, the acceptance and unconditional support language is used often with this and other online communities. The other option appears to be ‘haters and fakes’. My view is that parenting involves making some decisions for your child that that might not like but which is in their best interests sometimes. I’m not comfortable with the narrative being fed that non acceptance of an interest or identity might mean suicide or MH issues. It’s a very toxic way to present a hobby. It’s cultish and leaves children open to grooming in my opinion.

I’m so glad I found this thread.

My 10yo daughter is on the spectrum. She’s very creative and started making masks which is where I believe she’s stumbled upon this ideology. At first I thought it was just some sort of game they played at break time at school and they would get bored of it, but now I know it’s a bit more in depth than that.

My daughter struggles to make friends as it is. There are only 6 other girls in her class of around 30 students so she’s had a bit of a tough time trying to connect with any of her peers, as other ‘neurotypical’ students have bonded into their own groups.

She found a friend in one girl who she played ‘cats’ together with as they both found it fun. But I’ve recently found out that the other girls parents told her not to play with my daughter anymore and make other friends and she needed to grow up as they are 10 and going into high school next year. As you can imagine, my wife and I were both devastated and angry to hear this, but there’s not really a lot we can do about it.

As with every parent with a child on the spectrum, we need to try and understand their way of thinking, so we’re just having to support her with this as much as we can. I have no issues at all with her play around the house, it’s what she enjoys doing and why should she grow up too soon? On the other hand, I have tried to explain to her that doing it out in public, most people won’t understand you and you will be leaving yourself open to abuse and harassment.

We have a woodland walk near to where we live so I’ve said we can go there and practice if she likes, at least then, I will be with her and have control of the situation for her own benefit.

Most of the Therian community from what I have seen so far are very friendly and seem to be kids who have just found it difficult to settle in socially. Which I can get and understand.

Its a very cruel world and unfortunately, society is not as accepting as we are led to believe.

I will have to say that it is really good exercise for youngsters. Quadraphobics is an actual exercise where you practice running and jumping on all fours.

I've tried to relax a bit about her doing it, but I have banned her from posting videos on YouTube and interacting with other YouTube posts. She's been getting hassle from friends from junior school about "eeer you're a furry what a freak". I've told her she doesn't need to label herself - if she enjoys making and wearing masks, fine by me. But she doesn't need a label for it

I respect your opinion, but also see that for an autistic person, a special interest is often a need rather than a hobby. The intensity of it isn’t a bad thing in that case.

And absolutely, we do make unpopular decisions in our children’s interests. But for me, the danger is in giving an autistic child the message that they need to behave like a neurotypical person.

It’s natural to want to protect children from unkind comments, but in my experience, doing that by asking them to hide parts of themselves is more damaging than anything unkind that could be said to them.

It sounds as though this has become a bit of an identity / community in the same way that we dressed as goths as teens etc in order to be part of something. So the point in it is community? I wouldn’t like the ‘fakes’ narrative either and I’d have said exactly the same as you.

It’s definitely true that not being accepted for oneself can be psychologically damaging.