DD 13 overdosed and thinks she’s trans

[QueenBing]

I am really struggling to deal with this. This might be a bit long but I don’t want to drip feed.
DD is 13, openly lesbian and has a girlfriend. Just under 2 years ago, her dad and I split up and divorced due to him cheating on me multiple times. He moved an hour away and he sees DD (13) and DS (11) on Sundays for 6 hours. This is his choice. ExDH has a very strained relationship with DD, they argue a lot and he’ll simply walk away from her and blank her for weeks at a time. A few months after we split, DD took 3 overdoses weeks apart (first was ibuprofen, second was paracetamol…I thought I’d hidden all the tablets in the house but I’d missed a pack, I still feel the guilt, third was a massive paracetamol overdose when she’d been out with her dad and he’d bought 2 packets of paracetamol and he’d left them in their picnic bag). She admitted she was struggling with the divorce and family breakup and also she felt that she was in the wrong body. The last overdose was July 2022. Since then, if she’s had period pain or headaches, I’ve given her 2 paracetamol which I’ve made her take in front of me. It turns out that for the last few months she’s been spitting them out and hiding them in her room, she’s collected 8 tablets. She confided in a teacher at school this week and the teacher rang me. We had a talk and she said she’s still struggling adjusting to our new family set up, she feels excluded in her dad’s new life and she wants to be a boy. She also told me she’d told her dad she was keeping the tablets but he didn’t tell me. I have had words with him about this saying it’s basic safeguarding to tell me in order to keep her safe (we’re both teachers, he should know better) but he deflected responsibility onto me saying it was my fault for not checking DD had swallowed the tablets properly and if I made more of an effort with her I’d have known she was hiding tablets. Since July 2022, all tablets have been in my handbag and my handbag goes all over the house with me.
The gender dysphoria has now ramped up and she wants to live as a boy; cutting her hair, changing pronouns and changing name. With everything going on, she’s vulnerable and she’s under the youth mental health team. They’ve recommended I refer to an organisation which specialises in LGBT+ issues which I’m happy to do. DD is highly intelligent and in an assessment she had, the psychologist said she shows traits of autism so she’s on a waiting list of 4.5 years to see someone for a diagnosis. A private consultation is £400 which I haven’t got but I am saving for it. DH has refused to pay towards it.
I don’t know how to handle any of this. We walk on eggshells around her because if we say the wrong thing, she blows her top and self harms. It’s actually quite manipulative. Her dad has borderline personality disorder and honestly, she shows many traits.
So do I go with her wanting to live as a boy and facilitate this or do I explore the autism diagnosis first?! I just don’t know and the whole situation is awful.

There’s one group in particular who give her a hard time for being openly gay and it upsets her

And that's another possible reason that she feels it would be easier to be 'a boy with a girlfriend', surely, rather than a lesbian girl.

I’m sorry this is happening. Random thoughts…

Clearly this is all about the combination of her SEN with her relationship with her dad and the timing of puberty. Ideally she needs counselling with a therapist experienced in autism, parental relationship difficulties and self harm. I would not let here anywhere near a specialist LGBT therapist. Her issues aren’t caused by her sexuality; her obsession with being a boy is caused by her dad having a better relationship with her brother and the divorce etc etc. Transgender Trend may be able to suggest a good therapist, or other resources.

Take away her unsupervised internet access, if she’s reading sites like Mermaids she’s absorbing some very toxic content.

If she’s reaching out for a community and only finding LGBT, would it help to offer her other welcoming communities? I’m thinking drama groups, church groups (I’m not religious but I love how welcoming church is), Air cadets, Scouts, volunteering at a museum…

If you decide to allow social transition (which seems unwise but obvs depends how the self harm goes) then one option would be to remove her from school and start her somewhere else as a boy. (I’d expect people to soon notice she’s a girl though, I mean it’s pretty obvious from the adam’s apple and jawline etc., and if they feel deceived that could be worse).

I don’t think anything else has gone on recently. In y7 they were taught in mixed ability tutor groups and she hated it. When she was set in y8, she went into top sets for everything and found her tribe. I have friends who teach at the school and they said her friendship group is lovely and she’s hanging around with the nicest girls in the year group. She’s gone into y9 this year and due to the RAAC problems, they’re in temporary classrooms and they’ve had to change the timetable to enable the teachers to teach across different sites miles apart. The school is huge so y7 and y8 are 5 miles away in a conference centre, y9-11 are in the temporary classrooms and 6th form are all over the place. This means that if there’s certain teacher she feels able to talk to, there’s no guarantee she’ll find that teacher on that particular day as they could be elsewhere. The school have said she can talk to their designated safeguarding leads and they’re checking in on her, they flagged the CAMHS crisis team, and they’re putting her on the school counsellor’s list. She’s seen the school counsellor before, she’s well aware of the history, but the appointments stopped last year when DD was feeling more positive. She’ll be seen soon, I’m sure, and the teachers are keeping the counsellor up to date with everything going on.

I have also thought this.

Funny you mention church. We’re catholics and the kids are at catholic school. DD decided to stop going to church a few years ago because she said she wasn’t welcome being gay. She’s said she was gay from about y5 in primary school. I said that wasn’t the case but I wasn’t going to force her to go. Then the divorce happened and we all haven’t practised as much as we used to. In the week where she told the teacher about the tablets, she’d also told me she wanted to go back to church because she’d seen an angel. I took her to church on Sunday, after the tablets revelation, and I asked her if she’d enjoyed it. I got a shrug and a grunt, then she said she didn’t want to go back.

Shes very socially awkward so she won’t even let me get her guitar lessons because she’ll have to play in front of someone. She hates sport. Anything that involves a bigger group of people is a no which makes me think of autism. She gets easily overwhelmed. She’s said she wants to do the D of E which I’m all for so maybe that’ll get her into walking.

If I do allow the transition I agree it would be better for her to start somewhere new, but she won’t leave her friends. Also I know a lot of the staff at her current school as I used to work there so I’ve got eyes on her! She also likes being at the same school as her brother but at the minute they’re on different sites due to the RAAC putting the school buildings out of action. I think she’s missing him a bit, they’re very close.

Don’t let her anywhere near a lgbt plus counselor, as Saturday shop says. We’ve had a terrible time because of the school sending DD to one, affirming idiots.
look up Genspect, they have a thing called GETA which is a directory of gently questioning therapists. And questions to ask before you sign up.
good luck , very difficult times for you, 💐
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She's very socially awkward so she won’t even let me get her guitar lessons because she’ll have to play in front of someone. She hates sport. Anything that involves a bigger group of people is a no which makes me think of autism.

She sounds very like me at that age (I don't have a diagnosis, but two of my kids do), so I'm going to suggest a couple of things that I coped with and enjoyed.

The first is a pet, if that's feasible. Dog, for preference, or a sociable cat, or a couple of guinea pigs.

The other (sort-of sport, true, but nicely solitary much of the time) is something like kayaking or sailing. Bodies are pretty well covered up by wetsuit and waterproofs, and you can scootle along with your thoughts and the breeze, literally blowing the internal angst away.

Oh, and there's no rule that you have to play music to anybody. I hated (still hate!) playing when anyone else is in the house, let alone playing to an audience.

A bit of an update..
ExDH dropped the kids back late on Sunday which meant I couldn’t go out as I’d planned so I messaged him yesterday saying I needed a more formal arrangement with his visits. I suggested a half hour window for drop offs and pick ups and asked him to message me directly (not through the kids) if there were to be any changes. I sent this message around 3pm.
At 8pm, he sent me a massive message saying he’s now supporting DD in living as a boy. He’s using he/them pronouns and calling her by her chosen boy’s name. He said we have a “duty to keep them safe” and “we can start by doing something as simple as using their chosen name and pronouns.” No discussion with me about this, he’s just told her that’s what’s happening. So now I look like the unsupportive transphobic parent because I’ve said I won’t do this until there’s been input from a counsellor or psychologist. It’s all a huge mess and I think he’s pandering to DD to score points. It’s rich he says “we” have a duty to keep DD safe…was that his thinking when he didn’t tell me he knew she was stashing paracetamol?
Against my better judgement, I have referred DD to an lgbt organisation but I have included lots of background information about the family trauma, bullying, self harm and volatile relationship with her dad. I’m now looking into private appointments with a psychologist, not a gender specialist, to tackle the other issues. Her dad has joined Mermaids and he’s contacted GenderGP who seem very affirming.
He sees the kids once a week on Sundays for around 6-7 hours (his choice), he does the occasional overnight (if I were to average it out over 12 months it wouldn’t even be one a month) but now he’s decided he’d like to see them on Wednesday evenings 6-8pm. The kids are delighted with this so I can’t really say no but he is encouraging DD’s fixation on being a boy and I feel powerless.

Re, GenderGP you’re probably aware that she was struck off but in case not…

https://www.bmj.com/content/378/bmj.o1633#:~:text=Helen%20Webberley%2C%20a%20GP%20who,care%20of%20three%20young%20patients.

I’m very sorry how this is playing out. It looks like the Dad is using this to get popularity points with your DD.

As tempting as it must be to go along with the trans identity, the new name, the new appearance, potentially taking hormones, cutting off her breasts… I can tell you one thing: it won’t fix anything. It must be SO tempting to go along with it all in the hope that it is the root cause of your child’s distress, and everything will get better going forward, but it won’t.

The narrative parents get fed is that affirming the identity keeps your child from committing suicide. It is a manipulative lie started by pro trans lobby groups and repeated like a mantra.

You cannot separate the trans identity from the (potential) autism and the mental distress. They are all inextricably linked.

I have autistic kids so I really do know how difficult it can be, how distressed they can be trying to live in the NT world, how desperate some of them are to pin their feelings of “otherness” onto being trans. There’s something very enticing about a trans identity. Reinventing oneself. Suddenly being cool when your whole life you’ve been the class weirdo.

The problem you now face is that your ex is going to be the Disney Dad and use this as a stick to beat you with.

I didn’t know this at all, thank you for the link. It actually strengthens my case that we need to wait.
The only reason dad is entertaining this is because it’s an easy way to be popular with her. If he was doing due diligence he’d realise this isn’t the way to go yet.

I agree with everything you’ve said. Her dad has BPD and DD shows many traits of this, more than autism I’d say. Dad is very much a Disney dad. There’s no parenting, just wants to be their mate, still wants to control me and now there’s this. He’s a very manipulative man and when things don’t go his way he turns nasty. I know when he gets bored of this he’ll run a mile and I’ll be picking up the pieces. Again.

FWIW @QueenBing many people now say that lots of people get BPD diagnoses when it is in fact autism.

Er, A&E when she overdoses but not by ambulance - it can often actually take longer and even a serious paracetamol overdose takes literal days to be fatal. She needs emergency care but as she’ll likely be perfectly capable of walking, she’d be taking up an ambulance needed by someone else.

I don't know how possible this is but I think this is a situation where you and ExDH need to try to work together and co-parent. It is very worrying that he is affirming without your consent and the organisations he has approached are pro-transitioning.

Can you possibly try to meet with him to show him the evidence on these boards regarding the dangers of transition and the fact that Gender GP is struck off?

Otherwise i really fear you will be fighting a losing battle and she will just go to dad if you don't support.

to you, this is an awful situation.

Yep, I’ve never used an ambulance to get her to hospital. I’ve driven her every time. You still have to wait 4 hours post-overdose for the first blood test anyway, plus I live close to a hospital.

It’s impossible to come to any sort of arrangement with him. It’s not for want of trying, he’s just so manipulative and pig headed that it’s his way or no way. For example, both kids could do with losing a bit of weight so I asked him not to feed them junk food. He agreed and said he supported me. The kids then come home with a multipack of crisps, a cinema size bag of sweets each, a 6 pack of cans of pop (sugar free) and a box of cakes. This has happened time and time again, he ignores everything I say. I’m at the point where I’m looking at court orders to see if I can limit his interactions with the kids because, quite frankly, they’re damaging. The junk food isn’t an isolated incident either.
I know now I could send him 10 bits of evidence for every 1 he has arguing the case against a 13 year old girl transitioning and he wouldn’t care. (There are multiple reasons we’re divorced, this constant undermining being one of them.)
I’m not even saying I’m anti-trans but at 13 in the throes of puberty, I’m certainly not pro.

Being overweight is no doubt also contributing to her being uncomfortable in her body, feeling insecure, not wanting to do sports, feeling depressed, and then clingingon to "being a boy" to escape all of those expectations put on girls that she doesn't think she fits. It's all such a vicious circle.

Poor you, and your poor DD.

Be aware Mermaids is under investigation by the charities commission. Also 2 of the Trustees resigned under a bit of a cloud.

Hi @QueenBing,
My dd15 had a really tumultuous time at that age. She also cut off all her hair, was convinced she was trans, wanted to breast bind, the school let her change her name and pronouns. She self-harmed and also mentioned suicidal ideation to the school ( although didn't attempt it). My exh and I had separated a year or so before.
She has completely changed her mind about all of that now. She has grown her hair again, loves wearing cute, girlie outfits, loves make-up and jewellery. She is loads happier now.
I just told her at the time that she was too young to pin her flag to any mast. I supported her preference to dress / look boy-like but refused to let her bind her breasts. She thanks me now.
Teen brain chemistry is like a rollercoaster. They can be convinced of one thing one month and the opposite the next. And that's okay. I told her I would support her in testing out all the different possibilities but she didn't need to make big choices about anything yet. All the best.