ROGD Parent Support

[iamright17]

This is a new thread for parents who are experiencing the phenomenon of Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria in their tweens/ teens/ young adults.

Sadly we are being watched and our words taken out of context so please be careful what you say.

I want the UK and beyond to listen to parents. Even if it is deemed as anecdotal for now, it is important for someone to acknowledge our perspective. The trans narrative is trying to undermine our credibility.

Hi, my 13 year old is autistic and is flirting with this. When she was 11 she was begging me to have her breasts surgically removed and asked me this year (quite casually) if she could take blockers. I asked her how she knew about them and she said 'everyone knows about them'.

It terrifies me. Her ASD makes her so vulnerable. Naturally, she thinks I'm a hideous bigot.

Sometimes you just want to give in to it as you feel pressured to provide your child with some sort of support even if it doesn’t make sense to you. But the reason I struggle with this is because there has been no exploration or scientific evidence that convinces me that this is in my child’s best interest.
Surely we as a society can do better than offering drugs and surgery for a feeling that is invested in sex roles and stereotypes? It is regressive and makes me so angry that our kids are being sold out. They are too young to understand life long medication and associated problems with drugs and surgery. This is why it seems to them that we are not supporting the medical side of transitioning cause they can’t see our justified concerns. The people who pushing the drugs and surgery for youth know we are right and they encourage our kids to see us as toxic and harmful. It is beyond belief.
Parents are trying to protect their child. I hope this thread will help others understand just how damaging the Gender Clinics have been. They are not doing what we thought. They have been complicit in this development. They should stand up and be accounted. Thankfully, past professionals who worked at these clinics are speaking out. It is important that the Gender clinics stop now.
The more parents document their experience with clinics, the more informed other parents will be and can be fore armed. These clinics will also know that they are being discussed and might consider their interventions and who they let drive policy.

‘everyone knows about blockers’
This says it all. But it’s not a social contagion!!!

I offer nothing but support and well wishes with this thread, much like the trans widows thread, I think this is very much needed and the ideal place. I'll be lurking and sending strength to you all.

Sending support for this very valuable thread. I shall be lurking and learning.

Thank you for starting this thread. Only parents who are dealing with this can really understand, but it's great to know that other people empathise and hear our concerns.

It is right that our young adult kids are being sold out - but it's really worse than that. What is happening is that gender non-conforming people are being engineered out of existence, all in the name of progress.

I'm bloody angry but I'm not allowed to say that in public for fear of alienating my own child.

Sending love and support.

These kids are being completely failed.

Year Head made all the changes (told teachers to use he/him etc), then told her 17 year old brother but did not tell us. DS had to tell us.

As are these kids. I can not believe the year head thought this was in any way appropriate or considered the brother in anyway. And why putting the 'trans kid' front and centre might be about attention / sibling competition and is never ever thought about.

There is a pattern to ROGD - and it helps us to see how similar our stories are,
because in that way we can start joining up the dots.

Yep.

I find the peer exposure in many of our kids' stories (not all) interesting.

Before my son's diagnosis of GD, he spent a year in a pretty intense friendship with a girl who I belatedly discovered spent that year identifying as trans.

I know the genderist spin is that 'two like souls found each other', but given I know that before meeting her, he did not have GD, and after a year with her he did...hmm...

She, of course, has moved on. Not trans now. My son is left dealing with significantly messed up ideas about what it means to be a feminine male.

*What is happening is that gender non-conforming people are being engineered out of existence, all in the name of progress.

I'm bloody angry but I'm not allowed to say that in public for fear of alienating my own child.*

Same here. There is so much I cannot say under my own name, for fear of alienating my child/ren. I feel estranged from my own voice, and increasingly estranged from my children as a result.

I cannot understand - literally - how so-called progressive parents are embracing this most conservative of movements. To the extent that without the ability to access anonymous online support, I'd think I was going mad.

Thanks to the people with experience or interest in the issue at large for popping by and for your solidarity. I think that's why this feels like a good space for me; women have our backs here.

Exactly. This is why it was posted on Feminism Chat as opposed to other threads re children. It’s the collective understanding and awareness of gender bollocks

Thanks for this. It really is like witch trials, I’m scared to speak. We had 18 months of hell, but at 16 she seems to be a girl again. Oh but the horror of it, of having to face down requests for life altering procedures, without getting labelled a transphobic. I thought I was going to lose my mind. Eventually I realised I had to be able to live with myself, and that it was ok for me to say no, but if that’s really important for you maybe we can make other arrangements. I think she must have sensed the change in me because it never came to that.. I know most parents try to do the best by their kids but never in a million years can I accept that the way to deal with dysphoria is to cut out the offending parts.
There clearly was social contagion and I think it’s moment has now passed, but obviously lots of young and vulnerable people are still caught up in it.
Best of luck to all of us that our children can learn to love themselves, and leave these narrow life limiting labels behind.

Activism has changed clinical practice without a basis in evidence for this cohort of patients, and is stifling research. Is there any other health issue where the patients get to call the shots?

I am so tired of people assuming I'm upset because I've failed to come to terms with having a transgender child. Or for just being "old-fashioned".

Thank you for starting this thread, my autistic son told me he was trans about a year ago. Luckily he seems to have changed his mind now, although I still have the worry that he's just waiting till his upcoming 18th when he can act on his own.

We were under the 'care' of CAHMs already for his depression, and they were quite ready to refer to Tavistock straight away and recommended Mermaids to me. I'm so grateful to MN for the information and support they've given. Without them, I may have followed the advice from CAHMs and we could be in a very different place today.

in our case it turned almost overnight, Stepdaughter (12 at the time) and I had a good conversation earlier this year, prompted by a school friend who identifies as non-binary. SD said emphatically at the time that she wasn’t at all gender conflicted and was happy to be female and bisexual (I swear they are all sitting under an LGBT sorting hat at the moment).

Roll on through first period and noticeable breast and hip development, a distressing incident of being catcalled by a grown man and almost passing out in PE due to wearing two too-small sports bras.

Without parental knowledge she had several sessions with a school counsellor who suggested that this new, intense dislike of her breasts might be evidence of a trans identity. Stepdaughter was sent by the counsellor into a rabbit hole of high profile YouTube transmen...

Just turned 13 year old SD is now begging for a double mastectomy!

Rapid Onset GD really is rapid.

First we knew about it was when school emailed home saying that in their opinion, stepdaughter would benefit from seeing a gender counsellor outside of school. Cam home clutching a leaflet for the local council-sponsored LGBT support groups. The trans page linked to the stupid fucking genderbread person.

Kids are confused about their gender because adults are providing them with confusing information.

DuMonde that's so terrifying! Schools have a lot to answer for in how they are facilitating this ideology and confusing children.

Pique Resilience Project recently posted 4 mini interviews.

Helena’s story is most like my SD’s.

Stepdaughter is into comic book culture and a bit socially awkward, suddenly faced with being seen as sexually attractive to predatory men. Who can blame her for wanting to retreat into ‘being a boy’ for a bit?

This is all happening a year after we almost lost my daughter, her littles step sister, to a rare, cancer-like illness, so I suspect there is some kind of trauma response tied in, along with possibly not having been the centre of attention for a year (bearing in mind that she was somewhat protected from knowing just how ill the littlest really was - we didn’t allow he to visit PICU, as an example).

Problem is, we can’t trust any professionals enough to help us unpack all this - the last thing we are going to do is let DsD anywhere near an affirmation model!

Helena’s story:

My kid is now 16 - adopted from care awful history of abuse and neglect- came to the realisation that she is a boy over a 2 week period in January. We will support whatever happens, but the affirmation only approach shuts down any possibility of exploration as to what is really going on.

The affirmation model validates an immature thought process. It does not not allow for exploration because once affirmed, appropriate exploration would be deemed as ‘conversion’. This is such a dangerous model that the gender clinics and our schools and all institutions are implementing. How can this be happening? I really don’t get it. Find out Why and explore this. This cannot be achieved in as little as 6 sessions. It might take years. Brain maturity is 25ish. I find it crazy that we see affirmation as progressive. No one cares.

Iamright We care, truly we do. More people are questioning. Maya is doing a wonderful job at the tribunal. Women are steadfastly campaigning in every way they can. There are always virtual hands online.

Dd seems to have passed through the trans thing that was so bloody intense for the time it lasted. She has friends from her brief time with CAMHS that are identifying as all sorts, and she seems to view it all with an angry contempt. Because CAMHS did fuck all, really. We waited a very long time, she had a couple of sessions of counselling and a couple of groups, and then she was discharged because the overt self harm seemed to have stopped and she just clammed up in group sessions.

She's still dealing with very poor mental health and self esteem. She eventually disclosed to me that she had been assaulted on the way home from school about 6 months before she started identifying as male. She sees people she knows who are still under CAMHS care 'coming out' as NB or Trans, changing names and pronouns, and everyone buzzing round them like bees round flowers. You can see the utter abandoned distress on her face when she mentions the latest one, and I know that it is probably very tempting for her to slip back into things, but she's also growing up to be as bloody stubborn as I am, and she knows she isn't male, however much she hates her body.

Erial -I think there is research showing an over representation of adopted children children in gender clinics - I'll see if I can find it. I'd certainly get it in writing somewhere in her recent medical records in case she doesn't volunteer the information further down the line.

Floral so pleased your daughter has come through this.

As the aunt of a young autistic woman who has been taken in by the specialness of this and the fact that she’s now the centre of the family’s attention, I’m so sorry you’re all going through this with your own poor children. They are homophobic, still won’t acknowledge that their 30yr old daughter/sister is a lesbian and yet swallow the whole trapped in the wrong body religion, with regards the youngest daughter.