If your child has come out as trans what are you doing?

[Eatingchips]

I suppose I am interested in this because 3 years ago my DD suggested she might be trans and it is ongoing.

She says that some days she feels like a boy and some days she feels like a girl. She considers herself non binary and has the pronouns they/them - she/her and he/him and wants all 3 used interchangeably. She has given herself a male name but we don’t use that because a diminutive of her actual name is unisex/male and I have always mainly called her the diminutive name anyway so we have stuck to that.

She has all her life been gender non conforming whatever that means or an old school tomboy and coming from that experience myself I have always whole heartedly embraced that aspect of her.

She has some trauma in her past. She also has many traits of ASD which are becoming more pronounced as she gets older and a diagnosed sibling and another sibling likely to have ASD as well.

She is fully out in school and this is rife in her friend group.

My main focus at the moment is to embrace what she says in order not to alienate her. She feels how she feels and since that isn’t rational I’m trying to meet her where she is at. I have told her that we will support her no matter what and no matter where this journey takes her but I have discussed the perils of the medicalisation of trans people and how it is unlikely that anyone who could recover psychologically if they despised their body all their lives no matter how much surgery or treatment they had. I explained to her that the brain operates on patterns of thought and just because you change your body if you continuously have patterns of thought hating your body then most likely it will take an incredible effort to shift your brain from those patterns of thought even if you’ve changed your body. That seems to have helped her to make peace with her body as it is at the moment because in many ways she is a very rational person.

But it is an incredibly tricky path and we are very reluctant to involve psychologists or medical professionals given the culture of the moment. What are others doing? I’d love to hear from other parents in a similar situation.

@Eatingchips I've sent you a PM.

Thanks @RafasLeftBicep

There is an unspoken assumption underlying your thought here that may, if brought to the surface and challenged, help clarify what you think - and hence inform what you do.

The assumption, simply put, is that there is such a thing as being the opposite gender. We can make sense of being the opposite sex (whilst knowing it to be impossible), but it is not so easy to make sense of talk of being the opposite gender.

(An aside: in fairly recent times, 'gender' was often used synonymously with 'sex', a usage usually motivated by a kind of squeamishness about sex as an activity. Unscrupulous activists sometimes use this synonymity to confuse, deliberately or not. We should avoid that here; I distinguish 'sex' and 'gender' above and in what follows.)

OK. Now think about beliefs. A young person may mistakenly believe she is overweight, and try to avoid eating, injuriously to her health. A solution (not necessarily easily achieved) may be to convince her her motivating belief is false.

Likewise, a young person may believe she is the opposite gender, and perhaps seek to bind her breasts or whatever, injuriously to her health. Again, a solution (again, not necessarily easy) may be to convince her her motivating belief is false.

The cases seem similar. Both involve false beliefs. But I want to suggest there is an important difference.

In the first case, the belief is indeed false, but it could have been true; it makes sense (though it be false) for that person to believe she is overweight. The belief in question, we might say, is thus only contingently false.

In the second case, and by contrast, the motivating belief is necessarily false; it could not have been true, since there is no such thing as being the opposite gender. (Here is a point at which "'gender' is not a synonym for 'sex'" is important; of course there is such a thing as being the opposite sex.)

Contingently false belief vs necessarily false belief as causes of pathology: should these give rise to different ameliorative strategies - different therapies? It would seem so.

The second case - belief in opposite gender - is at issue here. Perhaps, given the modal status of the motivating belief, a therapeutic strategy emphasising the semantics of the belief is called for. In simple terms, this might consist in starting with questions (to the young person) about what she means by 'gender', 'opposite gender', 'sex', 'identity' and so on, and going on to investigate the sensicality of what she claims to believe about herself.

Of course this is likely to be difficult. Any young person claiming to be the opposite gender is very tangled in her thought; such thoughts are notoriously difficult to disentangle. But it does seem to be called for - and, yes, be assured it can work.

Such a strategy, note, in concentrating on the sense of the motivating belief, differs substantially from what might be best in other cases where the motivating belief for the pathology in question is contingently rather than necessarily false. In such cases, the truth of the belief is required to be challenged from the outset.

So - tldr - although both cases involve an aetiology of false belief, the differing modal status of the beliefs in question may imply different therapeutic strategies. (And 'opposite gender' has no sense, albeit that 'opposite sex' does.)

I hope this makes sense (!) to you, OP and others. And I hope it may help in some small way with the difficult situation(s) you find yourself/yourselves in.

@cigiwi
i think I see what you are saying.
some thoughts - I personally, as GC, don’t believe in gender identity, I do believe in the reality of sex. I am therefore able to cope with, to a certain extent, the fact that my daughter identifies as the opposite gender because it is not real to me. I’ve stated long ago (before I was GC or had an understanding of what that was), that you can’t change sex, and I think my daughter might agree with that.
My daughter, and I think many like her, doesn’t really have gender dysphoria. When she is going through a period of anxiety/stress/depression she tends to focus on gender a bit like using cutting as a coping strategy. She then has become focused on needing testosterone so that her voice changes etc. If I can get her through these phases, which are becoming less and less thankfully, I have noticed the need to for her to push forward with transition lessens.
Her ideas around gender are not really clear. I think she felt it made her special to be part of a niche group and that is important to her. Underneath it all she has very low self esteem and being ‘trans’ is like a security blanket for her. My job is to help her feel good about herself. Something I wasn’t doing when we were battling all the time. I do think it is important to challenge her beliefs, but very gently and that’s why I’m focusing on the sex part, because I think she can understand this. If I discuss gender with her, I would get internet rubbish parroted back at me.

If a child is completely immersed in gender ideology, and by that I mean peer group are trans/nb or “allies” and pushing GI, online activity is heavily focused in GI, school are supporting a social transition and through it, giving the child the message that their parents are not supportive etc, I don’t think anything a parent says about the issue will make a blind bit of difference. Sometimes the best strategy is to just always be open to listening to the child’s perspective and hope that as they mature they will distance themselves from the ideology.

I do think encouraging critical thinking around other issues can help without tackling gender head on- there’s generally some topic or another doing the rounds on TikTok or in current events.

Absolutely agree with this.

I hear the genuine frustration from posters speaking about this from the theoretical perspective of how they would like to handle teens/children who have been influenced by this ideology but as with anything the reality of dealing with it in practice is very different.

My 15 year-old daughter recently asked me what I would do if she announced that she was trans. I told her I would ask her why; I would assume that she was very unhappy and would want to know the reasons for this and how I could help. She seemed satisfied by this answer but then asked, “what would you do if I said I wanted to take hormones or have surgery? “. I gave my best attempt at answering this question. “I would do everything in my power to try to stop you from damaging your body. If it meant taking you out of school, giving up my job, flying to a remote part of the world and going trekking together until you changed your perspective then I would do that “. She pondered this for a moment. “Good”, she said. “Thank you”.

I thought this was an interesting conversation and wonder why she asked; some kind of test maybe? And of course, as others have said, this was entirely theoretical. I can't claim to know how I would react if a child of mine was truly distressed about their gender and begging for my help.

@Bitebite it is great to see that not all teens are completely enamoured with the ideology. Even my older DD who is not trans is completely on board with its prevalence in teen girls, the medical pathway used to treat it, no questioning it.

The critical thinking issue is interesting I actually think critical thinking is not as prevalent as we would like to believe.

<Trigger warning >There was extremely serious abuse in my family growing up from a sibling to his sisters including me. My extended family is full of people who should be engaging in critical thinking - doctors, engineers, teachers, PhDs and what did they do in response, pick up the rug and get out the sweeping brushes and sweep it under the rug. Losing all of that family connection following the abuse coming out is the trauma my child experienced. That reaction is par for the course in families. In my experience there isn’t routinely critical thinking on emotional issues affecting people. I think humans in general are far more emotionally driven and far less rationally driven than people realise. With that in mind I treat gender issues this as an emotional issue that needs emotional solutions rather than a rational issue which I can just argue logically with my daughter about or just take her in hand and sort it out. We will see though in time I guess.

Of course you're right that emotional problems need emotional solutions. And arguing logically with some adolescents is a non-starter.

But can't we be rational about the emotional support we offer, and likewise about emotional solutions? -- Yes, it's difficult to challenge adolescent feelings with logical argument. One way of dealing with this difficulty, I have suggested, would be to centre the adolescent by asking her to explain what she means rather than challenging the veracity of what she says.

This approach seems warranted by the problem itself here; it also has the particular advantage of (at least overtly) putting the adolescent in charge of the discussion, whilst the adult (not so much covertly, but maybe tacitly at least) has the opportunity of offering guidance, even if this latter amounts to little more than, "I'm sorry, I still don't get it: what d'you mean by ...", or "When you say ..., what do you mean by ...", and so on

It seems it should be possible to remain rational in such an endeavour. In fact aspects of this approach are explicitly part of many well-attested therapeutic practices. So-called 'Reflection'-based therapies proceed without challenging (logically or otherwise) the feelings or expressions of the clent. This is a rational way of offering support and assistance without necessarily giving in to emotions and feelings.

In line with this, please don't think I am challenging your way of dealing with your child. You in a difficult and unenviable place, I know; I am trying to offer a way of thinking about what it is you're doing, no more. One thing is clear, at least: your love for your child. I do hope things work out for you both.

@cigiwi I absolutely appreciate your input here. In the main I have found people have offered really helpful advice on this thread which I am very grateful for.

I haven't suggested that you can force your views on them.

You can say you won't tell lies, ie using counter-factual pronouns, or that you do not believe it is ok to compel the speech of others and demanding use of certain pronouns is doing that and you won't be part of it, or say that the law says kids can change their name legally once they are adults for good reason and that is up to them when they get to that age.

Which is to say, if they don't want you to force your views on them, they also need to have the same respect for others.

I'm not sure why you think people who disagree with you are speaking theoretically.

I don’t think all of them are @MangyInseam but some posters have been.

I hope it goes well with your child. It is such a difficult situation.

You can say you won't tell lies, ie using counter-factual pronouns, or that you do not believe it is ok to compel the speech of others and demanding use of certain pronouns is doing that and you won't be part of it, or say that the law says kids can change their name legally once they are adults for good reason and that is up to them when they get to that age.
^^
I agree with all of this.

We don’t use pronouns. We use a diminutive gender neutral name. I don’t discuss trans issues with her much because my kids have lost every member of their extended family on one side in the last 4 years arising out of the abuse issues I mentioned so we have enough contentious issues to get through.

@Eatingchips Like any discussion about parenting I suppose they'll always be people to tell us we're doing everything wrong. I'm trying not to take anything too personally - I think any parents who are reading and commenting in FWR are likely to be pretty GC but as with any parenting issue whilst we all want to do our best by our kids figuring out how to achieve the outcome we want (uncomfortable kids going up into comfortable happy adults) can be a tricky process.

I suppose my approach is probably best summed up as (some) people want to damage my relationship with my daughter, to get her to not trust me and to keep secrets from me. This is, for numerous reasons, a safeguarding risk. Fighting constantly or not showing her that I value her would play into their hands rather than undermine their strategies. Therefore I chose to place my daughters comfort ahead of any theoretical point scoring in conversation with her. I listen to her feelings, I do my best to understand her feelings. I respectfully come to different conclusions about the implications of her feelings. i.e. recognising that she does feel x but that feeling x doesn't mean she isn't a girl, that somehow x was a thing girls weren't allowed to feel.

I try to reassure her I'm on her side by siding with her about the trivial choices she can take to feel more comfortable i.e. trousers not skirts to school, and we jointly mock the sexism that means boys trousers are less tight and have pockets whereas girls school trousers do not. Whilst agreeing with her about serious stuff such as the girls not being given sufficient time and privacy to get changed after pe (the girls were told to change in a corridor, if you weren't fast enough boys and girls would just start walking through it) for girls at the just developing boobs stage this has been a terrifying and distressing plan. (I only learnt about it later but complained to the school when I did).

I feel like I'm making progress but we aren't 'out of the woods' yet. We aren't quite at the 'turn the internet off at home for 10 years' / never speak to (certain relative) / never see (certain family friend) / move abroad (not even clear which country one could go to) for a decade but such things have crossed my mind.

A hearty dose of love and sympathy for all the parents trying their best to support kids who are trying to process some very confusing stuff.

I would say at the very least I am trying to do the same @howdoesatoastermaketoast some days succeeding more than others . I’ve definitely 180 degree turned my parenting over the last few years to deal with this and other issues my family have faced and I’ve adapted and learned but same as everyone I’m making mistakes all the time as I learn and just hoping to do better bit by bit.

I think any parents who are reading and commenting in FWR are likely to be pretty GC but as with any parenting issue whilst we all want to do our best by our kids figuring out how to achieve the outcome we want (uncomfortable kids going up into comfortable happy adults) can be a tricky process.

Very true.

@Eatingchips that's certainly the impression I got.

/fingers crossed for us all

Marking space

@cigiwi it's a really useful contribution I thinks thanks - I think this is what I've trying to do but you explain it better.

@LittlestBaoBun , may I ask what your thoughts are on the responses you've had to your statement 'blockers buy the family time.' ? In relation to things like the Cass interim review, the NHS changing its stance etc.

OP, I do hear what you're saying about critical and emotional thinking, and how solid, hard and real the latter can be.

I recall when the 'Momo' panic happened, childrens' responses - including my DC's - was astonishing. Genuine hysteria. Pure, unadulterated social contagion, of course - no sight of the image that had caused the panic, but the whole thing tore round the school like wildfire and most of the children were affected, frightened and anxious about it. I was at a loss with what to do about that level of irrational fear, tbh.

The difference, maybe, is that that was incredibly intense but also brief. It wasn't being reinforced by authorities/adults, it burned out really quickly (thankfully).

I'd like to hear that, too, @DameHelena

You were much more polite about it than I was.
I thought they were talking out of their arse.