Dd ran away to be with trans lover and refuses to return

[Moomoola]

Hi, I was posting in the teens section and got some good ad vice and a suggestion that I post here.
here’s a link to that thread www.mumsnet.com/talk/teenagers/4699011-sil-cancelled-visit-as-our-dd-wants-to-be-a-man?page=1
im using ‘dd’and ‘she’ to keep things simple.
basically dd at 15 decided she was trans and I took her to get some boys clothes and didn’t pay it enough attention. To my naive mind it’s not (or wasn’t ) an issue.
Shes now 17 and started to date a girl ( x) who is 17, who’s parents paid for male hormones since 15. That was some concern as obv. X will have been through a lot. Dd mentioned that x has some mental struggles, the mum hides vodka. Dd is pretty naive, has had a few challenges and can be gullible.
in the last 3 months dd was clearly struggling.
just befor Xmas I made her a cuppa and she had vanished. We tracked her down to x house which she refused to leave. It was ibvioly coordinated as there was a lot of phone alerts and the dad had obviously come to collect her.
I asked the mum to send her back as it was Xmas day and we were concerned. I get a text back from dd saying the mum doesn’t want to be involved and why did I deadname her.
The mum obviously didn’t need to show the text to dd. There are other red flags that the mum is stirring. We got texts from dd saying we are abusive transphobes. If we try and talk rationally that’s conversion therapy. We are concerned that dd is being encouraged to write these. The grammar is sometimes too good to be dds. Any ‘friendly’ texts seem to be late at night. Though I may be overthinking that.
live managed to see dd twice so at least we are talking, but it’s as if dd is hardening herself from us. She has decided to live with x and her mum and is in love and considering top surgery as she has dysmorphia. At least she is still going to school.
we registered it with the police who said this is happening a lot and it’s a pattern.
we are not concerned about the trans thing as such, though obviously that’s part of it, we are very concerned that since dating x, a seemingly happy dd got increasingly depressed and convinced we were transphobic to the point that she had to run to xs house where she feels supported, and we feel she is being love bombed, isolated from us and coerced into thinking she also needs hormones etc.
we are getting nowhere. I seem to be living in a dystopian world where everyone has fake smiles and suggests we call her by her new name and everything will be marvellous.
live contacted Bayswater group, and I’m posting here as suggested by a pp in case anyone can suggest anything else I can do. For dd but also Dh and ds. Dh obviously distraught the more he reads and ds is spending more and more time alone on his phone.
Many thanks.

Thanks wednesday and everyone. I’m re reading, and very grateful for all your posts.
i think you were spot on wednesday. And chickaboop that is a very important list. So much of abuse is as you say, very hard to tag.
at 12 we discussed similar. Her head was turned, as, probably, everyone else’s is at 17. And yes, normally, I’d be laying down boundaries. There’s something about it being trans that puts everyone in a spin.
I popped into a concerned parents meeting - discrete invites and held in a back room, and I’m shocked - pupils, teachers, even a doctor in a hospital- all feeling threatened if they don’t toe the line. And using anonymous names for safety reasons.
what is going on?
Re DD I’m so confused - ‘be accepting’ - well of course I am, my only reservations were that DD herself said that X was struggling mentally.
It’s just dawning on me that I’ve really lost her.

Hi @Moomoola - I’ve been reading this thread for a while now although haven’t had anything useful to add. You haven’t “lost her”, maybe temporarily, but please take comfort that the whole trans thing might possibly be getting a bit old hat for young people, it’s a fad, albeit rather more dangerous than Clackers were, back in my day. And although your daughter is completely embroiled with X I and X’s family, most teen relationships end sooner or later.

I agree with everyone who’s said keep a loose leash and establish your own boundaries. It’s a shame your husband can’t agree a united strategy though, feels like you’re the one expected to hold everyone else together. Keep going - nothing else you can do. x

There have been so many suggested texts, that I don’t know which you are agreeing with? . But having read the fuller account of your meeting with the therapists, I agree with your Dh. They aren’t providing a safe space for you to explore these issues, they have an agenda and they are imposing it on you. As I understand , that was the last session, so that’s good. You don’t have to resist and have that added to your list of transphobic crimes.
There is nothings no you can do to stop your Dd taking testosterone, short of kidnap. I will say again, that your attempts to engage only convince her of your bad intentions. If it was me, I would tell her that I love her and miss her, and that I am frightened she is making irreversible and ill thought out decisions, but that I will respect everyone’s need for space and peace, and leave further contact up to her. And I really really would. If she comes back( and I think she will), she comes back, if she doesn’t , you have started to rebuild and don’t spend the rest of your life in mourning. Sewing room , cat , second honeymoon !
Another anecdote. Ours went to University last Autumn, made no effort to keep in touch at all, all messages unanswered, even when our dog died, and then announced she was depressed and wanted to leave. The key thing is that all the time I was messaging , and asking how she was, we were ignored. But when I stopped, she became much more forthcoming.
1 day she messaged”I love you” and I responded “OK”. She told me later she showed her friends that and they were shocked. She didn’t show them the hundreds of messages I’d sent asking what was happening, and to please get in touch because I was worried. I told her that I’d been really hurt and upset by the previous silence, and the penny dropped that you get out what you put in. I learned from that, I am much less proactive now.

Look at this Twitter thread and take heart, @Moomoola . Whether it’s just because of Elon Musk’s relaxation of the rules or more people “peaking” (and I include myself in that category) because of Isla Bryson et al, or the “catgender”/teacher stories, or just pure teenage faddery, the tide feels like it’s turned.

https://twitter.com/3ScotchEggs/status/1673422434492379155

And for any TRAs reading this, I’m not suggesting kidnap!

Ohhh thanks! Thank you so much for your posts. I was very very down.
I love the comment after the tweet, that someone’s kids use ‘don’t be such a they/them’as an insult!
mavis ‘more dangerous than the clackers’ 😂😂 and didn’t everybody fashion a cardboard wrist guard?! ( now you’d buy one ! In exciting colourawys)
oh you’ve restored my sense of humor, thank you.
thanks zebra and all. You’re absolutely right. I’m wierdly bored and sad and emotionally drained by the whole thing.
I need to distance myself, get on with being me, and somehow not get sucked into DHs misery. Which sounds awful, but I can’t deal.
DH in pieces though. He’s so missing DD. He’s dealing with crap at work too.

It sounds like you had very judgemental pro affirmation therapists. A lot of people over value therapy and forget therapists all have their own opinions and beliefs.
Agree with others you need to let your daughter know you love her and are there for her and she can return if she wants. You don't have to subscribe to her belief system and can still think she may damage her body and regret her current and future actions. You can't stop her though and you need to get on with the rest of your life and focus on what you can control and things you enjoy and your son.
You can't control your husband's control freak tendencies and obsessional thinking but you can change how you deal with him and how much you let his usually bad ideas affect you.

Oh Moo - genderwoo is SUCH a shit show 😭

I wish I could be helpful but all I can offer today is commiserations.

Luckily the thread is full of wise women who have already offered sane, calm, constructive advice and I can just add some wailing to the background.

I do firmly believe the assertion above - this loss, this awful loss, is a temporary one. The grip that gender ideologues had on society is loosening and it’s a matter of time until your DD’s eyes open enough to see the bigger picture, every day is day closer to her frontal cortex becoming fully developed.
You have been gaslit into believing that you are not a loving and protective mother but YOU ARE and we can all see it and one day your DD will too.

The AA serenity prayer is a bit too cheesy for my taste but it comes to
mind when thinking about 18 year olds and cross sex hormones - we (and by we I mean a general ‘we’ as parents and specifically your DH as a dad!) have to accept that it’s something we cannot change.

Worth remembering that while the long term risks are unknown/concerning the short term risks are much less so - some detransitioners report backing away from medical transition quite quickly after starting hormones after realising that the idea of transition was more alluring than the reality.

There is no reason to think that young people who spend a year or two (or several) on opposite sex hormones will be in any more danger than previous generations of teens who took non prescription recreational drugs and came through it relatively unscathed.

Small comfort but honestly, if it came to a straight up choice between a dodgy online prescriber facilitating testosterone purchase via a pharmacy or illegal ketamine/heroin/amphetamine use I would prefer my child do the former.

Obvs neither would be preferable but there are lots of detrans females/reidentified women who now have only a few traces of their prior testosterone use and who are happily and healthily carrying pregnancies to term (not that every women should be expected to want/have babies, just saying this to point out that even the highly-testosterone-sensitive female reproductive system seems to be able to rebound pretty well after a few years testosterone use).

Perhaps a bit of a clumsy comment but what I hope to convey is that even if DD does start testosterone please do not despair - taking that step forward now does not mean she won’t eventually retrace her steps.

To put it in some sort of perspective, my youngest (the one who survived cancer related illness) has never returned to looking like her old self post treatment (she rapidly developed an awful cushingoid state due to the steroid meds and it looks like a lot of her adult teeth have been destroyed inside the gum by the chemo) but it does neither me nor her any good to think about what she would look like now if she had grown from ages 6-11 without any of those medications. We have to ‘accept the things we cannot change’ and do the best we can to mitigate the physical changes moving forward.

I realise that there is an extra layer of sadness and frustration for parents of gender distressed children and teens in that gender related medications are not actually life saving (despite what the activists say) but your DD is living with ‘transition or die’ as part of her community narrative and that narrative can be very persuasive (so for practical purposes, it may as well be real).

All this to say that whatever DD does today doesn’t necessarily have that much effect on 5 or 10 years time, and anything that does result in longer term consequences isn’t worth dwelling on now, but you can help DD cross that bridge when she comes to
it (as long as you’ve managed to preserve your own energy and sanity).

Can you get a counsellor/therapist just for you? I’ve had two lots of NHS therapy over the last couple of years (first 16 sessions of CBT and then 20
sessions of talking therapy a year later - now referred to a group thingy that should start around October) both therapists were women, one younger than me (probably mid thirties) and one older (around 60) and neither had any negative reactions to my mentions of DsD’s gender related issues - of course in solo therapy you are the focus so discussing how YOU are affected by the behaviours and emotions of others is absolutely expected (and therapists are absolutely supposed to be non judgmental).

In fact, the only mental health professional I have ever encountered who seemed to be Stonewalled was a paediatric psychologist in the psychosocial service at the hospital who was working with my youngest re: PTSD type symptoms - the reception area is full of LGBT awareness posters and I imagine his team have been up to the wazoo in Mermaidsy presentations for a number of years? Hopefully I opened his eyes a bit re: family dynamics and ROGD coming on after sibling or parent illness or after a significant bereavement.

I have recently noticed (via FB) that the sibling of one of my DD’s cancer ward buddies has transitioned FtM while her younger brother has been in treatment (for a very rare cancer with very poor prognosis).

Thinking about you everyday OP. You have our support. X

I want to add too that I don't think you've lost your DD either. I think this is temporary but can't say how long it will last. There are so many things that could become critically important to our children that we might disagree with, and part of them maturing has to be understanding that people can disagree but still love each other.

I do think a huge part of her relationship with x is pure drama. That will disperse at some point when real life takes hold.

My DD is starting secondary school and I noticed, on our school visit, that there are LGBTQIXYZLMNOP posters everywhere!! It is pride month, but ...

Then DD can home and was telling me about girls she bumped into who used to go to her primary school: 'Do you remember Susie? She's now called Elf'. Etc. After the sixth name was referred to I just said in a state of semi-despair "Darling, please don't start High School and become trans". She was quiet so I panicked, "...please don't tell me you're thinking about ...!". She just said, "Mummy, I just think it's all a little bit silly, isn't it...?" Her best friend thinks the same, so I really really really hope this stupid movement has hit its tolerance threshold among young people.

As an aside, I really don't understand what 'I don't feel safe' means in this context...? It's just weird.

“I don’t feel safe” means whatever you want it to mean, like saying “back along” down here in the south-west, which can mean last week or 1000 years ago.

Interpretations of “I don’t feel safe” may include “Please shut up, I have no answer to that”, “I don’t know why you even had me when you hate me so much!”, “Poor lickle me” and “Me me me me me me me me me”, for example.

@MavisMcMinty
That tweet deserves a thread of it's own!
So encouraging- I'm sure it will really cheer everyone up!

@MavisMcMinty 😂I think we could do a whole thread of interpretations of "I don't feel safe" or things which make TRAs feel 'unsafe' in general. It seems to be mainly words that make them feel unsafe: mostly it boils down to "I don't like what you're saying" maybe even "I know you're right but that's unbearable to me so shut up" and "la la la I'm not listening and you can't make me"

I don't understand how asserting parental rights for a child under 18 would ever be kidnapping...while I know Moo's DD has just turned 18, I have considered what it means for x's mother to have kept Moo's DD when she was a minor. Wouldn't the police have been able to come get her at some point? I'm not saying that wouldn't cause all kinds of problems, but legally, parents are responsible for their children and you can't just let a minor live w/ you w/out parental consent, like x's mom did.

But she is 18. And even under 18, that would be wrong. And guarantees status as trans kid most in need of protecting. IMO anyway.

Moo, I'm so angry on your behalf that the therapist suggested you and your DH did something wrong. Even though I can see your DH doesn't react the best, I honestly don't see any red flags in either of you being bad parents - you are loving and rightfully worried! Your DH's panic reactions are even understandable - he dearly loves your DD and this is uncharted territory. There's no roadmap for him and he doesn't have the female socialization like you do to seek out friends and support on MN. frankly too bad there isn't an equivalent MN for dads.

That therapist was so out of line they should be ashamed. Sometimes therapy is good, but sometimes it's worse than unhelpful. I hope your support here tells you that we care about you and think of you and your DD and family.

Heh, you start it, I’ve had no luck starting threads on here.

true for this current situation, but what about prior when she was a minor? The glitter families are not being held accountable.

I think sometimes ‘it makes me feel unsafe’ or references to safety can be a subconscious way of saying “I find what you’re saying challenging/challenges my world view or belief system” so it’s really thinking about the security (safety) of those beliefs when held up to the light or confronted with reality. #nodebate wasn’t just a way of trying to stop critical questioners, it was also a way to ensure the followers don’t question themselves.

I think also that sometimes it’s not our job as parents to make our children feel safe all the time once they are past being small children. It’s not our job to make the world emotionally safe and wrap them in cotton wool. We make them safe by giving them belief in their own worth as they are and by supporting them in facing them unsafe aspects of our world.

Moo I think time to get a new therapist (if you want one) who is able to keep their opinions to themselves. They are there to help you explore your feelings, not judge your actions and most therapists I know steer away from offering advice on what their clients should be doing.

As for responding to DD I think telling her that it is not your intention to make her feel unsafe but that she also needs to understand she is hurting you too.

‘I don’t feel safe’ could also equal ‘I don’t like the uncomfortable feelings I get when the idea that all this is rubbish is raised’ / ‘I don’t like the feelings of being normal and not special’ / ‘I don’t like the thought that if I’m not trans I might have to deal with the actual reasons for my feelings’ / ‘Who even am I if I’m not part of the trans community’ / ‘How would I admit that I did all of this for a fad’ / ‘If my parents aren’t mean and bad and wrong what does that make me’

Thanks all. delphinium of course we looked at what could be done. We registered it with the police, consulted a lawyer, asked consumer advise beureau, at 16 she is considered an adult here in Scotland. One lovely policeman said he’d like nothing more than to go round there, but he can’t and he advised us not to or they could get us arrested and make out we’d been aggressive (DH is a big chap). Another policewoman virtually accused us of being transphobic, as did the lgbtq bit of woman’s aid. Childline couldn’t help as I’m an adult, but recommended Mermaids, ditto NSPCC, as did a counselor friend. A teacher friend seems to think I’m not using pronouns enough. In short, there was nothing we could do. The mum seemed to think it was fine she was there, didn’t want money for food ( I wasn’t offering), and at the bottom of the list, DD said ‘it has been hard, sometimes hellish’ but she needed to do it for her own mental health. So any social worker etc will just say, well she’s happy and being fed.
It’s just that we know how hard DD finds boundaries. She said Xmas day was spent in a cold skatepark with X and Xs mate who doesn’t like DD. I’d have said,’see you later, I’m off to get my presents’ but she didn’t/couldn’t.
The only option would have been to call social services and our social services friend said that the most they would do would be to call DD and if she said she was fine, fine. They might go to the flat, but if it was clean and no obvious signs of dodginess they wouldn’t do anything, but they might investigate us as we get the impression that DD has told the school we are abusive. What she means by that I’ve no idea - it’s a catch all, scary term. Even her doctor said she couldn’t contact DDs new doctor and it would depend on the new doctors views as to whether she gets enrolled for a GIDs. Of course I wrote to the new doctor.
All doors are locked, and the people you’d normally turn to for help and advice are not there. This is why it ‘s so terrifying, as I’m sure many of you know. The parents meeting I popped into was full of professionals with anonymous names, too nervous to speak out. They were Having a secret meeting after being harassed when trying to hold a more public one. An 18 yr old bravely spoke up about the crap in her school and the culture of fear. It is absolutely terrifying and insane.

phew!
clog I send you all absolutely massive hugs. I googled cushingoid state and it seems yet another thing for you all to go through, cancer really is the disease that keeps giving. I’m so sorry, it’s relentless and never mind wearing pink and running marathons, the disease IS a bloooming marathon. You are immensely strong, and wise and I’m overcome by your generosity in posting on here. F**ck, you’ve been through it.

wednesday LGBTQIXYZLMNOP made me laugh, that’ll be the new alphabet posters for schools then! I might make it into a t shirt😊I’m very very glad your daughter shows sense. Well done daughter!
mavis I’ll post on your thread! Especially a positive one like that

faffer and missive yes, and this I think too. Especially after reading some of the trans subreddits.
thanks for all your kindness re therapists. I keep thinking how they ended the last session with,’it could have been sorted by now’’oh yes, a lot earlier’ I think they are referring to DH saying he wouldn’t use pronouns, though he then capitulated and now won’t again. I say,’play the system, then we can discuss pronouns, when we can actually talk to her. ‘ but he’s read that they are the gateway - just a shame we didn’t know when she was 15 and the school called us.
thanks all. You are very patient!
This
https://dustymasterson.substack.com/p/rapid-onset-terfing?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
might be useful. It is a letter by two 14 year olds explaining what it’s like to be in school atm.
please read and share!

Moo. By no means was I suggesting you and DH didn't do enough. I didn't know that 16 is the cutoff age in Scotland. I'm so sorry for all that. It's just so wrong. My heart breaks for you family.

Sorry delphinium I realized after I’d posted that it sounded a bit ranty, it wasn’t meant to be - I think I was trying to reassure myself that we’d done everything. It really is bizarre that everywhere you turn, you are the bad one for not being accepting enough. I also think this is designed to be done at Christmas so that of course, everywhere who might help is shut. Not that it helps when they’re open!
and you are up at 3.30! I hope you get some sleep soon! 🌺🌺🌺🌺back atcha.

My take on “I don’t feel safe” is it’s an emotionally manipulative phrase used to instantly shut down a conversation when a young person starts hearing some truths they don’t want to hear.

On a related note, this long tweet from a detransitioner talks about how she caused dysphoria in herself, constructed a fake reality around herself, and idolised a version of herself that didn’t exist. Of course I knew all this is true of trans teens but it’s so powerful to hear a detrans person lay it out like that. Especially the rage she felt when her fantasy was taken away from her by a sensible (non-affirming!) doctor. That’s what they mean by not feeling safe: not being able to luxuriate in their fake reality.