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.

I agree with bezmills thank you bearingfalsewitness waht a wonderful, heartening post. I’m so sorry you and your family went through cancer. It’s certainly not all pink ribbons and marathons!
if it’s ok I will mull over your kind words and reply tomorrow after a nights sleep.
thank you very much indeed. All my best x

BezMills · Today 20:39
I think that's a really thoughtful post @BearingFalseWitness

So do I, and what you say is so wise.

I should mention she was 17 when I was diagnosed so got through the last couple of years of high school with all that going on. Yet it’s only seemed to hit her extra hard years later. Maybe with time and space she feels safe enough to let it all come out, and in my experience girls do tend to internalize and blame themselves when they struggle.

How very difficult for you, her and your family. I hope you are well now 💐

I saw the same happen to a good friend after uni. His mother died in the final year of high school and he went off the rails after university. His psychologist thought it was him finally processing his grief for his mum.

Thank you everyone.
bearing falsewitmpness I’m so sorry you had to got through that. I will certainly take your advice, a regular walk and breakfast sounds wonderful, if I can get her to come.
you’ve also thrown some light on our situation, I had cancer when they were in primary school and Dh struggled to keep it all going. Dd only once talked about it and said it was hard because they’d see me getting whisked off in an ambulance and not know when I’d return.
Dh was then seriously I’ll. And it was my turn to keep it all together! It’s the fear of the operation etc but also the depression that follows any life threatening illness. We have wonderful friends who helped, but gosh dd and ds has been through an awful lot.

I also just learnt you can book into a gender clinic online. Didn’t know! Or how ridiculously easy and cheap it is.

well done uk government for stopping sturgeons insane bill.

I think you are right here as well bearing when you say in my experience girls do tend to internalize and blame themselves when they struggle
thank you so much for your help. And to everyone else.

Part 2 of graham linehan de program trans dd.
f**k.

grahamlinehan.substack.com/p/deprogramming-your-rogd-teen-part?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=67309&post_id=96474268&isFreemail=true&token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoxMjIxNTcxMjcsInBvc3RfaWQiOjk2NDc0MjY4LCJpYXQiOjE2NzM5NzE1OTksImV4cCI6MTY3NjU2MzU5OSwiaXNzIjoicHViLTY3MzA5Iiwic3ViIjoicG9zdC1yZWFjdGlvbiJ9.p5Tzds0s7YXcab2BFPj6v8qd0Vr-MRiKYn_3uWNYVjQ&utm_medium=email

Thanks to everyone who linked me to this.
I had NO IDEA this is what I’m fighting against, I feel so stupid and naive!
am handing in notice today. It looks like this is my new job.

I’m absolutely terrified as I think this is exact what’s happening.
worse in that dd is living with x and her mum, and x now goes to dds school.
so there is no time she is away from x.

So sorry your family is going through this, OP. I know you're not alone, but it must feel like it at times. I hope you can find your way through this and keep your daughter safe.

You've had a lot of good advice, well done for being a good mum. Best of luck

OP, wondering if this might be of use: drgabormate.com/book/hold-on-to-your-kids/

I had cancer when they were in primary school and Dh struggled to keep it all going. Dd only once talked about it and said it was hard because they’d see me getting whisked off in an ambulance

Massive sympathies. The teenage transboys we know well have all (bar one that I'm not so sure of), transitioned after a serious parental illness. The other one has ASD (as do some of the first group), and a serious injury as a toddler, so hardly a life free of trauma.

Incidentally, 'all' now means five teenagers on our not very long Christmas card list. Our friends are running out of daughters.

Someone, somewhere, needs permission and a socking great research grant to look at the common factors here.

ArabellaScott · Today 12:23
OP, wondering if this might be of use: drgabormate.com/book/hold-on-to-your-kids

That is such a wonderful book.

@Moomoola how are you holding up?x

Don't hand in your notice. You need money. This is a war not a battle

@Moomoola Wow! We have so much in common, I am so sorry your family also had similar experiences and have also been the thorough the wringer. Our whole family have been hit emotionally with the fallout in the last couple of years especially after COVID. Again I think it was probably having some distance from events and no longer being in that survival mode, when you are all just getting through each day and living in the present.

I’m grateful that I have a happy and strong marriage but DH confessed to me a couple of years ago that he was drinking way too much and I hadn’t even noticed! He would do his paperwork at night and have a small glass next to him and I just wasn’t paying attention to realise he was filling it up 6 times! Anyway he decided to stop drinking entirely and instead got really fit. So thank God he was able to come through it.

It’s very interesting (& sad) that I read somewhere that a good proportion of these teen girls presenting as trans (I think I saw a number of about 15%) have been bereaved and I am sure having a parent (or even two in yr case) have a life-threatening illness would segue into that group.

A lot of the time I wonder if it’s as simple as trans being offered as the ultimate escape and just being able to switch over to a parallel life? I have listened to a few interviews with detransitioners who have mentioned that due to problems such as loneliness and peer rejection they just wanted to have a complete “do-over” and have a completely new identity so that the loser girl in pain could be left behind and rejected as never being “the real me”.

I don’t know what your daughter has gone through and her experiences but I just watched an interesting new documentary on Gender Identity. It’s created by a Catholic film studio in the USA so is very much from a Catholic ethical stand point but it was interesting how much evidence they had to conclude that this ideology is ultimately a war against parents and especially mothers, at least now it plays out with teen girls (their focus). The parental alienation is an enormous part that just is not getting the attention it should.

So instinctively I would again just say HOLD ON, whatever you are told or however you are treated keep showing up for your daughter and fight tooth and nail to stay in her life and connected to her. Unfortunately you may have to ignore the obvious trauma playing out in front of you if she takes medical steps. But I would see it as a form of self-destruction/self-harm/self-hatred and a fantasy she is using to escape psychic pain. If she had any other mental health issue such as an eating disorder or cutting you would not end a relationship with her or leave it to play out without being right next to her. So as I am sure it may be unbelievably painful for you to do, just keep the communication open and do whatever you can to be ALONE with her. Just show her not matter what she is telling herself and being told, that you do love her. She is definitely in a cult and the strategies for helping a cult member leave should be yours. It’s a crime how girls are being groomed into rejecting their mothers in particular and how we have become the monstrous TERFs living in the dark, evil forest like in a fairy tale.

I think you should focus on caring for yourself (your own mental well-being) and your family and keep inviting her to part of your psychic world in unsaid ways. It’s the ultimate teen rebellion although of course horrifically self-destructive.

I am from the UK but live in the USA. I don’t quite understand how old your dd is. How can she be kept at another person’s home? What is the legal age for her being able to do that?

Don’t cling on in a pathetic way, but as others have said show your world to be warm, loving, fun and accepting. Plenty of propaganda on social media won’t hurt, showing friends and family having happy times. Personally I would go so far if you are able in the late spring to get a puppy to bait her out of her toxic dream! I know none of my kids could stay away, and I would just take film every day of us playing with the pup and taking them on walks/having fun and make sure she can only meet us at the park to see the dog (not take it to her). My 2nd daughter especially would literally dump a boyfriend rather than miss the life of a puppy 😂. She comes home from Uni to see the dog more than us!

TBH this whole insanity is like a Greek Myth, the daughter who has been caught by sirens and take down into the dark underworld.

Opps that was really long!

Here is the trailer for the movie I mentioned. It’s independent so I paid $10 to download but I found it very good (although with the strong religious slant in the 2nd half FYI) . Part of the movie shows the home videos of a girl that was a famous trans YouTuber from the age of about 13/14 through her medical transition to eventually detransition and now into her 20s.

runawayplanetpictures.vhx.tv/packages/dysconnected/videos/dysconnected-trailer

DodoPatrol · Today 12:33
Incidentally, 'all' now means five teenagers on our not very long Christmas card list. Our friends are running out of daughters.

Someone, somewhere, needs permission and a socking great research grant to look at the common factors here.

Five teenagers!
What a good idea about the research grant.

This thread has been important in revealing what an effect a family illness or bereavement can have in inducing the idea of changing gender.

I so hope you will take great care of yourself, OP, too like. BearingFalseWitness said. You being strong, calm and full of love will act as a beacon apart from anything.

I realise I've inadvertently exaggerated, ScrollingLeaves, as two of them are now over 20, and poor kids have progressed from 'wearing a checked shirt and having a haircut' to having mastectomies and growing beards in pursuit of this baffling ideal.

They just all seem very teenage in outlook.

My older cousin goes by Sam, has an extensive collection of checked shirts (I'd be suprised if she owns a single skirt or dress), 20odd years doing difficult dangerous work in the Canadian Fire Service. She's a fit and strong 52yo gay woman and happy to be that. I dread to think of how she'd be today, if she had become convinced she was a boy in her teen years and had surgery/hormones etc.

The illness or loss of a parent as a factor has struck a chord with me. I was talking to my older DC about this a couple of years ago and asked if anyone they knew from school was now trans. They said yes, there was one. It was the girl who tragically lost her mother to a sudden illness when she was about 13.

Lots of sound advice here OP about keeping the communications warm and open so your daughter can find a way back. I can only begin to imagine how awful this is to deal with. Good luck .

The teenage transboys we know well have all (bar one that I'm not so sure of), transitioned after a serious parental illness.

in our family it’s a little sibling with serious illness, rather than a parent.

Sasha Ayad has said that a lot of the kids she works with have a disabled/special needs sibling, or have been bereaved, or have a parent absent via hospitalisation.

DodoPatrol · Today 10:55
I realise I've inadvertently exaggerated, ScrollingLeaves, as two of them are now over 20, and poor kids have progressed from 'wearing a checked shirt and having a haircut' to having mastectomies and growing beards in pursuit of this baffling ideal.

Actually, I think you’ve under-exaggerated given what two of them went on to do to themselves.

CriticalCondition · Today 12:16
The illness or loss of a parent as a factor has struck a chord with me. I was talking to my older DC about this a couple of years ago and asked if anyone they knew from school was now trans. They said yes, there was one. It was the girl who tragically lost her mother to a sudden illness when she was about 13.

Lots of sound advice here OP about keeping the communications warm and open so your daughter can find a way back. I can only begin to imagine how awful this is to deal with. Good luck Flowers.

A few years ago I read the de-transition story of a male journalist who had transitioned quite old having had a family who’d all grown up. He did not seem to be an AGP.

I cannot remember how far he took the transition, but later he realised he’d made a great mistake. He realised with hindsight that the desire to change his gender arose after experiencing the tragedy of sitting by his son’s bedside for a year and watching him die.

The point of his article, as I recall, was to say that at no point in the process of his transition did any of the health care ‘professionals’ he saw ever explore what he’d been through.

Yes, OP. Everyone here has so much sympathy for you. Your daughter is going to miss what she has left behind though: keep hanging on