My 13 year old says she is trans. How do I deal with this?

[ProfessorInkling]

It's been a slow burn for the last 18 months or so, since puberty really took off.

I don't know where to even begin to try and explain her earlier years and how we got here because she used to be interested in my views of the world, as kids tend to be of course.

She's always been such a girls girl - not stereotypically girly in any way but in touch with her identity as female, looking for and to female role models BECAUSE of their sex, Mary Anning, Rosa Parks, flipping Artemis Athena Cleopatra, and on and on...

NOW it's all 'I feel like a boy' and 'top surgery will be everything' 'why can't you use he/him pronouns for me'....

How do I deal with this?

So far I have tried listening, reasoning, and reassuring her that while she is free to express herself in any way she likes (boys shoes, clothes, short hair at the moment) I cannot deny her biological reality blah blah blah... but am I going to lose her this way?

If it's a phase I can do nothing of course but every day she seems further from me and more entranced with the idea that she can 'become' a boy.

No diagnosis but have always wondered ASD/ADHD.

K4tm, the Equality Act doesn't apply in the home.

OP, I don't have experience of this with my own DC yet, thank God, but this account has stuck in my mind and echoes much of the wise advice you've already had:

https://lilymaynard.com/my-first-article-a-mums-voyage-through-transtopia/

Some good advice on this thread OP. I would second listening to Gender a Wider Lens podcasts, they are very compassionate and give excellent advice. If you haven't listened to them, go back to the early ones then pick out the ones that seem most relevant.

One of them I remember was about what to do in your situation and it was about the way parents and kids see the world. Parents panic when their daughter says she's trans because you're jumping ahead to the oh my god she's going to cut off her breasts and end up sterile!! Whereas the kid is actually just trying something out and really hasn't thought it through, because she's a kid and they don't have much perspective on the world. By over reacting you can actually push them to defend a more extreme position than they were in. So it's important to keep calm, although I totally understand your anxiety!

It's significant that she used to agree with you and now she's reversed. This is totally normal teenage behaviour, she is trying to provoke a reaction, and to show that she is independent to you. Reasoning and rational argument is not going to help you here. You have to keep your cool and ride it out while avoiding letting her do anything irreversible. I also think holding the line about your views about it not being possible to change sex is really important, teenagers need us to to define boundaries so that they can safely rebel against them.

My DD said very similar to me at age 14. She has ASD and had been out of school due to anxiety for a couple of years at that time.

With DD I knew it was because she hated the sensation of periods and was struggling with the changes to her body. Avoiding things she found hard was a real pattern with her, so it made sense (especially given how the idea is absolutely everywhere) that she would latch on to it as the explanation for and solution to her discomfort.

I told her she could dress how she liked, do whatever hobbies she wanted, have whatever hair style she chose but she would absolutely always be female and she could not change that.

I did empathise with her feelings and although I declined her request for a binder - I told her they aren't good for you and as she has asthma I wasn't prepared to restrict her breathing - I bought her several sports bras that were vest style which she wore.

18 months on she is doing much better. She is in school, has friends and seems to have not just accepted but embraced being female (although she still hates her period and I don't see that changing as it is a sensory issue linked to her ASD).

@ProfessorInkling you have my sympathy because I know it is a scary place to be. You have to do what you believe is in your daughter's best interests in the long term. I echo all those advising you to love and support her but this doesn't mean agreeing to her every demand.

This is a great post! Great parenting from Biasquia!

One thing that may help if your school has a sixth form - by our large sixth form most have grown out of this phase and it’s seen as something the younger ones did. It’s something a lot of sixth formers joked about in private out of embarrassment. The small group that persisted were very vocal and the rest tolerated them but got fed up with their ‘oppression’ and the group became more isolated yet powerful in their visibility and demands of the school. It was sad to see all round.

What was good was that, by sixth form the L and G of the group had left it too and had come out and been respected for it. I was really pleased on that progress which I think would have been really much harder in my generation.

If she can see the trend it might help. Or at least help you knowing it’s a phase. The big thing to emphasise is to make it known she can change her mind about things at any time without embarrassment or ‘I told you so’. It’s a tricky balance. It’s difficult getting yourself out of a group.

I am hoping in a few years time the whole movement will be seen as deeply unfashionable to school children as it’s something the previous generation did. The pushback will be led by them. I just hope there’s not a backlash on those who have persisted.

Some great constructive posts. It's certainly important to check what's happening in school - is it a school with activist adults unthinkingly affirming and driving a wedge between children and parents? If so, then you need to give some clear "advice" to the school about the limits of their authority in terms of pushing transitioning at your daughter.

There are so many parents struggling with this level of social contagion and one thing we have learnt is that encouraging teens to become involved with social activities is critical. Playing an active role in family life, hobbies, sports, choirs - anything that focuses on their role in communities / society rather than self absorption is psychologically helpful. As other posters have pointed out, it's about protecting our children.

My niece felt she was nonbinary then she wanted to be a boy. It started when she was 14 and she was a very girly girl before. My brother (her dad) and my niece mum had a conversation with her where they listened to her but they also made it very clear they would not allow any physical changes like chest surgery etc.and they asked her to wait till she was older. Meantime they let her express herself as she pleased. She cut her hair short, wore boyish clothes and was called by gender neutral nick name. She even had a girlfriend at the time. Now she is nearly 18 and all this has passed. She feels comfortable with her body and has a boyfriend :) I'm not trying to say it is always a phase but it might be and the best is to accept it at the moment and let you daughter "be a boy" for a while :)

So tell your child a lie ? That they can change sex ? Have irreversible surgery and drugs ? Really ? It’s not an opinion to believe in biological sex.

OP I would look at the site of Canadian Billboard Chris . He has lots of factual research and lots of interesting interviews.

And another one for Chloe Cole interviews .

Well done Biasquia. Great post .

All young people should be celebrated and loved as individuals.

Exactly. .The advice was good solid advice.

Also in todays papers an ex Tavistock dr has written a book blowing the whistle on what was happening and the dangers .

Bayswater Support is a very good source of advice materials, they also run support groups. They have Top Tips, advice for parents of girls with ASCs, and I found their "Parenting a Young Adult with Gender Dysphoria" article espeically useful.

Resources – Bayswater Support

My main thought is don't let the gender issues suck up all the air in the room, try not to discuss it too much and stay connected with your DD over everything else about her and her life that isn't gender.

I came here to recommend this. Excellent podcast

Ultimately though, it’s about supporting them in their choices though, whether you agree with them or not.

So why do we not support the "choices" of teenagers with anorexia, or teens who smoke, or do drugs, or any of the other things that we disagree with and think harmful?

In this podcast Peter Boghossian and the woman roleplay scenarios about how to tackle conversations with a trans child.
Peter Boghossian is very good at skilled negotiating and getting conversations between opposing viewpoints started and has done a lot of podcasts on this from campuses around the USA, the final part of the podcast you may find useful, he tries to get a dialogue going and try to counter the toxic pro-trans propaganda that your daughter will be exposed to.

%3AAWiderLens

But it’s not an opinion is it ? You know the truth . When they are a fully matured adult you won’t be able to stop them but when they are technically a child ?

@WitchyFingers

I honestly do wonder if there's a bit of a class divide when it comes to the trans stuff.

I teach in a very diverse girls school & it seems to be white middle class girls who have changed pronouns. I am trying to keep up with who has changed names.

An issue I have is that some parents don't seem to be aware. So we are withholding their new identity from their parents. This feels wrong to me.

OP at least you're not in the dark. I would just go along with it for now. I reckon some will grow out of it by 6th form.

I would just tell her that there is no such thing as trans

@Biasquia thank you for sharing this❤

Have you considered explaining how awful mastectomies are? For example, 30% of women who have them for cancer are left with longterm pain; she may assume the percentage is only going to be better for young women who have elective cosmetic mastectomies for gender dysphoria, but I think it'll be the opposite. It seems to be the dregs of surgeons who go into performing cosmetic operations on trans-identifying patients. I have seen so many young adults describe surgical malpractice without any awareness that the post-op complications they recount are abnormal.

I've put this approach into practice myself, because Mini-Pots is a boy who is definitely on the spectrum, and who was scared of the physical changes of puberty. Who wouldn't be? He likes being the shape and size he is.

So he came home from secondary school one day, asking if he could go on puberty blockers to avoid puberty.

This was a bit of a shock, but I dealt with this by explaining the effects they have on bone development and showing him accounts of the impact. Incidentally he said, "but trans kids don't experience those, so why would they damage my bones?"

Having explained that puberty-blockers did damage the skeletal development of children who were prescribed them for dysphoria, I asked him whether he still wanted to avoid puberty knowing it could lead to osteopenia and osteoporosis, or whether he'd prefer to have a fully-developed bones. One of my maternal relatives developed advanced osteoporosis very young due to the effects of an eating disorder in her teens, so I can (and did) explain the lifelong impact of interfering with adolescent bone development at the drop of a hat.

He thought about it for a few seconds and decided he'd rather have a healthy adult body.

At this juncture, I must second earlier suggestions to get her enrolled in some kind of physical hobby, so that she learns to value what her body can currently do. The scar tissue from mastectomies interferes with upper-body mobility, and it'll be much easier for her to value her ability to painlessly raise her arms above her head if it's something she does routinely already.

And @MrsSkylerWhite these girls are not ‘thinking for themselves’. That’s the whole issue. They are listening to voices on the internet and blindly following them without thinking deeply. If they were thinking for themselves and critically looking at this - they would realise how regressively backwards this whole thing is and how women’s rights are being trampled all over.

My kids know my views that a person can't change their biological sex. Luckily my kids agree with me. If my daughter had said she wanted to be a man I'd have asked her where she was going to get a penis from? Because without it she couldn't be male. If she wanted short hair and to wear trousers that would be fine because clothing and haircuts don't change your sex. If she had wanted surgery I'd say no because you only need surgery if you are ill.

soundslike a phase-went from supporting people like maya to saying she feels like a boy

nah this is trying to be fashionable

He's a regular on here, and always constructive. Whereas your username doesn't exactly ring any bells.