healthcare professionals should concentrate on gender non-conforming individuals at early adolescence, navigating them toward a healthy adulthood

[IwantToRetire]

These findings hold critical significance on several fronts. First, they reveal that a sizable percentage of teenagers experience some level of dissatisfaction with their gender identity.

However, most of them tend to resolve this uncertainty as they mature into adulthood, ultimately aligning with the gender they were assigned at birth.

Nonetheless, there remains a smaller yet consistent portion of teenagers who persist in their dissatisfaction or even transition from a state of contentment to dissatisfaction with their gender identity.

“These findings indicate that healthcare professionals should concentrate on gender non-conforming individuals at early adolescence, navigating them toward a healthy adulthood.”

Clearly, they are also significant for parents, caregivers, and society at large, providing guidance on how to better care for, assist, and support adolescents, especially those prone to gender dissatisfaction.
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Undoubtedly, the next crucial question revolves around identifying which adolescents will navigate out of the phase of gender uncertainty and who will persist in their dissatisfaction. While such data is currently lacking, an evidence-based approach holds the promise of transcending ideological debate to a scientific endeavor in developmental psychology.

Not sure these 2 studies will cause much of a stir but interesting that the lanuage of the article is more bland than previous articles in Psychology Today.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/lies-and-deception/202404/insights-from-research-of-teens-unhappy-with-their-gender

I have a gender non conforming neurodiverse 8 year old daughter. I hated the early years with princess parties and other such gender stereotyped shite.

I let her wear what she wants, have her hair how she wants. She gets mistaken for a boy quite a lot. If I am honest, there are times I wish she would just put on a frock, but I swallow those feelings.

I would really value some advice on how to maintain a healthy relationship with her sexed body and how she chooses to present as I know she is in a high risk group for becoming distressed about her body and how society reacts to her as she goes into puberty.

Look for good strong role models, Genderblender. For younger girls I'm thinking of Pippi Longstocking type of characters.

'A mighty girl ' is good for finding books and films that challenge stereotypes.

how society reacts to her as she goes into puberty.
This is the real elephant in the room.
Treating distress in the little girl is the same as giving 1950 housewives valium to cope with thier lives.
The real problem is everyone else.

With mine I tried to find something that clicked- art, sport, language .. keep trying different things that she likes hoping she stays engaged and has fun things to do.

Maybe trying to hold it lightly and keep it fun and playful helps, too. Easier said than done, I know.

However, most of them tend to resolve this uncertainty as they mature into adulthood, ultimately aligning with the gender they were assigned at birth

Clearly the author has an agenda.
How many parents have a certificate handed to them by the midwife which states the “gender” their new born baby was ‘Assigned’?
”It’s a boy” isn’t assigning anything, it’s observing sex, and then this is recorded.

I cant take any article seriously that uses the phrase 'gender assigned at birth'

Cross posted!

This. Ensuring that children engage fully in as many activies - creative, sporting, musical, community based etc as well as making sure family life is active.

Active engagement rather than passive inward focussed .

Sometimes, I just want to scream.

I wish the bastards would stop bloody medicalising puberty. Puberty is essential. It's often uncomfortable, we all survived it. Nobody is a sex stereotype. Being gender non conforming is entirely normal. Stop trying to neutralise young people's developing personalities, tastes and sexuality, you absolute showers! It's so bloody sinister.

"Healthcare professionals should concentrate on gender non-conforming individuals at early adolescence"

Thank fuck this sort of attitude was not around in the 1960s/70s/80s/90s etc. It is seriously messed up thinking. Nowt wrong with the children - plenty wrong with the adults who are imposing this load of codswallop onto kids and society, as a whole.

My DD, born 1983, wore what she wanted, sometimes her brother’s hand-me-downs (which she loved for their oversized comfort), sometimes dresses. She enjoyed sports, outdoors rough and tumble, threw and caught like a boy (I taught her) and was interested in science and nature. Her hair was long but mostly tied back.
I can honestly say the idea that this was anything other than normal never entered my head, or anyone else’s. Some girls were more “girly” and some less so. This was accepted common sense. Everyone grew up eventually, though for some it was more difficult than for others (I myself found adolescence very hard). If you had told me then how society would end up as it is now, I’d have laughed in your face. It would have sounded deranged.

Depending on context, this article may not be as bland, or gender ideology-driven, as all that. It could be a (rather meek) declaration of war.

They talk about gender dissatisfaction, uncertainty, and unhappiness, all terms which have been decried by TRAs as transphobic, because they don't just go straight to declaring 'trans kid'. They declare allegiance to science over ideology. And they talk about high desistence rates, implying that early transition could be a mistake.

In fact they make gender wobbles sound like a common and natural part of growing up.

Exactly. I work in this field in a profession where we are trained to ask clarifying question and explore the understandings that all involved parties hold.

Since this phrase came into the mix no one (client/patients, their families, or other professions) has been able to tell me who is doing the assigning and what, exactly, they are assigning.

The most coherent answers suggest the phrase relates to societal expectations about gender roles and expression. When they grasp this, we can reflect on the many different options available in terms of navigating such expectations

I agree with @fromthegecko it's a rare example of reporting some common sense research, a radical act these days.

Ah feck I just lost a long thoughtful post about what it was like for me as an 8-yr-old GNC/dysphoric little girl! Here goes again, sorry it will be more rushed and less well edited this time.
In the meantime borntobequiet's post appeared, and made the same points about how recent the iron grip of princesses/fairies/butterflies is. I was lucky to have been 8 before that unfortunate shadow was cast over little girls. I was called a 'tomboy', and a 'crazy-mixed-up-kid' with a good-humoured and loving eye-roll; these days I'd be in danger of medicalisation, and very scarily, I can imagine I would have tried to get around my sensible parents to get access to 'gender affirming treatment', including puberty blockers. I'm v lucky I made it to adult human female!

I agree with PPs - keep it light as possible, find role-models, books and hobbies that appeal.

Being GNC is a lot about having to reject things that you aren't comfortable with, which encourages negativity. I had one doll that I absolutely loved, and one frock I thought was really cool - but yeah I totally hate dolls and frocks cos yuk they're so girly.
I didn't actually want to look like a boy, I wanted to look like me, a non-girl, and even at that age I wanted to look good - a baby stylista, just not in frocks
If I'd had access to stylish 'unisex' clothes, I'd have been delighted to shop for clothes with my mother and work out my own way of 'looking good', not just boys' jeans and t-shirt kind of outfits.

So finding positive things to nurture is really important, things that your daughter likes because they are right for her. She's very lucky to have a thoughtful mother like you who takes this seriously; I was lucky to have parents who didn't have to, because a GNC girl didn't stand out so much back then.
Just keep loving your little 8-yr-old piece of human individuality for what she is, as you so obviously do.

I wish her well in making her way through the maze, as I did.

My post is in reply to GenderBlender.

I honestly believe that so much of this is driven by the capitalist need to sell and profit by making two of every product (clothes, toys, sweets) so that boys and girls are conditioned from an early age to ‘know’ which things are ‘theirs’. It means less passing down and sharing of consumer goods and less sharing even of neutral things like chocolate. Recent generations of parents have absorbed this while society in general became more equal and women and girls made gains in other areas.

People were ripe for Stonewall training and quasi-scientific gender woo because they were primed by consumerism.

There is shitloads of money to be made in transgender healthcare. Not so much in just letting kids be themselves, and treating mental illnesses (which is what real gender dysphoria is, surely) using the most well-evidenced treatments available in a conservative way.

To take any of this seriously researchers, activists and healthcare workers focusing on 'gender' need to specify what 'conforming' and 'non-conforming' is - not in vague language but using specific examples. Girl wearing jeans? Woman working in STEM? Boy who wants to be a nurse? When I was young breaking down 1950s stereotypes was being encouraged, not reinforced! Just stop discussing gender, stop males perving over young girls (or anyone else, but particularly girls around puberty) & use the single sex space that matches your biology.

The point in posting this article is that in terms of this "news" source about psychology, it is a bit of a break through.

The language used is that of those who have grown up in an era (fostered by queer dominated universities) when gender and sex have been used interchangeably. Which is partly why it is so hard to get a common understanding because some young people have only know this interchangeable use of the two words.

So as stated in OP what is interesting about this article is even the suggestiong that you just watch and wait and (as seems obvious to most of us) help young people get through the years when puberty starts to impact on young bodies.

But as I also said in OP I am not sure this is a widel read news source, so doubt that the outcomes of the surveys will for instance make a change to Stonewall, let alone Mermaids.

I'm just hoping this is a sign that the tide is beginning to turn, or even that all those young people brainwashed by queer ideology, are now starting to realise that the real world is quite a bit different to the one some self important egotist who taught them in university, made them think was factual.

Sometimes I think what most of these teens need is parents and teachers to tell them the teen years are a bit shit, and leave them to figure it out. Spending time with psychologists seems to mainly convince them that there is something abnormal about feeling weird and uncomfortable about their body, and struggling to fit themselves into society.

I really think a lot of what is being described as gender distress has little or nothing to do with gender or sex.

Maybe girls feel dissatisfied with gendered ideas about what girls are because the ideas are shit.

Its all so topsy turvy.

The 1950s were said to be shit for girls, but "tom boys" were every where and people and families would just shrug and say she will grow out of it. (although I suspect them is was more about gender stereotypes in terms of clothes and interests).

It seems so linked to the years when puberty sets in.

But again in the past (and not saying it wasn't troubling times) most got through it.

What has happened that this age for children has made them think that it more than a stage towards becoming an adult.

It is that not just social media, but media as a whole presents such extreme versions of femininity and masculinity.

Or a now quite consistently public projection of hypersexuality as a norm?