Teen declared they were trans and now says they can't be in contact with us

[crochetedcat]

As the title says really, I'll try to keep this brief but obviously it's complicated.

DS went to university and within a few weeks of being there declared he was now trans and had a new name. We were all rather confused as this seemed out of the blue at 18. He is autistic but seemed happy and doing well, good course, plans for the future etc. I've kept using 'he' here for clarity.

We decided to jointly take the approach to be supportive and to focus on everything else, didn't question it, carried on as usual. I was very aware that challenging it would not go down well, especially when at uni with potentially lots of people saying how awful we were for asking any questions at all. So we decided to take the 'thanks for telling us dear, that's great, how's uni going' approach.

Tbh there was very little change apart from when they came home for a visit in November they were wearing a bit of make up and had made changes to voice and mannerisms. This was difficult to deal with as it felt like the concept of being female was being stereotyped but again, we didn't react and continued to support. He happily went back off to uni after a few days of seeing family etc.

Christmas was the same. He came home for a week but was fairly distant. But we continued being positive and asking about course, friends etc etc - everything you would usually do. No one questioned anything and just rolled with it. The key point here is we have all been as accepting as possible, no one has said anything even vaguely negative, lots of enthusiasm about uni and life more broadly.

Then early in the New Year, we got a message that we were all clearly embarrassed by him and there would be no more contact ever again. It felt ludicrous tbh. The day before we'd been chatting on WhatsApp about his course and something I'd been reading. I responded asking where this had come from, that we weren't embarrassed and would support him in whatever. He said ok and asked about the dog as she'd needed to go to the vet. A completely unemotional reaction really to having just declared he'd never see his family again.

However I haven't heard from him since. He ignores all messages including asking him if he's ok. This was nearly 3 weeks ago. He's not great at responding to messages but would usually do so in a day or two even if just an emoji.

I am guessing the accusations that we are unsupportive are about his anxieties. Or wanting the drama of no one supporting him. It feels very similar to 'the script' of the cheating husband where history is rewritten to fit the narrative.

I also assume the wanting to cut contact is due to him feeling uncomfortable in his 'old life' because it's confronting and now his new normal where probably everyone is effusive.

I would bet money on new friends / the internet driving this.

But it feels so unreal and I don't know what to do next. Is it serious? Is he just never going to have contact with us again? Do I just remain supportive and sending him photos of the dog and articles I see about climate science and including him on the family groups, he hasn't left those yet?

I'm of course angry that someone could just send a message like that to his mother with no feeling. And upset. And scared etc etc

And then there's the minor fact I'm financially supporting him through university. I'm paying for the phone contract for the phone he used to tell me he was never going to see me again. Is he assuming I'll carry on sending him £700 a month to cover his uni halls costs whilst he declares he's estranged?! It feels like a younger teen yelling that they hate you and then asking what's for dinner and can they have a lift to town.

At a loss really and not sure where to go from here to have the most sensible outcome.

Thank you.

He issued the boundaries, but I don’t think he understands the meaning of the word.

Good point!
I was watching another video and it was a transman talking about RODG. He/she believes it's not real, and they went on to say after a person has gone through treatment, and they regret it then transitioning is not right for them. The person who is detransitioning has done life changing things to themselves. Yet, it's not a mental illness.

Here's another video about a young woman who transitioned from FtM and then changed her mind. The treatment she had can't be reversed it's heartbreaking.

This is a great perspective to share.

💐 to you and your daughter.

Unconditional love is something I never fully understood (clearly I felt it, but I just wasn't aware I did) until I realised that I can be simultaneously exasperated, hurt and confused by my child whilst also never letting go of that love. Feeling despair, confusion, self doubt about my own parenting prior to my daughter's autism diagnosis was probably the start of my understanding. During her mental health crisis (age 13) she was violent at home. Most of it was directed towards me. I've never experienced violence in a home before so the learning curve was steep. It impacts everyone in a household, with other children being at additional risk of physical and mental harm. In my case my love for my daughter was tested (obviously!) but never waivered. A child declaring "no contact" is throwing an emotional bomb into family life. It's "emotional violence", for want of a better phrase. (not to be confused of course with the misnomer "literal violence" that apparently describes anyone who doesn't agree to a coerced belief that we all have a gender identity).

Are you sure? I don’t think I can see even a grain of truth.

Thank you - this reflects how I feel. We’ve told him we love him, continued to accept him, told him he can be whoever he wants. We’ve continued including him in everything. Even my parents who are in their 80s, really really confused by it and worried sick haven’t said anything questionable or critical.

We continue to send chatty messages, dog photos and include him.

I have spent considerable money financing his choices to go to this university in an expensive part of the country.

We do all of this because we love him and see it as our responsibility as parents (the money part).

I also do not believe we have done anything wrong. In any other situation if a child acted like this in response to how we’ve behaved no one would question whether we’d done enough.

Yes he’s an adult but right now it feels like he’s being cruel. He won’t speak to anyone including my mother who is unwell and may not be with us that much longer. It feels like manipulation and punishment. Our door will always be open but as an adult who can make choices he also needs to realise that these have consequences for others. I need to protect all our mental health too.

Let him stew in his own juice, he'll be back soon enough.

*If a male says they are female, then if I am to treat people without prejudice then I don't go round pandering to stereotypes. I don't go applauding them for their 'courage'. I just say 'and?'. If there is an expectation of more than that says more about the need for validation and their insecurities than it does about my values or judgement.
The whole 'but you are not doing it right' thing is problematic. There is no right way or wrong way to handle things. Families are much more complex and dynamic than that. *

Before I thought properly about any of this I made a male aquaintance who wanted to be a woman. For his birthday I bought him lip gloss and some other things, naively thinking I was showing my support and acceptance.

I'll never forget hearing the term 'transwomen are women' on the radio for the first time and realising if I'd really seen that person as a woman I wouldn't have tried to demonstrate my solidarity through choice of gift. I'd have gotten him a bottle of wine or some chocolates like I might all my other female friends. It was trying to square all this that made me go hang on a minute.......

It feels cruel because it is. He is being abusive to you.

That’s awful. Why won’t he speak to his grandmother? I would have let him have it. I do not think that being trans is an excuse to be rude.

You sound like an amazing Mum and I think you're doing all the right things. I suspect his wish to have low contact is that he can't square in his mind the new identity he's created for himself at university with the person he's always known himself to be at home with you.

That cognitive dissonance is really painful and so he is trying to distance himself from his old life and pretend it didn't exist. Probably encouraged by the cult of GI.

I really hope that he will work it all out for himself. I suspect the pull of being the member of an "in group" at uni and being celebrated and told how amazing he is for being "trans" is really strong for him, especially so new into university life.

I suspect there is a big part of him that "knows" he is still the boy he always was and it's uncomfortable when he comes home to slot so easily back into being that boy.

Maintaining a pretence is much easier when you can distance yourself from reality. That's what he's doing by not wanting contact.

Refusing to speak to a grandmother (he has presumably got on okay with up until now?) who has not said anything critical or unsupportive is more indicative of a general mental health crisis rather than all this trans stuff which could serve as a distraction. Perhaps he's just very, very low. I'd be more and more inclined to report this to the university wellbeing service and say that he is acting out of character and may be at risk.

I need to protect all our mental health too.

The message I repeat on this thread is always that you matter too. Your own sense of identity matters (identity is also relational, so when you communicate with others things like 'being a mother to a son' rather than a daughter matter. It's YOUR lived experience. This doesn't suddenly change or devalue because he says so). You own mental health matters. You don't deserve to be held hostage to a believe, regardless of whether you share it or not.

I think that you can become prisoners of this and become scared to express your own feelings. Especially since you get berated by people saying you must have done something wrong or you haven't done enough. It's taboo and off limits to say 'I feel my son's demands have become abusive or manipulative'. That's really not ok.

We should be having an open conversation about this and the impact on multiple members of a family. Not just the trans person.

Perhaps if it was discussed it would remove some of the worse elements of behaviour because these children would have to be more accountable for their own behaviour rather being framed as helpless passive victims of nature and society.

It would remove power from those seeking to alienate children from their parents.

This needs for give and take needs to be seen and heard.

You got him to 18 year old. You protected him and supported him with all his challenges. He is now in University because of your love and support. He is lucky to have you as his mother. Whatever he decides to do is up to him he's an adult. He needs to get over not having to ask permission anymore. You love him anyway regardless.

This. My daughter (actual DD) would rather die than be taken clothes shopping or to buy make up.

He is ignoring all of us - his parents, sibling and grandparents who have all recently sent messages in various forms or called. Only his father and I have been told he no longer wanted contact. In a way it makes me feel less alone because he’s universally refusing contact with any of us and shows how unfair his behaviour is.

Well quite. And why assume I wear makeup or am any good at it.

I think you’re sadly spot on

My understanding is that the medical profession is split down the middle on this and currently the NHS does not consider gender dysphoria a mental illness - unlike body dysmorphia for example 🙄
Some clinicians will tell you that your brain cannot be one sex and your body another sex i.e. there is no scientific evidence for this. And yet, others in gender clinics will tell your adolescent that the recognised treatment for their self reported gender dysphoria is hormones and will refer on to an endocrinologist and to hell with the any co- morbidities, setting your child further down a path from which it may be too hard to come back.
It would be great if some HCPs would post on these threads as they do for other serious health issues on MN.

They’ve offered the same type of support we have - being calm but engaged and even driving several hours to see him and take him for lunch one weekend. I suspect this means they’re also unsupportive.

Maybe send a care package to him, nice items of food, some drink and bits and pieces of makeup, body care, that will say you still care and accept him even though he has cut contact

I'm glad you've been in touch with them. They will have processes that they follow when a third party reports a concern about a student. I'm sure they will have followed that process but there won't be much they can do if he's unwilling to engage and/or says that everything is okay. Because he's an adult, you won't be given an update.

I think mainly it's for your own peace of mind that you've done everything you reasonably could.

Very true. I would call
or text and ask him what’s going on and that he’s upsetting his grandmother.

I think what probably happens in the run up to a vulnerable young person getting caught up in the whole trans ideology madness, is that they spend an awful lot of time watching stuff on youtube and tiktok of trans-identified people telling them all about how their families were not been supportive, were transphobic etc, deadnamed them (it's pretty hard not to ever accidentally do that, after 20 years of calling your child the name you gave them at birth) and how they need to be prepared for the same things to happen to them.

It's probably presented as an unavoidable consequence of coming out as trans, to the point where someone new to the whole cult feels they must be doing it wrong if they don't experience the same from their own families. They obviously aren't getting the message home clearly enough, if their parents barely raise an eyebrow. They are going to have to ramp up their game and keep goading you until you a give them the reaction they can peg as 'transphobic' or 'toxic' that they've be told to expect.

Part of the deal is that there is supposed to be trauma and a monumental struggle in this quest to be accepted as your authentic self. All the small-minded normals aren't supposed to understand, or immediately accept, or make it easy. What on earth would be the point of that?

Trans people generally claim they want the freedom to go about their lives quietly, in the gender identity they've chosen, with no negative consequences or negative attention on them. But what they frequently get, especially as it becomes more and more ubiquitous for a certain type of young person to announce that they are trans, is no attention at all. Just a shrug and 'Goodness, in 18 years of being your mum I'll admit I never saw that one coming. Hey-ho, whatever floats your boat. There's a lot of it about nowadays, isn't there? It's quite the thing. Anyway, how are your driving lessons going?'

And that's not what the newly trans-identified young person wants at all. They want to shock and alarm you, they want to go into battle with you and debate their right to exist, They crave endless discussions about it. On the less combative side, they want cheerleaders. People who will coo and gush, and go out of their way to ostentatiously vocalise or demonstrate all the ways in which they are not just accepted, but celebrated in their gender identity of choice. They've spent months building themselves up to this, how dare you just shrug and act like it's nothing? If you can't be a cheerleader you must be the enemy.

So they move on to the punishment and 'You are toxic and I need to cut you out of my life for the sake of my mental health' phase.

'Buy them some nice make-up'! It just makes me despair - not least because I too, a woman, would be the last person qualified to offer tips on make-up buying.

@crochetedcat I'm very sorry indeed to hear that contact with a (presumably beloved) grandmother isn’t being maintained. That must feel very wounding

OP, it is really sad but not surprising that he is not engaging with siblings or grandparents. Same here, it makes me feel a bit better too - but desperately worried at the same time. I think the only family members these kids will engage with are ones who are affirming. They’ve made up their minds that they are the opposite gender and they are not interested in talking to anyone who doesn’t share their view. Having said that, I do believe they are in distress and need help