Pre-teen very recently saying non-binary from online info

[OneMoreLime]

My autistic pre-teen daughter told me she feels a non-binary gender identity (demi-boy). I'd appreciate some advice about how to respond. As an autistic woman, I get the feelings behind this, but I'm worried about where this might lead to.

She heard about this online - she heard about gender identities in what we thought was a purely educational website (now blocked) She doesn't have any social media access. She describes feeling this way for years - this genuinely doesn't fit with the choices she made up until a few weeks ago.

Any advice on how to respond? I've ordered the Sex and Gender book for her. Any other resources that might appeal to a pre-teen? She said I was "wrong" as I didn't fully agree with the online info, I'd like to find some reliable info sources pitched at her age.

She has been very anxious recently, spending more time alone, not wanting to leave the house, dropping her hobbies, seeing her friends less. I'm obviously trying to get her out more, encouraging hobbies and friendships, but it's a slow process. I don't think any of her friends feel this way.

She wants to cut her hair very short, boy-length. I'm wary of a drastic haircut even without the demi-boy associations. She has previously always wanted long hair, loved brushing and styling her hair, and struggled to adjust to a heavy trim.
I said she can have a shorter cut next time e.g. chin length, then we can consider even shorter at her haircut after that - does that sound like a good approach?
A very short cut probably won't suit her face shape, and she can feel very self-conscious about her appearance.

She previously really asked to get her ears pierced, we had said she was too young. I'm now wondering if we should say yes to this?! It may be something interesting and exciting which diverts her focus.

It a programming website where you can build games / animations.

I've just checked and it seems that the issue is due to the discussion boards rather than Scratch itself? Can anyone confirm?

It's a way of learning to code.
https://scratch.mit.edu/about

But people can make their own projects and it also has forums where kids and adults post. Eg https://scratch.mit.edu/discuss/topic/786622/?page=1

Schools allow primary kids to chat online with strangers? That's a huge safeguarding issue.

Scratch is a children's coding website from MIT. Children learn to code in a way that is intuitive and visual.

You can stick to designing your own projects with scratch junior for your kids, which has simpler programming. With the older version for older kids, your projects get uploaded so that other users can try them out and see your code. And you can see other children's coding projects. Which might be things like games, useful tools, and you can see how they coded it and get ideas yourself.

Turns out, amongst the thousands of projects to view, there are a number where the user has basically made a slideshow about gender identity. Very little coding.... and a lot of information.

I'll check if we can restrict Scratch so she can just do her own projects, without accessing other peoples. Or maybe if this situation fades, she could just access the website when we are nearby.... It's a shame as she has very restricted internet access compared to her friends, and maybe being proficient at coding was a slight consolation?!

I agree with the comment above about whack a mole!

Let her get ears pierced, it's not a big deal.
Speaking from experince of three teens (1 girl, 2 boys and one of the boys autistic). The most important thing is to keep dialogue going. It has to be communication they want to hear or will understand. If you don't they might shut down and you will lose them.

I agree we have had a wake up call and been a bit naive about Scratch.

We frequently say no to websites and apps her friends have access to, and Scratch is used in schools, so it seemed relatively ok. We had a look through the projects available, and didn't stumble upon anything controversial.

Have you asked scratch to take that content down

I’m sorry you’re going through this. I think you’re doing everything right so far.

It sounds like your daughter is quite logical about other areas of life (coding etc). Maybe you could try to get her engaged in critical thinking exercises in the meantime as a fun way of analysing information she’s given and separating fact from fiction. This is a great skill to have anyway, and it’s likely to help her to understand bias, misleading language etc and identify that in other areas like the gender identity debate. A debate club could be good when she’s not too anxious for it, provided it’s one which promotes clear logical arguments and not emotional ones. Either way, if she took part in something like that she’d have to get used to arguing against things she believes in sometimes, which could help her to understand the opposite point of view.

I think the crucial thing here is to get her to understand the difference between unquantifiable feelings (like having a gender identity), and fact (like your sex). GI isn’t meaningless, but it isn’t “real” in the sense that it’s fluid, hard to measure, and entirely subjective. If she’s able to focus on material, provable facts about herself then that will always offer greater certainty than the kind of “truths” that are peddled as part of gender identity.

As a replacement for scratch, could she play a coding game instead? This game for instance is highly rated and involves programming in a Python related language.

Maybe microbit https://microbit.org/ its made by the BBC so at least its clear who runs it and who to complain to.

How old is she @OneMoreLime

I wonder if somethings are being said by boys and girls at her school that's leading her to question her gender too.

I had a similar issue with my daughter (now 13) a few years back. She's very much like me, into gaming, coding, DnD etc and her autistic traits meant she had an obsession level of knowledge. She'd try and engage with boys in her class about these things (as the girls weren't interested and thought her 'weird' for liking this stuff) and she'd always get shut down and told by these boys that as a girl she shouldn't be interested in them.

It didn't help that even at home, she doesn't share the same interests as her sisters who 'love' makeup and clothing.

It made her question herself way too much... I'm not going to lie, I was very worried about her at one point. We ended up having a few discussions about toxic masculinity and how essentially the boys (who were still very emotionally immature) were threatened by her knowledge and skills. And then a wider talk about stereotypes and a real honest talk how her sister's 'interests' in makeup etc are tied up with their adhd masking and wanting to fit in with peers, rather than it being a 'this is what real girls like' thing.

Fortunately, it seems by sharing my own experiences of never conforming to gender stereotypes, and getting her to think of it all from more of a radical feminist perspective, she's moved on from such thinking. She's definitely got to a stage now where she's less inclined to care what others think/ say and will even challenge such stereotyped thinking. But I do have to monitor content she engages with online. Anything I see that could potentially undo our work together, I'll gently probe with her and offer alternative thinking if necessary. I need her to come to her own conclusions for it to stick if that makes sense.

(On the hair thing, dd insisted I cut her hair short in Yr4 and kept it that way till mid way through Yr 6. After all our talks, she came to me a few months later and said she wanted to grow her hair out. That's when I knew things we're sinking in with her. )

I would suggest that you start with 'don't believe everything you read on the internet'.

"Non binary demi boy" doesn't actually mean anything. It's like when you take a 'which house are you' Harry Potter quiz and it says you're Ravenclaw. You might feel that Ravenclaw does actually describe you as a person - clever, brave, whatever, but it is still just a made-up word to describe a personality.

Does she know that she is autistic? I would also tell her that autistic people are very prone to feeling like they don't fit in. They are also very bad at labelling their feelings and can latch onto other people labelling their feelings for them.

I think everyone is so nervous around the gender conversation that they treat 'non binary demi boy' with way more seriousness than it deserves. Get her to take some other internet personality quizzes (what warrior cat are you?) and say that it's basically the same thing.

I would cut her internet and get her a kitten.

I'm being a bit flippant, I know, but she needs less time online being parented by algorithms and strangers, and something meaningful to focus on in the real world. It's now beyond doubt that social media has a detrimental affect on the mental health of children, and this is one of the ways that presents itself. Hilary Cass has clearly said that sites like Instagram are algorithm farming 'trans' at children. There's a court case happening in California right now where a 19 year old girl is suing meta for the damage using their platforms has done to her mental health.

My eldest was very GNC at around this age - short hair, clothes from the boys section etc. I just went with it and said girls can wear any clothes they like and have any haircut they like, it doesn't mean anything. A girl with short hair is just a girl with short hair. She did sometimes get mistaken for a boy which she thought was hilarious. Her attitude was, look at that silly person who doesn't know that girls can have short hair and wear star wars t-shirts too.

I agree with the "don't believe everything you read on the internet" line. The tipping point with my DD and her flirtation with being trans/non-binary came when she trotted out the "Gay people wouldn't have rights if it weren't for Trans people" argument.

I pointed her to Marsha P Johnson's own words (available on You Tube) admitting he had been nowhere NEAR the Stonewall riots. I also pointed out that fact that it's widely acknowledged that the call to action came from a Black lesbian. I then asked her why she thought women (actual women that is) were being written out of gay history. DD is gay herself so asking her to consider if lesbians being overshadowed by males who did none of the work and took all of the glory wasn't just yet another extension of misogygy.

It's a bit like the JKR is a raging homophobe arguement. Once you go to the origianl source it becomes clear that some people have an agenda and many people just echo what they've heard.

Would therapy help? It’s worrying she’s dropping her hobbies and friends.

Jaw length bob is a compromise. Does she mean Tom boy rather than Demi boy?

Agree with limiting her internet access.

Further I also think 14 is too young for children to know their own mind about topics like this. Yes they can experiment but always should be at the forefront that they’re growing, experiencing puberty and that their minds can change. No way do you want her going the full trans route without discussion and preferably no or little pressure from online sources.

A kitten is actually good idea! Something to care for.

I would say take her out to get her ears pierced and maybe for clothing that’s more unisex. I don’t think that’s a bad thing experimenting.

Dd1 was older than this but watching lots of women’s rights films seemed to get rid of the pronoun nonsense she started spouting. We watched Enola holmes and suffragette and hidden figures and a few more I can’t recall. I got a list from here. We also watched lots of films with both DDs which allege there is a right and wrong way to be a woman. Miss Congeniality was their fave. There is an endless supply of this on Netflix. We now talk often about this kind of thing and this has helped deconstruct strict gender norms.
I hope this is helpful.

Does it matter? Let her cut her hair, it will grow back. If it's a phase, that will become clear soon enough.