@sarahd89 , taking everything you are saying here at face value, I do hope this isn't all coming across as a pile-on. Thank you for being here and for engaging.
As a parent, it's awful hearing your child say they wish they were dead. I've had that experience - my daughter has said it on more than one occasion. I've also had the experience of my daughter kicking and hitting me, at one point pretty much on a daily basis. She wouldn't leave her room for months. She's not an only child, so we also had to think about sibling safety in this mix. In short, it was horrendous and the really intense period lasted months.
Everything began with her asking us for puberty blockers, just before her 13th birthday. She then backtracked a few days later and said it had been a joke. Then asked for them again after a couple of months and it was clear that she was serious. She said she didn't know if she was really a girl and this medicine would give her time to think about that. This was somewhat of a surprise, as I knew nothing about gender identity at the time, but taking a pause seemed reasonable. At this point, we looked at the NHS website which said that the impact on the developing teenage brain is unknown... So we told her she couldn't have them.
I'm intrigued by your reference to the alternative to PBs being "doing nothing". I didn't do nothing. I joined a "trans parents' network" at my work to listen to other parents, I bought a book on gender dysphoria (it's an excellent book, written by Sue and Marcus Evans) and taught myself how to listen to what my daughter was telling me about her distress and how to do a differential diagnosis to unpick and then start to slowly address what might be causing the dysphoria. I felt lost and scared. I didn't know what I was doing and my daughter's mental health was getting worse and worse.
Fast forward to now, nearly 4 years later, and she's going to school, doing all her hobbies again (music, football and more) and (for the most part) thriving, albeit while still in recovery from the trauma of being bullied at school for a sustained period of time. Despite the mostly positive direction of travel, we're still having to follow a watchful waiting approach because she's still really unhappy about her developing body. She would still love to take testosterone if it was safe to do so - she's told me this recently. She knows she's female though and she knows that taking testosterone wouldn't change this. I'm hoping that as she continues to mature, she will continue to reconcile with her body. She's making progress on this. Although she still hates periods - she only gets them occasionally, because she's on the pill - she no longer screams the house down, self-harms or attacks family members when she gets them.
Our stories are obviously different but it feels like there are some similarities and it comes across very strongly how much you love your child. And how hard it's been working out what's best, with so much conflicting information.
I have a few questions. How old was your child when:
- PBs were started?
- everyone started using she/her pronouns to describe your child
- feelings of distress about "gender" were first obvious?
One thing that jumps out at me hugely in terms of difference between your and my experiences, as mums of children who have expressed gender dysphoria, is that when I first heard that PBs had an unknown impact on the developing brain, that became a hard line "no" for me. Not matter what, this was never going to change. By contrast, you said (and I hope I get this right, as I'm paraphrasing from a post of yours earlier) that the science isn't settled yet on brain development impact.
Apologies if this comes across as judgemental, but I genuinely find it astounding that anyone would support their child's brain being experimented upon with unsettled science. I truly hope that your child continues to feel happy and is able to mature into adulthood without cognitive impairment. I can't remember which PP said it, but I would love to know that all the children who had been given PBs for gender dysphoria were now thriving as adults. That would be amazing. But it sadly seems highly unlikely, or there wouldn't be all this reluctance from the adult gender clinics to share the long term outcomes of the GIDS patients.
Edited to add that I'm taking what you're saying here in this thread at face value. After writing my comment above I saw i couple of people commenting that you've been on other threads talking about why males (who identify as women) should be allowed into women's refuges. If that's also true, I would like to clarify that I have no empathy/sympathy for that viewpoint whatsoever. That's a hard no from me.