Help! Son (13) with severely mental health issues thinks he is trans.

[Camille2906]

Please help me with my want-to-be-trans-child as I am more and more freaking out as his mother. As English is not my mother tongue, please excuse andy mistakes.

I am the mother of a nearly 14 year old boy who thinks he is transgender and wants to be a girl for one year now. Until now he has only socially transited outside of our home and any medication is not planned at all.

All of it started when he became suicidal and diagnosed with depression because of severe bullying at school. He is also profoundly gifted (IQ is 145), has diagnosed ADHD and probably some autistic traits (autism was ruled out). He has been quirky for his whole life and has never really fit in for the most of his life. We now that the idea of being transgender got introduced to him online (reddit, discord, roblox) where he was encouraged pretty much and praised for being trans. We have never affirmed him at all at home but we tell and show him everyday how much we love him as he is without insisting too much that we think all this transgender thing is nonsense and that he is still a boy. I still try to tell him my personal opinion quite often because I desperately hope, that this way, I will be louder than the trans activists. We also completely restricted his internet access since he came out and control what he is doing (he knows about it). So no more reddit, discord, anime, roblox and so on.

Since a week he is in a children- and youth psychiatric clinic for a stationary treatment as he is still suicidal despite all the therapies we did for the last 12 months. This was absolutely necessary.

But I am freaking out about the social transition. In his new school nearly everyone was absolutely fine with his wish to be called Luna and not Felix. And also in the clinic they respect this wish and call him Luna though he still has to be in a shared room with a boy and use the boys facilities. He bought himself some skirts from his pocket money but he doesn’t have them in the clinic. I explained to him that his time there is about healing and not about wearing skirts all the time because I am not there.

Because I am so scared of his future I told him what it really means to be a trans woman, about the surgeries, the lifelong medication and the risks and I even showed him videos of weirdo trans women fetishists. So now he doesn’t want to do anything medical anymore and changed from trans girl to demi boy and thinks he is gay (I’m fine with being gay!). That’s what he told me but I can’t believe him. He still doesn’t want to let go of this stupid girl name and tries to wear girl clothes whenever he can. Yesterday I visited him in the clinic and the girls made him his hair (he has long hair).

Sorry for the chaotic writing but my worries are eating me up more and more. The more I research about all this gender ideology the more I freak out.

His former therapist didn’t affirm him, also just the name thing…, and worked with the waiting approach. She told me that she thinks he has a huge identity crisis because he never fit in. Also she thinks that he is running away from the trauma of bullying in his old school by getting rid of this person and being someone else.

I am so lost. How should I go on with my son. I love him so much and I just can’t sit there and wait. So if anyone has some advice for me I would be quite happy.

Thank you for reading this long post!

Try getting in touch with https://www.bayswatersupport.org.uk/ - they should be able to help you. Good luck x

Am I also allowed to contact them even if I don’t live in the uk?

In Germany there are no official resources for us. I am in an online support group for parents but there is no professional help available for us because Germany is always some years behind…

Yes, you can definitely contact them.

You can also contact Genspect: https://genspect.org/support/support-for-parents-and-relatives/

James Esses also has a list of gender critical therapists, some of whom work internationally (that is, by video call from wherever they are):

https://www.thoughtfultherapists.org/find-a-therapist

I’d like to add one fact about my son.

He is a very small and thin child who I smaller as all the boys in his class because he skipped a grade. So he might feel different because of his body again. He also has just started puberty and no big changes are visible yet (height, voice, etc.).

BUT on the other side he has no problem with his body if he doesn’t have to compare himself to anyone. At home he runs around naked after a shower and playing with his best piece sometimes under a blanket… So he can’t really hate his boy body…

Ah poor kid. He sounds so mixed up, and its frightening how easily he can find praise and affirmation from declaring himself "trans" when just being the precious boy he is gets him teased and bullied.

I have absolutely no experience with this but if "non-binary" is a thing in Germany, that seems to me a reasonable way of rejecting the macho stereotypes and gathering the "celebration" from outside but it feels like much less of a one way path, something that will be a lot easier to just grow out of and leave behind.

I could be completely wrong of course but it seems a lot less of a trap.

There are a lot of useful things here, @Camille2906:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5523864-17-year-old-autistic-son-has-started-taking-hormones-without-our-knowledge-or-consent?reply=152028781&utm_campaign=reply&utm_medium=share

Thank you for your answer.

But he is a boy and he is also not non-binary. I won’t change from one ideology to another. I strongly believe in biology and that a human being can either bei male or female defined by his biology.

He does not have to live up to any gender stereotypes and we never enforced them. He was allowed to dance ballet when he was younger, to have long hair as long as I can remember and much more but he was and always will be a boy.

I deeply regret that I have been so open minded but I have never thought that dancing ballet as a child is now used by him as an argument that he has always been trans. The same goes for his long hair.

Does your kid have access to lots of other quirky kids as friends? I think that being trans could be a way of him understanding why he's always felt different to others, if he has grown up in a very mainstream school for example. My son went to a very mainstream primary, struggled with friends, struggled to fit in. But his secondary school is absolutely full of quirky kids. He has made a big group of friends just like him. He won't need to go online to find his tribe, and I think that takes a lot of the risk away of ending up in an online group that is very affirming of something harmful.

A year ago he switched school to a special high school for gifted kids. Unfortunately he outed himself there in his first week.

As nearly all of the kids in this school have some sort of mental distress because of their former school, their giftedness and additional diagnoses, they are all very acceptable of each other weirdnesses.

His friends group consists of a variety of students of different age, classes and sex. But when you watch these kids they are still the nerds of all the other nerds. A psychologist told me, that these might be the profoundly gifted kids in a large group of gifted kids. These kids might still be more quirky and different to the others even they are all gifted.

But the point is, that these kids all accept my son wishing to be a girl. Some don’t, so they just stay out of his way. His friends don’t care about all this. They just like him. And because the like him, they call him by his preferred name and pronouns. Some who think this is weird, choose a nickname for him to not hurt him.
He wants to be called Luna, so some call him “Moendchen” which means little moon in German. I guess this should mean little Luna while trying to avoid the boy-girl-thing.

A lot of children desist after going through puberty, so as long as you can keep him away from those who would medicate him this may resolve anyway. Maybe buy him a kilt to show that it is not clothing that makes you male or female and watch Carry on Up The Khyber (British comedy film if you've never heard of it that includes a Scottish regiment) If he still likes ballet introduce him to performances by Rudolf Nureyev, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Vaslav Nijinsky.

It sounds like he has a good therapist already.

Thank you for your answer.

Right now he has just started his treatment in the clinic and he will have to stay there at least for a few more weeks. He wanted to go there and get help by himself but I guess he slowly realises that it will be a hard way. Whenever I visit him (two to three times a week), he tells me and I feel how much he misses his mom (I am a single mom) and his home.
The clinic doctors told me, that they won’t work on the trans thing but refer him to a specialised clinic if this would be so important to him. And then that would be again up to me. In the actual clinic it will be all about his depression and suicidal thoughts.

By the way, his depression and suicidal thoughts didn’t get any better after he transitioned socially - just for the record…

I guess, it’s just the name thing that freaks me out and scares the crap out of me. Unfortunately in the clinic and in the school you can’t forbid anyone here in Germany to use his preferred name. It is seen as using a nickname. But I refused to change anything official. The other thing is, I strongly refused any name change on documents, like report cards, and insisted, he still has to take part in the boys PE group. The school has a gender neutral bathroom, but he thinks the way there is too long and prefers the boys toilet directly in the cafeteria… The clinic also insisted in sharing his room with a boy and using the boys washroom or the one gender neutral one if it is free. Until now I don’t know which one he uses.
BUT when he becomes 14 end of August there is a law in Germany which allows him to change his gender in his legal documents all by himself. If the parents deny there probably will be a legal case. I told my son what will happen to him, if he calls CPS because of this gender shit and that he might have to leave his home if he insists that we are bad parents because if not affirming him. I hope he never risks his very good relationship because of this. Thankfully he has no access to any of the trans activists online or offline.

What possible reason is there for someone to think that ballet classes as a child are the reason they decide they are trans?

Is he on social media, and can you track what he is viewing?

Sorry I can see you have now taken control over his access.

Maybe because it will be mainly girls who attend ( I imagine).

Is your son an only child, or does he have siblings?

No problem.

Yes, he had too much access to social media before this has all started. And trust me, I feel the worst about this. It happened in a time where I was sick myself and wasn’t there form him as much as I should have been.

As soon as we knew about all what has been going on, we immediately installed a new child safety system for the internet access because he got around everything we had installed until then (remember his profoundly giftedness…).

Since then he hardly had any opportunities for free internet access. Of course I cannot control the school internet or his friends but at least he can’t use this alone for too long. I also regularly control his WhatsApp messages with his knowledge.

But I have to admit that his computer gaming time got worse and worse the worse his mental state became. So I decided a complete cut off together with the clinic. We started already at home but it’s going on in the clinic where the luckily don’t have any media access besides DVDs and music. The only thing he will get is 15 minutes each evening for messaging with his friends from next week on.

Has anyone ever thought of contacting one of the famous detransitioners to talk with your child about the risks of indoctrination online and of activists and doctors? I”ve been thinking of this for quite a while now because I think this might really impress my son and might get him back to clear thinking.

He is an only child as I got divorced when he was two years old. I never found another man who I wanted to have another child with.

His dad is very involved in his live and we do work quite ok together. Of course we have discussions but all in all his dad is absolutely a good father!

When you read the typical questions in the internet if one might be trans, you will be asked if you liked dresses as a kid, if you had girly hobbies, if you had long hair, if you liked pink, if you played with girls toys and so on.

So if he found one of these questionnaires he really could tick all of those questions with a yes.

The thing is, he has always been a very tiny and fragile looking child who never liked the rough boy playing, although his interests were very “boyish”. This resulted in him playing a lot more with the girls in kindergarten and school. You could always see that he adopted the interests of a new friend to maybe be more liked if he was more like them. As this were mainly girls, he also liked their interests most of the time. So he started ballet because a female friend in kindergarten started ballet and liked it. The list goes on and on.

And how is he responding to your son's 'trans' identification?

Hello Camille!

You mention a few things that I think are reason to hope:

• He no longer identifies as a trans girl.
• He identifies as a demi boy, not a demi girl.
• He prefers to use the boys' toilets instead of the gender neutral ones.

Yes, he still wants to use his girl name, and I understand that this must be very distressing to you, but it might just be some kind of psychological refuge against the bullying he endured (as in, it's not him - Luna - who got bullied, it's Real-name), so it might not be the alarm signal it looks like.

I don't really have any recommendation or help to offer, other than if possible staying as far away from the specialised gender clinic.

I hope your son finds peace and relief from his own distress, and can leave these difficult times behind very soon.

At first we were both very accepting, like for two weeks or so. Then I started researching a lot and told him that I won’t affirm our son anymore. He was fine with it.

His father lives three hours away and I often have the feeling that until he gets a call or a message from us or anyone else or is together with him, he is out of sight and out of mind. I truly think that he doesn’t think and worry about this point at all because he doesn’t see it in his daily life. He doesn’t have to fight about forbidding his son wearing a dress to his first prom. That’s all my stuff to do. He doesn’t worry about the fight of clothes buying because he pays child support and I buy the clothes. I guess he deeply hopes that it will all go away on its own one day when the mental health situation is solved.

We are both on the same side of not affirming him with a new name or new pronouns or allowing any legal or official changes (documents, toilets, PE group, etc.).

Thank you.

The thing is, after all this month of dealing with his severe mental health issues and the suicidal thoughts and attempts (I guess he never really tried because he never even half way succeeded), we have both lost trust. It is so hard for me to trust him at the moment because he just doesn’t tell me when he feels really bad. And I guess he also lost his trust in me, his mom, because he just closed up completely. That’s why I am scared that he still thinks he is trans and just told me he is a demi boy because he wants to keep his mom happy.

The thing is, he only wants to be trans in school, with his therapist and now in the clinic. But it all always goes back to the name, the pronouns, the clothes and the hair and make-up. He said he is fine with us to use his birth name when I explained to him that it really means something to me and that his parents have chosen it carefully. But the more people outside our family call him Luna, the more often he tries (still rarely) to ask me if I would call him Luna or calls himself she in conversations with me. He doesn’t tries this with his dad or his grandparents or his beloved uncle because he knows, they would think he is crazy (especially his grandpa and uncle).

Trust me, I will stay more than away from these gender clinics at all costs until he is 18. And I do hope that we can solve this at any chance before his 18th birthday.

Dont blame yourself for letting him do ballet lessons or grow his hair long. Plenty of boys have and are not gay or trans.

However I do think that you do need to ease up and follow his lead and support choices for the sake of his mental health. Showing him pictures of what you describe as “freaky women” or getting a detranistioner to talk to him will just give him feelings of shame.

so as not to derail thread into a trans debate I’m lesbian who believes firmly in single sex spaces.

best wishes to you both

The most important thing is to keep your son away from gender affirming medical procedures, such as puberty blockers and cross sex hormones. This buys him time to realise who he is, and many gay and autistic kids realise after puberty that they are gay and autistic rather than trans. The social transitioning is not neutral, but it is less dangerous.