Parent Voices: How to Embrace Your Child's Gender Transition
by Jennifer Rodstrom (transcript of her TEDxTalk)
I can distinctly remember my younger child asking me or my husband at random times, do you like having a son and a daughter? And I'd answer, of course, I have the best boy in the world and the best girl in the world. What more could I possibly ask for? And I meant it.
What I did not know then, that I know now, was that my child was trying to gauge our reaction to see what we might do when we found out that the kid we'd been raising as a girl didn't identify as one.
I try to imagine what it must have been like at 12 in middle school to. Something doesn't feel right here, but I can't quite put my finger on what it is. Can you imagine how overwhelming that must have been? We soon learned that our child was experiencing what's known as gender dysphoria, or the feeling that your internal identity doesn't match the gender defined by your external.
And to say this was unexpected and incredibly challenging for us would be an understatement. But what I wanna share with you today is how we got to where we are today. Myself, my husband, my older son, and of course my younger child. How we made it through this bewildering time, time, it required three key areas.
First, unconditional love, second. Parental acceptance and guidance and third community support. Now, unconditional love is one of those things we tend to take for granted, right? Parents, of course, we love our children, but there can be those times when that love can be put to the test. And this could have been one of those times my child's gender crisis, but for my husband and.
It was clear-cut. We loved, supported, and accepted our child no matter what, and nothing was going to change that. The harder part was really hearing what a child in distress was trying to convey. The way I see myself is different than the way you, mom and dad, and the rest of the world see me, and I need you to believe me and support me.
What would it have said to our child if we didn't believe? That we know him better than he knows himself. Why would he ever wanna tell us anything important ever again? What would this have done to our relationship? On the other hand, how could we be 100% certain this wasn't just a phase or that he wouldn't experience some other shift that we were unprepared for?
We couldn't, but we searched our memories trying to find clues. To help us on this path because as parents, we want irrefutable proof and absolute truth on something as big and scary and life-altering as a child's gender identity. Alas, life doesn't provide such clarity, but for us, there was no option. The stakes were too high.
Studies continually show that transgender youth are at higher risk of suicide than their peers. More than 50% considered suicide in the past year while 20% made an attempt on their life. Yet these alarming statistics can be altered with affirmation or support and acceptance from friends, family, and school.
Sadly, only one in three of these transgender teens find home to be a gender-affirming. Well, about half report that school is that space for them. We are firmly in that one in three, and we knew that we supported our child no matter what. But what does affirmation really look like in practice? For us, it was more than passive acceptance.
It was actively supporting his social transition. When he selected a new name and began using the pronouns, he, him, and. It was letting him get a haircut and new clothes that better reflected how he saw himself. This was not easy, but for us, this was what unconditional love looked like. Trusting our child to a point, because we still had to be the grownups and we needed to manage and plan his transition with and for him because there's so many pieces a kid can't do on their own.
And I had to balance opposing truths simultaneously. Love, accept, and trust my child while coping with my own misgivings and fears about what all of this meant because I didn't need to just accompany him on this journey in many ways. I needed to lead it. It was a lot to take in. We needed. We found wonderful clinicians and therapists and doctors who helped us to understand what this path might look like moving forward. (Click to learn more about Parent Coaching)
I read everything I could get my hands on books with titles like “Raising the Transgender Child” and “Transgender 1 0 1”, and we have been incredibly fortunate to have a warm, welcoming, loving community supporting us every step of the way. We encouraged our child to be patient with us as we learned and researched and planned for all the different aspects of what lay ahead from the social transition to potential medical treatments to maybe legal changes of his name or gender.
And if any of you have ever known a strong-willed teen, you can imagine how well that was received. Not very, but we were determined to get it right, whatever right might look like.
Now a social transition of name and pronouns, it doesn't really sound too complicated until you stop to think about it. Who needs to know? Everyone you have ever met…So the grandparents, the aunts, uncles, cousins, your friends, your kids' friends, your kids' friends', parents, the middle school principal, and the therapist at the school. Uh, the teaching staff and the administrators. Don't forget the pediatrician, dentist, and orthodontist, and any of those extracurriculars. If it's a drama teacher or a band leader or a soccer coach, they need to know too. It's literally everyone. And who told most of these people? My husband and I, we had the same conversation over and over and over again with different people in our orbit while we were still coming to terms with this new reality.
We carefully planned the school transition with the administrators, how we'd let an entire seventh-grade class and their parents know that one of the students was now transgender and had a different name and pronouns they’d be using. And all of that careful planning went right out the window when a teacher accidentally shared a new seating chart with a name the kids had never seen before. In a middle school classroom, you can imagine the speculation and frenzy and questions, and so forth. And my kid watched this unfold with horror because of course it was his new name shared too soon before all of that careful planning came to fruition.
And it was awkward and he was very upset and we were frustrated. But we got through it and really that was straightforward compared to what lay ahead, gender affirming healthcare or as I like to call it, what do we do about puberty? Because it was coming for our child like a freight train, and his body hadn't gotten the memo that it was the wrong puberty.
The relatively easy decision for us in this was what are known as puberty blockers. This would buy us and our son some time to think and plan. And puberty blockers do exactly that. They halt imminent puberty and they're reversible. And as soon as you stop taking them, your natal puberty resumes. And these are not new medications. They've actually been around for about 30 years and have been used to treat a condition called precocious puberty when kids as young as six or eight start to show signs of puberty long before they're ready. But this wasn't a long-term solution. We all have to go through puberty someday if we want to or not, and which puberty that would be.
That was a big decision because testosterone affects fertility and he would need to take it for the rest of his life and it would change his body and his voice to be more like his older brothers. And even if he went off testosterone at some point, these changes are not necessarily reversible. Try to imagine having to make this life-altering decision for a young teen.
How could we possibly know what the next five, 10, or 20 years might bring? And if he would change his mind, but we had to be the adults. It's one of those times that really can stink to be a grownup. We had to be the adults and make the hard decision, and we knew from our research and soul-searching, and saw that testosterone was the right choice for our child. Now, I think I can safely say that most kids don't like minor surgeries or shots. I think that's a general rule of thumb we can agree on. But what I can tell you is the day my son got the implant in his arm that released the puberty suppressant, the kid was giddy with excitement and I cannot tell you the relief I felt to know that we had made the right decision, and a year later when he went on testosterone and he had to learn to give himself a shot in the thigh, he did it calmly and efficiently, and I can't imagine anyone, child or adult who would do a weekly self-administered shot if they didn't think it would make their life.
This journey has been a winding road, to say the least, two steps forward, one step back, and this wasn't happening in a vacuum. I think we all can remember the events of the last few years - there's been this little thing going on called a global pandemic, and uh, my child was not, you know, immune from everything that came along with that.
He experienced the school closures and isolation from peers. Finishing middle school remotely and starting high school the same way, and this is because being transgender does not negate all the other aspects of adolescence, nor does it fully define who my child is as a person. He is loving and compassionate and silly, and he's strong-willed and stubborn, and at times infuriating.
He loves his friends more than anything, and music and horror movies, and true crime, and he's sarcastic and creative. And I can honestly say I think he's the most confident and comfortable he's been perhaps ever today. And an important piece of that is that all of his legal documents accurately reflect his identity.
We took on the delightfully painstaking bureaucratic process of changing his name and amending his birth certificate so that everything from his passport to his social security card, his driver's license and so forth, match who he is. So what does this all mean to you? I mentioned earlier the importance of community.
Transgender kids and their families cannot do this. Like so many aspects of child-rearing, it takes a village. So what can you do to support transgender youth you might encounter?
I'm gonna give you four things:
First, use their preferred name and pronouns. This might seem really basic and really simple, but it's incredibly powerful and has a huge impact on how they feel about themselves. If you mess up that name and pronouns, it is okay. Simply apologize and keep going. What's important is you tried.
Second respect how they choose to express their gender identity. It may not line up with what you tend to think of as boy and girl and male and female, and that's okay.
Third, don't ask them insensitive or intrusive questions about their body that it would never occur to you to ask anyone else.
And finally, learn all that you can about the reality faced by transgender youth and frankly adults in this country. Trans kids need supportive adults to stand up against the hateful and dangerous legislation that is being proposed and passed seemingly daily across the country.
I can tell you, despite what you might hear in some of the rhetoric, no kid and no parent chooses to be trans or have any type of political agenda. It is a painful and at times grueling path. I believe that some of the attacks that we see are based on fear and ignorance. People simply haven't met a transgender kid or their family and they don't realize we're really not that different from anyone else they know.
Well, you all now know all about a trans teen and his mom. I hope that makes us a little less scary, a little less other. I'm just a parent who wants the same thing as any other parent I know. I want my two boys to grow up to be happy and healthy. Just remember, we're just families, parents, and kids, trying to do the best we can, asking to be treated with the same respect and understanding that you would give to anyone else you'd meet.
Parent Voices is an anonymous opportunity for parents to voice their experience of raising a trans child, without disclosing their identity, and outing their child. If you would like to submit an article please send it to hello@genderspecialist.com with the subject line “Parent Voices”
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