This may feel triggery at first but is worth reading through.
Trans folx are under no obligation to be this patient, but some of us choose to dive into it and the rewards can be great.
I’ve got a ton of friends with teens and have been modeling and explaining to my community the science for YEARS and lo and behold a significant number of people I’ve known since their teenagers were infants are having their teens come out to them and just… supporting them. I’m far from the only one. There are whole places that parents new to this can go, and they start out where he is and see, very quickly, the science and the support modeled from other parents (including trans parents of trans kids) and suddenly they’re diving in wholeheartedly.
One of the interestingly complex issues around families is that a lot of teenagers, due to rapid brain development during puberty, have a very hard time “taking the emotional temperature” of the people around them. Even without trans issues in the mix, it takes a lot of work for teens to hear through the static that their brains are throwing up, and it takes a lot of work for parents to not take it personally when their teens are not able to modulate their emotional responses to unclear data.
This is one of the reasons why I think it’s super, super helpful when parents can jump on board and get educated before puberty, because it’s a lot easier when you’ve got an extremely thoughtful 4 year old or six year old explaining their gender and a doctor explaining what it means, at a time when the parent is in “learning” mode instead of in “react mode.
Unfortunately bodies and brains don’t always cooperate, because there’s yeah, the “I always knew” kids who came out at age 2, but there’s also a large chunk of kids who don’t figure things out until puberty strikes, and another whack of people who figure it out during or after puberty, and that’s when things get particularly hairy.
See, MOST parents, in theory, want “what is best” for their kids. But how they shape that image of “what is best” depends hugely on their own background, how they were parented, and the social expectations surrounding them. Small town religious families often have a hard time bending, for example, where there are many specific social expectations in the culture (you will go to church, you will marry within the faith or “adjacent”, you will get this kind of job, having a girl means this, having a boy means that.) But so do families in a lot of other places. The same force that makes a parent unhappy when their child doesn’t decide to be a doctor or doesn’t go to their alma mater, all of that… that stuff tends to be generational and difficult to change.
HOWEVER… There’s this incredibly potent argument to be had around mental health and suicide, that makes most parents, even with those complicated social expectations, sit up and reassess.
And that’s what you see up there. It’s not phrased, “If you don’t do this your kid will die”… it’s phrased, “I know you want what’s best for your kid, and you wouldn’t be asking questions if you weren’t a good parent, and let me give you another angle to look at this from.” (And then the science is presented.)
But it works often enough to be worth the effort. And it almost always needs to come from an outside person.
Because asking a kid who is struggling through dysphoria and fear of parental alienation to coddle their parent through this is often too much when that kid is ALSO going through puberty and unsure whether their parents are truly assholes who care more about their own expectations than they do the person their child actually is or just misguided.
I’ve seen so many parents make the leap, with varying levels of grace.
But I’ve also seen so many kids whose parents failed to make the leap, or worse, didn’t even try.
If your parents didn’t make this leap, I want you to know that it isn’t because you did anything wrong or failed to make the correct attempt. In most cases, it’s a failing of family culture, and has roots farther back than you could possibly have influenced.
But if you’re a teen, and having a hard time figuring out whether your parent is really evil or just inept, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE reach out, when you can, to an adult who does already understand the issues, and specifically someone who is working for a hotline or is already a parent of a trans kid who is supportive.
I know parents around the country who would literally open their homes to kids and young adults in a heartbeat if necessary, to give them a soft space to land from parental rejection. I know multiple parents in the town I’m in.
This is a hugely complex issue. But it’s an issue that is moving quickly in the right direction in a lot of places. We’re at about 70 metaphorical monkeys out of 100.
