From the Members

[NotAnOstrich]

My 15 year old daughter suddenly came out as non-binary about a month ago. She was always a feminine girl, with no interest in "typically boyish" activities or things. She still isn't interested in "typical boyish" things. Now, she says she isn't a girl, but doesn't want to be a boy. She still wears make-up and dresses and skirts most of the time, but every so often she'll put on a baggy shirt and boy's shorts. It just doesn't make any sense. She wants everyone to call her they/them and she wants to bind her breasts (I said no to binding). She never told me she had any issues with her body until a month ago, but she says she has felt like this for a couple of years? I feel lost on how to deal with this, there was never any warning. She has self-diagnosed from watching videos on youtube and reading on Tumblr.

Welcome to the board. My daughter sounds a lot like yours. She came out as non-binary in the beginning of July. Her one ask, other than short hair and her baggy boyish clothes, was a binder. I drew a hard line. No binder. She really fought about it for a good month but seems to accept it now. No more binder fights. Yay! I’m feeling a lot more relaxed now. We’ve made our boundaries (dress how you want but you are a girl) and she seem so to be ok with it. I did buy her a spanxx type tank top as a concession. Got it from Kohl’s. She had it on for 10 minutes and declared that it was way too uncomfortable and she hasn’t tried it on since. She also ordered herself a binder from our Amazon account right after she “came out”. Huge fights ensued. I eventually opened the darn package and seeing how small and tight it was, let her try it on. It took forever to get on and off, she had it on for at most 5 minutes. At the time she said it felt “fine” but she’s never asked where I hid the thing. Even though she won’t  admit it I really think she’s concluded that binders are uncomfortable and that she really doesn’t want to wear one. She doesn’t even wear a sports bra. Just a normal bra everyday. I tried to tell her about all the health hazards; that didn’t move her at all. 

If you haven’t checked out Sasha Ayad’s site, inspiredteentherapy.com, I highly recommend it. Her perspective really helped me in how to talk to my daughter about this stuff.