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[Fading Hope]

Fading Hope

Hi,
I'm a parent of a teen who told us 2 years ago that she was nonbinary. A few months later, she changed that to trans boy. She had, up until that point, been a big fan of skirts and occasionally dresses. She didn't care a lot for playing with dolls but played with stuffed animals in that way. She loved princesses but also dinosaurs. We always encouraged that girls can like and do whatever boys do. This was completely out of left field and unexpected. She used to love swimming, and had done a lot of it just a few months before this revelation, but since then hasn't been in a pool once. She mostly stays in her room now. It's hard to get her to do anything else.

Hi Fading Hope,
Your story sounds much like what has happened to our son since he decided that he is trans.  He enjoyed all sorts of boy activities and still to me seems to have many of the interests that I think of being a boy's.  But like your daughter with her swimming he has given up playing the piano which he was very good at. And he spends a lot of time in his room. 

Fortunately this month his job as a teacher's assistant working with young children has resumed, and the kids are actually in school so every weekday he's out of the house, interacting him with them and with the rest of the teaching staff and making the two-mile round-trip walk back and forth.  It's all made a difference in his state of mind, so far as I can see, and also given my wife and me something we can talk with him about now.  So anything that will get your daughter out regularly and interacting may help, job or volunteer activity. 

I still worry about the time he spends alone though (weekends mostly now) and wonder whether he's found that being online supports his trans identity. 

Anyway, let's keep talking.  Whatever reality there is to gender dysphoria (and I have my doubts there is much), I suspect kids like ours have not had it but instead are swept up in what now seems like a solution to identity issues that they like most young people have that stem from other issues.  So just maybe, Fading Hope, there is hope that our kids will come to see the answers they are searching for are not in changing their bodies but instead doing the work of really coming to understand who they are meant to be.  That is my prayer for my son. I would be pleased to add your daughter to my prayers.

Thank you so much for the offered prayers. I will do the same for you.