Our Discussion Topics

[TChealing]

Hey there, I’m not sure if I’m posting this correctly, but here it goes. My 13 year old daughter recently came to me and said she is a boy. It’ was out of the blue, and so confusing. She is internationally adopted, has always been socially awkward, because of COVID, she’s been home and online for the past year. She’s never had many friends, but has developed a “friend” group online. I feel bad because I wasn’t monitoring her online use like I should have... I had no idea that there were so many different terms on gender and sexual orientation. She said while she was researching things to help her friends through their transitions, she realized that she’s actually transgender. She said these friends started calling her by different pronouns, and that it felt really good.

I probably didn’t handle it the best when she told me. I was angry and she said I made it about me, and that I made her feel awful, because she was already doubting herself. Now that’s she’s told me, and I’ve told her I don’t agree, she is digging her heels in even harder. We will continue to use her name, we still use girl pronouns, we’ve taken away her phone and computer, but I’m still so scared, confused, angry, etc.

I don’t want to do or say the wrong thing... maybe I’m the one that’s wrong in this situation. I don’t know? This whole thing just sucks, and I never in my wildest thoughts would have predicted we’d be going through this! Any advice would be greatly appreciated on how to navigate, what to say, and tips to help her. Thank you!!!

I feel for you, I and everyone here never thought we'd be going through this. I figured my daughter would go through hard times during puberty and would have body image issues but never this type of behaviour.  My daughter is even younger, at 10.5, and is going through puberty and staying at home during covid and doing school, isolated, she has had higher levels of anxiety and now has said she is a boy and that is really shocking to me.  I hope she snaps out of it.  I've reached out to a local psychiatrist who is controversial in my city because he tries to help kids go back to normal and not transition so I hope she can see him and get some other help for the underlying issues of not having friends and always being online.  I hate the world that we've created with all of this technology.  The saying was always that technology will be our downfall as humans and it just keeps getting worse when they have access to all of these social media sites.  I also wish I had spent more time with her and got her off of the social media and never allowed it but she uses the computer for school so I can't block everything, i'll just have to block sites.  I just don't want her to hate me and rebel further the more I try to push her away from it, it's such a difficult thing to go through and I completely sympathize with you.  Thanks.