No "gender issues" for our kid

We never brought her to a therapist to discuss gender. We never treated her claim of a trans identity as an issue in itself. We never sought treatment for gender dysphoria.

When our little munchkin announced a trans identity at age 11, we knew she wasn’t actually dysphoric. We knew it was a game of sorts.

We just didn’t know what game or why.

It took us a few months to discover one part of the mystery, and a few months after that to figure out the rest. It turned out there were two giant underlying factors — or “comorbidities,” as we came to understand — contributing to her escape into a trans identity.

Once we figured out those two things, we focused on “treatment” for those two things. The trans identity fell away from there. Not quickly, but indeed definitively.

I’ve been told that one of the things we had going for us was that she was a tween/younger teen vs older, and therefore less entrenched as well as more under our influence.

But we had to play the long game, and along the way do things we never could have predicted. We bought her a binder. We caved on the name and the pronouns. And once while washing dishes and being presented with the subject of Matt Walsh by my child, I really did say the answer to “What is a woman?” is “Anyone who identifies as a woman.”

Yes, we really did these redonkulous things.

But one thing we didn’t do was give her significant attention about her trans identity. We didn’t treat it as a conversation topic.* We didn’t praise it; we didn’t pathologize it; we didn’t feed it; we didn’t fight it. We didn’t send her to therapy about it.** And in our case this worked to our advantage.

Every family and kid and parent-child relationship is different, and parents have an infinity of ways of navigating the gender bee-ess. This was our way, specific to our circumstances. I am always amazed by the creativity and resilience of parents living through this long-term crisis; I read their stories on PITT and hear their stories live. I would love to hear other families’ desistance stories, too, would love to hear how others escaped the madness in their unique ways.

*To be thorough, I will mention that when she was on the cusp of desistance and it was time to nudge her over the line, we did indeed discuss it head-on

**But we did send her to therapy specific to the two comorbidities. More on that in another post.