So your child or teen has come home and told you that they now prefer he/him, she/her, or they/them pronouns. Where did this come from? Maybe this isn't how you raised them. Maybe this is something strictly against the faith you raised them with. More problematically for you, that isn't the name you gave them, and the pronouns they want don't match. Is there something wrong with them?
Let's go back to birth.
Remember holding your baby for the first time? Remember how you felt the first time they tightly held your finger with their hold hand as tightly as they could? The first time they walked and you cheered? The first time they swung their arms around you and said "I love you"? Remember how deeply you felt you loved them, and wanted to protect them from anything that could hurt them in this world?
As parents, we want the best for our kids. We do love them. We want to protect them, and much of the time, our responses to their choices can be borne in fear; especially if we anticipate they may be putting themselves in danger.
I am writing this post in hopes that this is you. You love your child, an
d worry about harm.
What are the potential worries you may have about being asked to use different pronouns?
Is my child transgender? If they are -- what would they mean for them? Would they go to hell? Would they be allowed at our church and in our faith? Would they be rejected and ostracized by our family, our friends, and our community? Would they go on to experience hate crimes, bullying and a stigmatized life? How can they be a successful adult? What if they ask me for hormone therapy or surgeries?
Is this just a phase? If I engage with this, what if I'm encouraging it and it would otherwise be a phase they could grow out of?
What is this causes their siblings to copy them? What if encouraging them would set a bad example for the rest of the family and the community?
There are a lot of concerns that may play through your mind if your child starts talking to you about gender. Morality, faith, fear, anxiety of the unknown, so many things.
I am going to take this back to birth again to remind you that you love your child. If your child was born with 13 fingers, you would love them. If they were born with deformities, you would love them. However they came to you, it became your duty to love and protect them.
Why does this happen? Are they choosing this?
Right now, research suggests that this occurs in utero. The brain and genitals develop at different times when the fetus is growing. Different levels of hormones at both of these intervals impact the development of incongruence between gender in the brain and genitalia.
Brain scans have been done in those who express a different gender than their biological sex. The brain scans show that the brain structure aligns more closely with their perceived gender than it does with the biological sex they were born with. It is literally a structural difference in the brain. It is not a choice.
With that in mind, let's break down some statistics.
First of all, the developmental task of adolescents and young kid is to try on different identities to figure out who they are. This may be a facet of exploration; it may be something that they want to experiment with, or it may be something they have felt internally since they were very young and are now expressing it.
What you need to remember, no matter the reason or the long term outcome of this, your reaction affects their mental health.
30% of transgender youth have attempted suicide in the last year; 50% of trans youth consider suicide. In adulthood, one in two transgender people have attempted suicide. They are 3.5x more likely to die of completed suicide than non-trans peers.
However, a study found that those who had supportive parents, only 4% attempted suicide. They are 94% less likely to attempted suicide compared to those with parents who choose not to receive them. Perceived support could literally be THE factor in your child's choice to end their life.
Kids who are autistic are more likely to not conform to gender-norms, and may experience "gender dysphoria" or prefer "gender fluidity." This means they might not feel comfortable with the sex they were born with, and they may feel they have some days they feel more masculine, or some days they feel more feminine - or perhaps just feel neutral of either gender. This is extremely common in neurodivergent populations; we have to remember that autistic individuals perceive the entire world differently than neurotypical people. They perceive sound, visuals, and textures differently. They perceive social cues differently. They also perceive their bodily differently in some cases. They also are at high risk of suicide, particularly if not accepted by their families.
I've spent many years in this field, and I've worked with many people who were estranged from their family - for religious differences, moral differences, or just a lack of acceptance. Some sat hundreds of miles away crying after a parent who refused to speak with them had passed away, feeling unable to even attend their funerals.
Stop and remember that baby and how much they needed you. The yearn for a supportive, loving parent never goes away.
Society will continue to ostracize them. People will bully them. Laws will be put forth that may limit them from being able to compete in sports and promote discrimination of them to be able to obtain jobs. But you are their parent. You are their advocate.
This isn't a choice. There are biological bases for this. And if you believe in God, do you believe that God makes mistakes? Would God want you to reject your child or do anything that would push your child toward hurting so much that they end their life?
You have a chance to learn for them. To continue to love them and believe that if you are religious, morality is not yours to enforce. That belongs to your higher power.
Because the other risk is that they kill themselves, or you live the rest of your life without your child. You'll never know how their life turns out. And even if you feel like that's the best choice and you can't support them, I know there is a deeper part of you as a parent that longs for that relationship.
It has been shown in studies that when parents use and accept a youth's chosen name and pronouns, suicide thoughts and behaviors are reduced.
You can bring them to us for medication. We can do medication. We can do therapy. But science tells us that you have power to stop them from hurting, feeling depressed, and feeling suicidal. If you as their family, the ones who are supposed to love and protect them the most, reject them, then medication will not work as it should.
As the world is changing, your kids are in fear of the future.
I urge you to consider what harm comes to you in offering your child support. Your lack of support will not change the course of the exploration of their gender. Rather, it could shift their journey toward looking at suicide. It could shift them toward being estranged from you as an adult.
As a parent, you are allowed to feel grief and grieve. You are allowed to be confused. You are allowed to worry. You are allowed to feel pain about this. That is all natural. But
But I do ask that you take space to explore churches in your faith that do accept LGBTQ folks. Take space to learn what youth feel and have experienced if they felt rejected by their families. Take space to learn about the risks of suicide. Take space to learn about all of this. It's new and it's scary, but there are so many resources.
Resources
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