I must say that regardless of your feelings and intentions, the title of this thread makes me sad.
One possibility is that the OP’s daughter/son is troubled by her/his own puberty. Periods, especially those in adolescence, are often hellish. Body hair and body odor aren’t cute. And even non-gender dysmorphic girls can hate their hips and breasts. Maybe these things are embraced by girls who see themselves as sexual beings. But for me, they were unwanted lumps of flesh that only served as painful reminders that I was not a cute little kid anymore.
I hated puberty. And my hatred made for a lonely existence since all the other girls seemed to celebrate it. So I can easily see myself, if I were a kid today, attributing my angst to transgenderism. I can understand how a kid might think that if they aren’t immediately thrilled with their sexy parts, that means they’ve been given the wrong ones.
So I guess what I’m saying is that lying doesn’t need to be the alternative explanation. The OP’s daughter/son may truly believe they are a boy AND actually not be, at least not in the transgender sense.
Yeah, I didn’t want to attempt a comprehensive list, but this occurred to me as well. The kid may be having an unusually hard time dealing with puberty, or have some other reason for fervently wishing to be a boy and is confused about whether this is the same thing as being transgender. We don’t know enough here to be able to tell what’s really going on with this kid, but something is going on. Trying to “put her back in the closet” is not addressing the real issue, whatever that may be.
I’m hoping the therapist will ask appropriate questions and attempt to figure out what the kid is thinking and really wants, because HubZilla doesn’t seem interested.
Thanks LSLguy for the heads up about ellipses and another poster. I probably do think slower than some folks, but I am not entirely ignorant and I come from a poetry rather than a prose background, so I will accept that it is just not done on this message board.
Me too. I think maybe this is causing some of the remarks that the OP isn’t really very supportive. Hard to think “supportive” and “closet” at the same time.
Thst is kinda sad.
Who cares whether it’s just a phase? The response right this moment is the same either way. Consider what the school is like and what the response is likely to be. If it’s not likely to be actively dangerous, then talk it through with your kid, make sure they’re aware of the potential problems and have ideas for how to handle them (OK, you’re pretty sure Becky in 8th grade is going to be a bitch about this, but she only picks on people who are isolated, so make sure you’re with your friends pretty solidly for the next few weeks). Make sure they’re clear on when to call you in for backup, because twelve-year-olds are notoriously shit at gauging that. The same stuff you would do for any big change. And then say, ‘Have a great day in school, Alex.’
If it’s a phase, she’ll have a chance to explore this territory and get whatever it is she needs from it, and then she’ll outgrow it and she’ll remember that you were with her all the way. If it’s not a phase, he’ll have a chance to find that out for sure, while knowing that his parents have his back all the way.
Either way, you telling them not to do this won’t change who they are. It’ll just make the process of discovery more complicated and more difficult, and make them feel like you don’t love who they are.
I really hope that kid is okay, now and in the future.
My daughter now in her 50’s had me pretty well convinced when she was a child that she should have been a boy. Until she was 16 she dressed like a boy, had boy mannerisms, she usually played sports with boys, hated her piano lessons, carried a baseball mitt in her back pocket hooked on her comb. I suspected it might have been my influence because she hug out with me all the time and helped me with the dog training, shop projects etc. No interest in girl stuff. At 16 she started taking an interest in boys and everything suddenly changed. She never did become super feminine and still is slightly boyish but her sexuality is 100% female. She was and is what we call a tom boy, less so as an adult. She has a great marriage going on 28 years now and 2 wonderful kids. I don’t like to label either way but at the same time if she wanted to claim an official switch of sexes at 12 I would have been against it for at least a few more years. I don’t believe puberty is a good time to make a decision like this.
The thing is, i’ts NOT about external appearances and actions, gender identity is an internal thing.
I was a raging tomboy all my childhood, and well into adulthood. Always into the boy stuff, didn’t “get” fashion and make up and stuff, even after TWO trips through “charm school”.
I never felt like a boy or a man, didn’t want to be a boy or man - I just wanted to be able to do what the boys/men did even if I was a girl.
It was clear to me (well, after about 10 or 12), but utterly confusing to many around me who assumed I was a homosexual or “worse” as they’d put it. And that’s why this subject can get so confusing for people, this conflation of external traits and actions with an internal state of being.
Nowadays the far greater acceptance of what we called “tomboy” 50 years ago would say that today’s equivalents of Broomstick and HoneybadgerDC’s daughter have a much easier time, not a harder one.
So-called tomboy is now fully in the mainstream of acceptable girl behavior. Preferring pants & athletics to dresses & playhouse is now normal, not deviant. It might be a minority interest, but it’s recognized as a sizeable and accepted minority, not as a tiny and deviant minority.
Which to me implies the opposite of what some of the [del]conservative[/del] reactionary pearl-clutchers up-thread have said.
Specifically, any nominally female kid today who makes gender or orientation questioning noises is more probably somebody for whom tomboy isn’t enough. They really do have more going on in their gender/orientation mix than meets the eye. If they were merely XX/female/hetero tomboys, they’d have been “out” to that since they were 5.
Net of course of the poor unfortunate children borne to extremely rigid and doctrinaire parents and who aren’t exactly aligned with whatever happens to be their parents’ particular rigid notions of gender stereotypes. Those kids are just screwed no matter who or what they are.
I agree.
For the most part, yes, tomboys are not subject to “correction” in the way they were in my generation.
^ This.
Remember Scout from ‘To kill a Mockingbird’ that was me at a young girl. I hated dresses and loved outdoors play and any animals I could get my hands on. Of my 2 daughters one was a tomboy another is very feminine. It is very different raising each one. I don’t think I ever went thru a bi- or trans- period, I was just accepted as a tomboy. I try real hard to accept what people say they or feel they are. It is such a slippery slope now, It’s hard to know what to do or say sometimes , you have to be so careful not to offend. I have to say, though, my children don’t seem to worry about it. They have grown up in a very different world than I did, needless to say. I am learning though!
I’d like to point out too that transmasc =/= more tomboy than tomboy. I went through tomboy phases as a child, and “girly” phases too. These days I can still be pretty femme - a lot of my clothes are girls clothes, though not quite so explicitly as dresses. And yet I’ve been taking testosterone for eleven years now. I’ve had surgery. I don’t get misgendered (I’m always seen as male), and I’m really very happy with my choices. So please don’t judge your child’s gender identity by things that are, in the end, just culture and fashions.
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And did she claim at 12 to be a boy? Did she ever say anything about it? If not, then is this story particularly relevant?
A number of people who are either transgender themselves or have family members who say that they or their family members were aware of the gender dysphoria from well before puberty. What are you basing your belief on?
And I don’t think anyone’s saying this kid needs to go on drugs or have surgery right now. There’s nothing wrong with going by a different name and simply dressing like the opposite sex. Only a total quack would immediately say, “okay, we’re going to immediately start transitioning you!”
One step at a time.
IDK…have you watched the reality show ‘Jazz’…I think it is on TLC. She started hormones before reaching puberty to not developed male characteristics. She is looking into surgery now at age 16.
The important part you are missing is the “right now.”
Who knows what would happen down the road, p
L
On this point I’m pretty much in agreement with Philip Larkin. Whether you want to or not, you will fuck up your kids.
Hormone suppressors can be initiated at this point, and can be discontinued without any deleterious effects should a different outcome be desired.