My thirteen-year-old son came out a couple of months ago as trans, having identified as gender fluid for the previous year or so. (He is also on the autism spectrum, for what that’s worth.) We are a pretty tolerant family in a crunchy area, so mostly people have been trying to accommodate this change without a lot of pushback. (I will admit that I am not yet convinced that this will be a permanent change.) But I am about ready to strangle him specifically in the area of names.
In August of 2016 (when he was still identifying as female), he announced as he arrived at Girl Scout camp that he was going to be using his middle name from now on. (Note that I was out of town at the time, and a friend was the one who dropped him off at camp, so we didn’t even know about this until he was gone.) OK, fine, we notified the school in the fall, and he went by that name until about January of 2017. Then he announced he was going to use a different, more gender-neutral name. That one lasted until August, when he picked a name that does not sound even remotely female and came out as trans. (Ironically, he told me about this on the way home from registering for school, so then I had to try to set a change process in motion instead of just registering him with the new name and gender in the first place.) A couple of weeks ago, he used a different male name to introduce himself at a gender diversity event, but told us he was just trying it out and we didn’t have to make that switch. Yesterday morning, he emailed all his teachers, the counseling staff, and a few other administrators at school to announce that he wanted to switch to yet another male name. (For those keeping count, this is his sixth name in 15 months.) It’s not the name he chose, but I’ll call him Al for the rest of this post for the sake of having something to call him. (I do recognize the irony in making up a pseudonym for a post complaining about frequent name changes.) We found out about this change by getting an email from the school psychologist explaining that she had done a little pushback on this change, and asked him to at least stick to this name for a few months instead of changing again next month. He has never discussed any of the changes with us beforehand - he just announces them, to someone other than his parents.
I’m just done. I can’t keep up with this switching, and I feel it is deeply inconsiderate to everyone who is trying to work with him on all of these changes. I don’t know what to call him any more, and I don’t know what to do. I don’t think this is a normal process even for trans kids, is it? I know he is trying to figure out his identity in general, and that that is entirely appropriate for a 13-year-old. My husband just calls him by the first initial of his original name (which also matches name #3, but none of the others). Al doesn’t like that much, but doesn’t really complain about it, either - he just keeps it on his list of ways that he resents his parents (which I also understand to be age-appropriate). I address him as “kiddo” most of the time when I’m talking to him directly. The fact that he announces it to the world before he announces it to his parents is an additional dollop of irritation in the whole situation. I don’t like getting emails from school administrators that assume I know all about this and having to infer what’s going on. He has told me that every change is “permanent,” but the time period between changes keeps getting shorter, and it has really reached “boy who cried wolf” territory.
Do I have to just keep trying to change what I call him every time he does? How can I explain to him how frustrating this is? I suspect that his autistic weakness in perspective taking is a factor here. Help me understand, and help me figure out how to talk to him about it, please.