Someone help me find a path with my trans kid

In My Humble Opinion
21

ETA: the last 2 posts weren’t there when I started.
I have zero relevant life experience other than once having some transitioning transexual grown-up employees. So here goes a shot in the dark worth every penny you paid for it …
Is there an opportunity to talk with him/her about what he/she thinks names mean? I understand and accept the idea of searching for identity. I question the logic that says identity is closely coupled to name.

Being a “Bob” is not really different from being a “Joe”. Being a “Linda” is not really different from being a “Catherine”. Changing ones name (within a single gender category) doesn’t change who you are or how it feels to be you. It’s not like Bobs are all cool and Joes are all dweebs.

If the kid is doing some autistic-typical thinking (AIUI), he could easily be placing the name cart well in front of the identity horse. IOW, he thinks that as his idea of identity morphs over time, that’s somehow proof the problem is his name, and if only he found the one that truly fits him, suddenly that name choice would cement the rest of his identity. Of course that’s poppycock, but it’s certainly the kind of thought process an autistic 13 yo could adopt. Everything MUST match.

Obviously as between an obviously male name versus an obviously female name there’s a divide there. Which can be fudged with one of the many mostly neutral names. Many, such as Madison, were male names until fairly recently and have since become mostly female. If he’s not sure which flavor he’ll settle on there’s lots of neutral-leaning-female choices to be had.
Bottom line:
Getting him to stop changing his name is not your goal. Your goal is to get him to stop *wanting *to change his name. Always work on fixing causes, not fixing symptoms. My bet is he doesn’t know why he wants to change names and you may be able to enlighten him that it’s pointless. Don’t push on how inconvenient it is to others or set limits. Instead work on the idea that adopting a new name is not doing anything useful to adopt a new identity.

Good luck.

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How is this useful?

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I hated my name as a teen, If I had asked my Daddy about changing it, I would of been on the ground, bleeding. How has the idea of a legal name changed? Don’t schools require legal names of their students? I got an idea, tell Al that he will have to earn and save money to hire a lawyer to file papers to legally change his name ( other than nicknames, he could do that all he wants)and then his paperwork at school and the Doctor’s office, etc. Would be the legal name only. I feel your pain, though, Any teenager can try all your patience , hang in there, this will soon pass. Pace yourself, I predict there will be other issues for this child. Maybe seek therapy for yourself, also!

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In my era at that age (early 1970s) it was commonplace for 12-14 yo girls to adopt nicknames or start using their middle name instead or simply pick some other name at random. Nobody tried to reregister their legal name at school.

Most girls outgrew this a couple years later and settled back to whatever they’d been called since they learned to understand human speech. A few stuck with their self-assigned name and made the legal change (with parental help) towards the end of HS while applying for college.

Funny enough, I knew of exactly zero guys in my 2500-kid high school who did anything similar.

Point being, as Beckdawrek says, there’s lots of ways for someone to informally adopt a name for social purposes that has zero official administrative impact.
Ref my prior post, the OP should probably not be looking to facilitate the kid having a nom du jour. But as a fallback option, the kid can be educated about the difference between social, that matters for his acceptance in his society, and official that doesn’t really matter except to cops and computers.

This may really be a mind-fuck for somebody who insists that everything MUST match. But that might be a useful learning experience as well.

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It’s not clear from the OP that the child is transgender, so much as going through some issues with definition of identity. I find it interesting that this is going on at an age right after menstruation probably started.

This could be pubescence stuff with a possible side of a ‘borderline’ or maybe ‘schizotypal’ personality trait (not necessarily to disorder level), rather than primarily gender dysphoria. Or it could be growing out of dysphoria, worsened by pubescence.

I’m going to back up a bit. Crunchy be damned, you have a daughter who is freaking out about becoming a woman. I strongly suspect that’s what’s going on. And honestly, the whole business of “You really are the gender that you think you are” is not actually helpful for someone who is going through an identity crisis.

This may be harmless teenage weirdness out of which your kid will grow. It may be the early signs of something that will get a lot worse. You need a shrink who is thinking about this in terms bigger than gender identity (as narrowly understood). A counselor from a “supportive” QUILTBAG group, however well-intentioned, is likely not to manage that.

I don’t mean to be mean, but this is not necessarily what Al says (s)he wants it to be.

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worse!?!?!?!?!

Jesus Christ.

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OP:

Just above:

I think you may have the birth AKA “conventional” gender of the kid backwards. Not that that hugely affects the advice you gave, but this is already a convoluted enough situation without some of us starting out 180 out of phase. :slight_smile:

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I think it may be you that has it the wrong way around :wink:

Personally, I’m not sure what’s the best way to deal with this, maybe try and get him to agree to a compromise; change his name unofficially as often as he wants, so he can ask you and his friends to call him new things, but no more ‘official’ name changes until he’s stuck with a name for at least x months.

There are so many possibilities for why he’s doing this, it could be a simple power trip to an extent- enjoying being in charge, while adults run round after him trying to do what he wants, it could be that he thinks he’s going to find a ‘perfect’ name, which is going to make everything right, like LSLGuy said, or it could be part of something more.

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I just read the OP, twice, and I can’t figure out which gender the child is or was. But I wish the OP luck in dealing with a 13-year-old. That’s a time of experimentation and switching of identities for most kids, so I imagine it can be very difficult when the child is gender-nonconforming and on the autism spectrum.

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You may well be right. Ref John Mace just above, the more I re-read the OP the less convinced I am that I know the kid’s birth gender.

The kid being autistic-ish, in and of it self, says the odds are about 80/20 he was born ostensibly male. Perhaps I took that too far.

OP, can you throw us a bone here?

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Why does the gender matter? Not being snarky, but I don’t see why it does.

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Sorry, I was out last night and just saw this.

Al was assigned female at birth, and started menstruating a few months before he came out as genderfluid. We have a separate argument about the safety of breast binding for teens going on that I didn’t get into in the OP.

I am quite certain that the autism piece is exacerbating this. I have tried talking to him about the difference between name and identity, but he’s at an in-one-ear-and-out-the-other age for talks with mom and dad about stuff like that. I don’t have a lot of places where I can ask questions of trans people and those who are familiar with them, but I’m asking the ones I can find about this issue, including here.

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OP: thank you for more of the back story.

Since this was probably directed at me …

I see two reasons. One is simply for story continuity and comprehension. It helps us all to use consistent pronouns if nothing else.

The other is that the situation with a born-female who’s now gender questioning / trans / term du jour is not exactly symmetrical with a born-male who’s now gender questioning / trans / term du jour. Yes, there are many similarities.

But there are also things that differ a bunch. F to M and M to F seem to be real different in terms of social acceptance. There’s almost certainly different counseling points of emphasis for each. etc.

I’m not trying to suggest transitioning one way is OK while the opposite is just wrong. But they are different and it would be IMO a disservice to the OP and the kid to pretend that they are identical.
Back to the OP:

Here’s a comment I’ve made to several threads about people contemplating a change. Whether it’s changing a job, a college major, etc. I think it applies here too, and will need the OP, the kid, and probably a counselor, to sort it out.

It’s important for the person changing to understand the difference between running away from something versus running towards something. When you’re unhappy with your status quo, running in any direction at all is “away” and may feel like an improvement, at least at first. But that’s shortsighted and a good way to make things worse not better.

Work hard to figure out what’s not right about here/now and specifically how where you might go will help fix those issues. Once you know where to go, even preliminarily, *then *start moving deliberately that way.

Always run towards a deliberately chosen goal. Not just away from a bad situation.

So far ISTM the kid’s behavior looks like running from, not running towards. That is not a recipe for success by anyones’ standards. Including the kid’s.

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The constellation of characteristics that together constitute autism, especially those most associated with high-functioning autism (e.g. Asperger’s) are also mental conditions and behavioral patterns that are predictably likely to show up in marginalized / socially-misfitting people.

It can be a chicken-vs-egg question, and perhaps one that is best reconciled by seeing the entire mixture of gender identity concern / dysphoria and autism as a single phenomenon. Trying to figure out what causes what may not be a productive endeavor.

Oh, and what everyone else has been saying about you being a good supportive parent. Kudos.

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Reddit has a ask transgender subreddit in case you are looking for more voices in the future.

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I think Step 1 should be asking Al why he keeps wanting to change his name. AFAIK this isn’t typical of transgender or autistic adolescents, so there’s presumably something else going on here that no one but Al can explain.

Since he’s on the autism spectrum, it would probably also be helpful to clearly and calmly explain to him that it is confusing for other people when someone decides to go by a new name. Most people don’t change their name more than once or twice in their whole life, if they ever change it. If he frequently changes his name, other people will find it difficult to remember what he wants to be called and are also likely to become annoyed or start thinking that his name is unimportant.

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This is not relevant to the central issues in the thread, but my mom almost never called me by my given name – it would be “honey”, “missy”, and even “kiddo” :), etc. The OP may just be in that habit and not use even the original birth name very much.

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This is exactly correct.

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The child of two of my best friends (who considers me to be their non-blood-relative uncle), who was born female, decided at around age 14 that they* were gender-fluid.

Their first name is an Irish female name – not common here in the States, but fairly clearly female. They decided that their preferred name would be a shortened version of their middle name (a very feminine name in its whole, but the shortened version is fairly gender-neutral). Their parents were willing to facilitate a legal name change, but strongly encouraged them to wait until they were an adult to do so. However, the parents did work with the school to ensure that their child would be called by their preferred name.

In the four years since (they’re now 18, and a college freshman), they’ve gone through periods in which they felt more male, and periods in which they felt more female. They spent most of their sophomore year of high school almost exclusively male. At this point, they identify as female most of the time (and have for at least the past year), though, they recently told me that they still feel that they’re gender-fluid. They still have not filed for a legal name change, and I don’t know when (or if) they will.

They’re setting in well in college, and I believe that the understanding support that they got from their parents and school made a huge difference in that, given how many trans and gender-questioning kids face massive struggles and lack of acceptance.

    • At that point, they decided that “they” was their preferred gender pronoun, and have used it consistently since.
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The school psychologist and Al came to an agreement that he will keep this name for at least three months (basically, until semester break). Al and I agreed that 1) he may change his name this spring, and thereafter, he may change no more than once per school year, and 2) any changes need to come to me before they go to the school so I am not blindsided.

Further discussions this weekend gave me a little more insight into the current name choice. As I said above, it’s not actually Al. It is a name that is probably 90% male, but is used as a nickname by enough women that it is not a huge surprise to see it on a woman (although women usually spell it a little differently). Al told me that he chose it to try to head off hostility from people who are bothered by a mismatch between his name and their perception of his body. :frowning: I guess I’m glad he’s perceptive enough to think of that, at the same time that I wish he didn’t have to take that kind of reaction into consideration.

I agree that trying to tease out which things are gender dysphoria and which things are autism is unproductive if not counterproductive. But I think they both needed to be mentioned in order to give a clear enough picture of my kid for anyone to give me useful advice.

Thank you. I sure don’t get that feedback from Al, so it’s nice to hear it from someone.