Early this morning I lay awake in bed thinking of the forks in the road during my daughter’s childhood. She is nearing 16 and has been trans-identified for over 2 years now, starting with middle school peer group influence, and the customary deep-dive into internet/social media/anime during Covid. While she has shown some signs of desistance recently, she has also told me that she’s committed to her daily chest binding and plans to have a double mastectomy at age 18.
100%. The diagnosis of ADHD & finding the right medication to help her manage it has been a complete game-changer for her. I was referring to the Autism spectrum, which no, not all people are on.
Don't shilly-shally or worry about the car payments or give a second thought about missing your friends in the knitting circle. This is about the very survival of your kid as an intact and functioning human being. Think big. Act big.
Best is to move abroad: Mexico or Costa Rica or Italy or Poland or Greece or Croatia or some forgotten harbor in the Caribbean - any place where people are still basically normal. It's not hard to get easily-renewed 6 month tourist visas in many of these places if you're American or Canadian. Many of them can be very affordable if you rent a home with the natives and stay away from the tourist circuit. Live off your savings if you can't keep doing your old job online. Find a full-remote job even if it is beneath you - JetBlue customer service or the like that simply requires a phone line and a semi-functional internet connection. Before you leave, find a mail holding-and-forwarding service so you can still have a U.S. address for convenience purposes.
Home school or un-school or call it a sabbatical or just be a truant when it comes to education - if your kid can already read and write and do basic algebra and geometry she can always get a skilled job in a trade like HVAC. She doesn't need more K-12 education right now. She needs normalcy and morals, not college-credit English Lit.
Give her the space she needs to grow past this unfortunate phase. No half-measures. Get out. Now. After a year of detox maybe you'll all be in a position to come home. But don't skimp.
This is not financially feasible for many families. And gender ideology is increasingly everywhere. This isn’t a problem that can be so easily run away from. Also, the trans identified child isn’t the only person in the family whose needs matter. I have a desisted son and another son who is flirting with a trans identification so I am not without personal experience. We are exploring a move but due to the care of an elderly family member and significant economic considerations, it really isn’t a just go situation. Nor would it guarantee a positive outcome.
I have close friends who fled the Soviet Union in the 1980s with little more than what they could fit in a couple of suitcases. Doctors, engineers, scientists, etc., who left behind steady jobs and comfortable (for that time and place) apartments to work menial jobs in the U.S. because Freedom. For themselves and their children. (They eventually learned English and rejoined their learned professions, but it took many years.)
I have personally moved halfway around the world (and back again) to pursue economic opportunity. But I was lucky and got to take my savings with me.
It is a matter of initiative and priorities. And read what I wrote: You don't have to move to the fanciest part of Miami Beach or to the French Riviera to give your family the chance to reset. Abroad is "best," but frankly, just 100 miles down the road and a new (home) (un-)schooling situation is probably enough. Farther is better but start with something. Change your place to change your luck - it's an old medieval saying.
There are two problems to solve here. The first is personal and proximate: how to snap your kid out of a self-destructive streak and, quite likely, break with an unhealthy peer group. A change of scenery - even if you stay in your Blue State - is a powerful help. Anyone who says that even just moving two counties away is impossible simply lacks motivation.
The second issue is how to fix our culture. That will take time and effort. Which we must expend and which I am expending. Run for school board. Boycott Bud Light. But when you have kids growing up in real time, you can't wait around for victory on this front if you have more pressing fires to put out first.
Until you personally have a child who is caught up in this and *you have taken your own advice*, you don’t know what you don’t know.
It sounds like you have moved halfway around the world…solo. How lovely for you but seriously, do you know what it’s like to have many kids and an elderly man in your daily care?
Further, I am the parent of a happily and successfully desisted now young adult child so I’m not speaking in hypotheticals. There are many things that can be done without blowing up the life of every single other family
member.
The international idea is hilarious to someone with my life. Disabled children and elderly people with dementia don’t get to immigrate just anywhere. We don’t have refugee status. We do not have the financial means (asset wise) or even the legal right (in the case of my nieces and nephews) to relocate all of the family members who rely on us for care and financial support. If it were just me, my husband and one child, sure. But that’s not our reality- we have a gaggle of considerations I don’t think you can wrap your head around. I do not lack motivation- I lack not having a plethora of other considerations besides what I want or what might be best for 1 particular child.
And check the recent changes to WA State law before you suggest moving within the state might help. They have made it legal for shelters to house runaways and not inform the parents.
Ha ha ha. I didn't move solo. Silly assumption to make.
Yeah. Life is as complicated as you let it become. There will always be multiple conflicting demands on your time and resources. You choose based on your priorities.
My kids aren't trans, and I'd sooner tie my aging mother to the roof of a pickup truck Grandma Joad style and motor the whole family off into the Dust Bowl than stay put in a situation where any child of mine was actively circling the trans drain.
But that's just me. Your mileage may vary.
I'm just hear to let all the other readers know that moving long or short distances in order to shake things up and create new opportunities is a viable strategy, and one that many people seem oddly slow or reluctant to even consider. I have friends with small children and aging parents who are about to move abroad to pursue an important job opportunity. It can be done. People do it all the time. Do some online research into places you can move and think long and hard about it.
So you didn’t move alone. How many dependents did you move 1/2 way around the world with and do you have multi generation family caregiving obligations that you personally see to daily? How many people financially rely on your income to eat?
What actual experience do you have that makes you think you can lecture BTDT parents about priorities?
Why do you think you have *any valuable expertise* on an issue that apparently doesn’t affect your family?
You speak in cliches, generalities and display zero compassion for parents. Until you have BTDT parenting kids facing this issue, you aren’t in any position to presume to advise parents.
I will not accept advice from someone who has not only zero idea of what my life is actually like but apparently lacks the compassion, intelligence and imagination to even try to consider the realities that families like mine are facing and actually even thriving in.
Obviously I'm not here to give advice to the chronically resistant and close-minded.
But to all the other readers out there I say this:
Many people make big moves with their families in tow because of a promotion, a deployment, a bankruptcy, a war, or anything in between. It's a valid answer to a range of questions. It can be the same here, too.
I'm tiring of the knee-jerk, you-should-just-move "advice" that's become so popular on social media.
First, as TessK said, this doesn't even address the underlying global problem, which can't be run away from.
But, insofar as some of us are in worse places than others, and perhaps would like to move: Don't bother me with pat advice unless you're making me a bona fide highball offer on my house that includes paying my realtor's commission, and providing me with low-interest financing on my new home, and job offers for all of my working family members in the new city.
Because if you haven't given any thought to the high cost and infeasibility of moving from a tanking market to a more desirable place at the exact same time as everyone else, late in life when you hadn't planned to and all your assets and efforts have been bet on your current home; then you're just minimizing the suffering of others in order to make yourself feel superior.
Which makes you no better than the gender ideologues, who ultimately are doing the same thing.
I wouldn't send my child to most 4 year colleges if you paid me to, regardless of their mental health. Most colleges are no longer institutions of learning but centers for leftist indoctrination.
You already flushed money down the toilet paying for a bonehead therapist to take your child's hand and run headlong into her delusion. Do not give any money to universities or professors who will teach her to hate you while she destroys her body.
Cut off contact with anyone who affirms your daughter's delusions. They are either knowingly helping your daughter towards body mutilation, which makes them horrible people, or unknowingly doing it, which makes them fools.
Neither one of those type of people have any business being in contact with your daughter. They may seem "nice" but they are not friends.
As far as her wearing chest binders goes I would recommend doing what my old man did to me when I was wearing clothing he didn't like. Take it away, throw it away, and don't buy her anymore.
You are literally talking about last century! Smart phones have changed society more than computers have. A seventeen year old whose phone is taken away is an outcast. Everyone has a cell phone now, even the poorest people.
Don’t beat your self up ….you did what you thought best at the time, …
that therapist sounds dangerous, …that whole “they will kill themselves”, is and was a fabricated lie. Don’t pay for her to go to college, ….if you can….there are many places that are “volunteer working with wildlife for one or two months, sometimes more. You pay a fee and it will give her a break from the insanity and something positive to focus on. Animals are magical and these programs build character and take the focus off oneself. There are so many to chose from, she can help elephants, or orangutans, sloths, Sun bears (https://www.bsbcc.org.my/).
I have 6 years and have decided I am not funding it. Unless post secondary changes there will be trade school or Jordan Peterson University. I hope everyone here has checked out UTX where Kathleen Stock is a fellow. But ya, getting a degree or diploma to get a good woke job in a woke company for a woke wage pales in comparison to the urgency and need to get out of the cult of confusion. I would rather my child work at McDonald's and know who they are than live through such a woke nightmare.
There’s nothing wrong with working at MacDonalds! It’s a fantastic company that values its young employees provides great opportunities for progression for the Kids who want it. The former CEO of the Australian national corporation (going back about a decade) went strait out of 10th Grade into a job and was Managing at 19. By 40 he was the CEO. He tragically died of Cancer (I think) quite young and not long after he hit the top.
Part of the reason that we are in such a mess is that we don’t give enough kids a good taste of the value of hard work and it’s rewards early enough. I’m honestly of the opinion that every kid over the age of 14 should be given a day off school to do a job of some kind. I don’t care how smart you are or how wealthy your family is, you can do an honest day’s work, get paid and get your adulthood started. I wish my Dad hadn’t offered me more pocket money when I started looking for work at 16.
Agreed! They are consistently in the top 100 employers. "I never let my schooling interfere with my education." Mark Twain It is not our job to raise kids to get good jobs. It's our job to raise good kids. Character development is our number one mandate.
I'd love to see the list of kids that they can prove committed suicide because they were "trans" and not affirmed. Specifically because they were not affirmed.
I think that will be a very short list. I think it will be 0.
There will be one for sure. He was a teenager whose mother refused to give him hormones. He committed suicide by freeway because " my voice will never sound the way I want it to."
Thank you for expressing what so many of us (all of us?) experience. I agree that it sounds like you are taking each decision carefully and doing the best that you can. Sometimes what works for one child backfires for another.
The only suggestion I can offer is that the detransitioners are so very kind and many of them want to help others not go down this path. The detrans Reddit is very enlightening. There’s also an ask detrans subreddit for people like us to interact and ask questions. I saw a detransitioner post on there that she was very willing to speak with teens about it, to help parents. Also the detransitioner YouTube videos are so impactful. I think they might have swayed my daughter if I had known about them while she was in high school.
Maybe you can ask your child to watch with you, just to give it a chance. Be prepared that they have been told not to listen to detransitioners. So you have to find the perfect timing.
I’m thinking you were probably a good parent, we all do our best but sometimes things are odd for awhile. Don’t beat yourself up but rather think of all the times you went above and beyond. We all have something, I have been estranged from my son for 4 years for reasons unknown. I know that we did right by him even though no one is perfect.
I hope for your daughter that her brain finishes maturing - hopefully faster than average. That front part is not mature until around 25 and that part also helps process things to make good decisions. I hear given enough time most grow past it. My heart hurts for you. Please take care of yourself and know that you did a good job as a parent, for some reason she is just lost right now. Peace to you.
100 percent my thoughts, where I am at, and things I think about, except I only have a year left. Your comment about college was interesting. I'll have to look more into that. Maybe community College, stay at home more in my control and just 100 percent pay for everything and dis ourage a job to allow even a couple more years to develop herself emotionally? IDK.
So a bit of a tangent. I’m a pediatrician. Today there was a case presentation of a teen who overdosed in a suicide attempt. She was noted to be ‘non binary’ whatever that means. However in the presentation she was referee to as ‘she’ and not ‘they’ multiple times because no one can really keep up with that stupid language pronoun crap. Also her main problem is severe mental illness. I view the non binary as a symptom. Not a diagnosis.
You're in a position of authority as an adult doctor of children and one of your patients has a suicide attempt and your first thought is to denigrate their sense of self because it challenges your assumptions. This is practically the best chosen action short of anything overtly illegal to encourage future suicide attempts by demonstrating to this patient that the adult authority figure providing them medical care does not care about them. It is not only extremely unprofessional—and we are talking state licensing board issues level of unprofessional—posting this here is a potential violation of patient privacy. Why did you ever think this was appropriate? This is an active violation of your oath as a physician not to do harm.
Can you read? This isn’t my patient. There is no privacy violated. There are no identifiers in my post. I think it’s your assumptions that should be challenged. There is no such thing as non binary. It’s a fantasy.
You wouldn't have replied to me in a minute if there weren't a violation... and, as things stand, if you want to challenge my existence, the burden of proof is on you. So good luck with that... Your idea of sex/gender is a modern anachronism sustained through historical amnesia.
Ah, I'm sorry. Phones make us do stupid things sometimes. That said, I'm also curious... have you ever had a DNA test? A lot of people have extra sex chromosomes resulting in apparently binary phenotype presentation while their underlying genetics are essentially intersex. So, unless you've checked your own genetic code you can't rule out that your own biology is non-binary, to borrow your anachronistic usage.
I’m very sorry that you actually believe this. Most intersex conditions don’t actually come from the chromosomal level. The most common is CAH which is from lack of an essential enzyme in utero leading to increased in utero testosterone and virilization of female fetus.
Yes, we've all asked ourselves this. Then I spoke with my sister who raised her daughter in almost the opposite environment of where we live, believed almost the opposite of me, and yet, her daughter went in the same direction as mine. Both of our girls are on the spectrum and I wonder if that is what it all came down to: quirky girls desperate to fit into some category and find the black and white thinking of trans sums it all up in a neat package. I've just resolved to stop thinking about the how of the past and laser focus on what in the hell happened to our society. We spend more time dealing with the trans stuff then being able to focus on her eating disorder (which could kill her). This is so not right! I spend countless hours a week navigating with a scalpel to find doctors who won't privately/boldly/naively tell them to go to a gender clinic to solve all their ills (I've found 2 out of 100's). And walking away from friends and family who have no idea what we're going through and think we're overblowing all of it. I feel rage. But I also feel proud and confident that I know that I'm doing the best for my child. She is very close to us thankfully and is starting to see just how badly these doctors have harmed her. All she wants is a doctor she can trust. Will these doctors ever wake up??!!
100%. The diagnosis of ADHD & finding the right medication to help her manage it has been a complete game-changer for her. I was referring to the Autism spectrum, which no, not all people are on.
Sell everything and move far away. Now.
Don't shilly-shally or worry about the car payments or give a second thought about missing your friends in the knitting circle. This is about the very survival of your kid as an intact and functioning human being. Think big. Act big.
Best is to move abroad: Mexico or Costa Rica or Italy or Poland or Greece or Croatia or some forgotten harbor in the Caribbean - any place where people are still basically normal. It's not hard to get easily-renewed 6 month tourist visas in many of these places if you're American or Canadian. Many of them can be very affordable if you rent a home with the natives and stay away from the tourist circuit. Live off your savings if you can't keep doing your old job online. Find a full-remote job even if it is beneath you - JetBlue customer service or the like that simply requires a phone line and a semi-functional internet connection. Before you leave, find a mail holding-and-forwarding service so you can still have a U.S. address for convenience purposes.
Home school or un-school or call it a sabbatical or just be a truant when it comes to education - if your kid can already read and write and do basic algebra and geometry she can always get a skilled job in a trade like HVAC. She doesn't need more K-12 education right now. She needs normalcy and morals, not college-credit English Lit.
Give her the space she needs to grow past this unfortunate phase. No half-measures. Get out. Now. After a year of detox maybe you'll all be in a position to come home. But don't skimp.
This is not financially feasible for many families. And gender ideology is increasingly everywhere. This isn’t a problem that can be so easily run away from. Also, the trans identified child isn’t the only person in the family whose needs matter. I have a desisted son and another son who is flirting with a trans identification so I am not without personal experience. We are exploring a move but due to the care of an elderly family member and significant economic considerations, it really isn’t a just go situation. Nor would it guarantee a positive outcome.
I have close friends who fled the Soviet Union in the 1980s with little more than what they could fit in a couple of suitcases. Doctors, engineers, scientists, etc., who left behind steady jobs and comfortable (for that time and place) apartments to work menial jobs in the U.S. because Freedom. For themselves and their children. (They eventually learned English and rejoined their learned professions, but it took many years.)
I have personally moved halfway around the world (and back again) to pursue economic opportunity. But I was lucky and got to take my savings with me.
It is a matter of initiative and priorities. And read what I wrote: You don't have to move to the fanciest part of Miami Beach or to the French Riviera to give your family the chance to reset. Abroad is "best," but frankly, just 100 miles down the road and a new (home) (un-)schooling situation is probably enough. Farther is better but start with something. Change your place to change your luck - it's an old medieval saying.
There are two problems to solve here. The first is personal and proximate: how to snap your kid out of a self-destructive streak and, quite likely, break with an unhealthy peer group. A change of scenery - even if you stay in your Blue State - is a powerful help. Anyone who says that even just moving two counties away is impossible simply lacks motivation.
The second issue is how to fix our culture. That will take time and effort. Which we must expend and which I am expending. Run for school board. Boycott Bud Light. But when you have kids growing up in real time, you can't wait around for victory on this front if you have more pressing fires to put out first.
Until you personally have a child who is caught up in this and *you have taken your own advice*, you don’t know what you don’t know.
It sounds like you have moved halfway around the world…solo. How lovely for you but seriously, do you know what it’s like to have many kids and an elderly man in your daily care?
Further, I am the parent of a happily and successfully desisted now young adult child so I’m not speaking in hypotheticals. There are many things that can be done without blowing up the life of every single other family
member.
The international idea is hilarious to someone with my life. Disabled children and elderly people with dementia don’t get to immigrate just anywhere. We don’t have refugee status. We do not have the financial means (asset wise) or even the legal right (in the case of my nieces and nephews) to relocate all of the family members who rely on us for care and financial support. If it were just me, my husband and one child, sure. But that’s not our reality- we have a gaggle of considerations I don’t think you can wrap your head around. I do not lack motivation- I lack not having a plethora of other considerations besides what I want or what might be best for 1 particular child.
And check the recent changes to WA State law before you suggest moving within the state might help. They have made it legal for shelters to house runaways and not inform the parents.
Ha ha ha. I didn't move solo. Silly assumption to make.
Yeah. Life is as complicated as you let it become. There will always be multiple conflicting demands on your time and resources. You choose based on your priorities.
My kids aren't trans, and I'd sooner tie my aging mother to the roof of a pickup truck Grandma Joad style and motor the whole family off into the Dust Bowl than stay put in a situation where any child of mine was actively circling the trans drain.
But that's just me. Your mileage may vary.
I'm just hear to let all the other readers know that moving long or short distances in order to shake things up and create new opportunities is a viable strategy, and one that many people seem oddly slow or reluctant to even consider. I have friends with small children and aging parents who are about to move abroad to pursue an important job opportunity. It can be done. People do it all the time. Do some online research into places you can move and think long and hard about it.
So you didn’t move alone. How many dependents did you move 1/2 way around the world with and do you have multi generation family caregiving obligations that you personally see to daily? How many people financially rely on your income to eat?
What actual experience do you have that makes you think you can lecture BTDT parents about priorities?
Why do you think you have *any valuable expertise* on an issue that apparently doesn’t affect your family?
You speak in cliches, generalities and display zero compassion for parents. Until you have BTDT parenting kids facing this issue, you aren’t in any position to presume to advise parents.
I will not accept advice from someone who has not only zero idea of what my life is actually like but apparently lacks the compassion, intelligence and imagination to even try to consider the realities that families like mine are facing and actually even thriving in.
Obviously I'm not here to give advice to the chronically resistant and close-minded.
But to all the other readers out there I say this:
Many people make big moves with their families in tow because of a promotion, a deployment, a bankruptcy, a war, or anything in between. It's a valid answer to a range of questions. It can be the same here, too.
I'm tiring of the knee-jerk, you-should-just-move "advice" that's become so popular on social media.
First, as TessK said, this doesn't even address the underlying global problem, which can't be run away from.
But, insofar as some of us are in worse places than others, and perhaps would like to move: Don't bother me with pat advice unless you're making me a bona fide highball offer on my house that includes paying my realtor's commission, and providing me with low-interest financing on my new home, and job offers for all of my working family members in the new city.
Because if you haven't given any thought to the high cost and infeasibility of moving from a tanking market to a more desirable place at the exact same time as everyone else, late in life when you hadn't planned to and all your assets and efforts have been bet on your current home; then you're just minimizing the suffering of others in order to make yourself feel superior.
Which makes you no better than the gender ideologues, who ultimately are doing the same thing.
I wouldn't send my child to most 4 year colleges if you paid me to, regardless of their mental health. Most colleges are no longer institutions of learning but centers for leftist indoctrination.
You already flushed money down the toilet paying for a bonehead therapist to take your child's hand and run headlong into her delusion. Do not give any money to universities or professors who will teach her to hate you while she destroys her body.
Cut off contact with anyone who affirms your daughter's delusions. They are either knowingly helping your daughter towards body mutilation, which makes them horrible people, or unknowingly doing it, which makes them fools.
Neither one of those type of people have any business being in contact with your daughter. They may seem "nice" but they are not friends.
As far as her wearing chest binders goes I would recommend doing what my old man did to me when I was wearing clothing he didn't like. Take it away, throw it away, and don't buy her anymore.
1. Do NOT send her off to a 4 year college.
2. Help her get a job (at least for a few years) somewhere with kind, but more traditional, adult role models.
Our daughter didn't have a computer or phone in private spaces until she went to college. And she was in HS just before smart phones arrived, so she had as little access to the Internet as was possible. She did have her phone during the day. You might want to read this: https://pitt.substack.com/p/transgenders-connection-with-pornography?fbclid=IwAR18P1Ai0vpWvM-lMTBaufXGKv3wreQJMywG-ZSNeAnnN1aq1m_QxaKi20Q
Bluestocking, the porn story was shocking & sad. Yeah, hard choices.
You are literally talking about last century! Smart phones have changed society more than computers have. A seventeen year old whose phone is taken away is an outcast. Everyone has a cell phone now, even the poorest people.
Don’t beat your self up ….you did what you thought best at the time, …
that therapist sounds dangerous, …that whole “they will kill themselves”, is and was a fabricated lie. Don’t pay for her to go to college, ….if you can….there are many places that are “volunteer working with wildlife for one or two months, sometimes more. You pay a fee and it will give her a break from the insanity and something positive to focus on. Animals are magical and these programs build character and take the focus off oneself. There are so many to chose from, she can help elephants, or orangutans, sloths, Sun bears (https://www.bsbcc.org.my/).
https://discovercorps.com/landing/volunteer-vacations-destinations/?utm_source=google_search&utm_medium=search_text&utm_campaign=dc_volunteer&utm_term=volunteer_program&creative=613646104054&keyword=volunteer%20travel&matchtype=b&network=g&device=c&gad=1&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI8Ia75eDd_gIVjC2tBh1qhA_KEAAYASAAEgJp6fD_BwE,
They are so many choices..
just type in volunteer for animals vacation and so many will pop up. Any kind of distraction and removal .❤️ I wish you well
I have 6 years and have decided I am not funding it. Unless post secondary changes there will be trade school or Jordan Peterson University. I hope everyone here has checked out UTX where Kathleen Stock is a fellow. But ya, getting a degree or diploma to get a good woke job in a woke company for a woke wage pales in comparison to the urgency and need to get out of the cult of confusion. I would rather my child work at McDonald's and know who they are than live through such a woke nightmare.
There’s nothing wrong with working at MacDonalds! It’s a fantastic company that values its young employees provides great opportunities for progression for the Kids who want it. The former CEO of the Australian national corporation (going back about a decade) went strait out of 10th Grade into a job and was Managing at 19. By 40 he was the CEO. He tragically died of Cancer (I think) quite young and not long after he hit the top.
Part of the reason that we are in such a mess is that we don’t give enough kids a good taste of the value of hard work and it’s rewards early enough. I’m honestly of the opinion that every kid over the age of 14 should be given a day off school to do a job of some kind. I don’t care how smart you are or how wealthy your family is, you can do an honest day’s work, get paid and get your adulthood started. I wish my Dad hadn’t offered me more pocket money when I started looking for work at 16.
Agreed! They are consistently in the top 100 employers. "I never let my schooling interfere with my education." Mark Twain It is not our job to raise kids to get good jobs. It's our job to raise good kids. Character development is our number one mandate.
"A lot of these kids commit suicide otherwise"
I'd love to see the list of kids that they can prove committed suicide because they were "trans" and not affirmed. Specifically because they were not affirmed.
I think that will be a very short list. I think it will be 0.
There will be one for sure. He was a teenager whose mother refused to give him hormones. He committed suicide by freeway because " my voice will never sound the way I want it to."
??!! Words fail me.
So, 1. That likely had other mental health problems like most of "trans" do.
I'll take the 1 death over the mutilation and destruction of thousands.
Link to the Police Report or it never happened.
Sorry, it's been more than 10 years, before all of the current craziness. Trans have always been at risk regardless of age.
Like they didn't have Police Reports ten years ago?!?
Obviously this purported incident never happened.
Today is National Day of Prayer
In my War Room All Day, had to share.
Listen live here
https://afr.net/talk-player/
Thank you for expressing what so many of us (all of us?) experience. I agree that it sounds like you are taking each decision carefully and doing the best that you can. Sometimes what works for one child backfires for another.
The only suggestion I can offer is that the detransitioners are so very kind and many of them want to help others not go down this path. The detrans Reddit is very enlightening. There’s also an ask detrans subreddit for people like us to interact and ask questions. I saw a detransitioner post on there that she was very willing to speak with teens about it, to help parents. Also the detransitioner YouTube videos are so impactful. I think they might have swayed my daughter if I had known about them while she was in high school.
Maybe you can ask your child to watch with you, just to give it a chance. Be prepared that they have been told not to listen to detransitioners. So you have to find the perfect timing.
Praying for all of our children and families.
I’m thinking you were probably a good parent, we all do our best but sometimes things are odd for awhile. Don’t beat yourself up but rather think of all the times you went above and beyond. We all have something, I have been estranged from my son for 4 years for reasons unknown. I know that we did right by him even though no one is perfect.
I hope for your daughter that her brain finishes maturing - hopefully faster than average. That front part is not mature until around 25 and that part also helps process things to make good decisions. I hear given enough time most grow past it. My heart hurts for you. Please take care of yourself and know that you did a good job as a parent, for some reason she is just lost right now. Peace to you.
Loved this line : understand that emotional pain cannot be fixed surgically.
I relate to much of this. It sucks
If you need a sock puppet to help you troll, you're doing it wrong. (not directed at the original post here to clarify)
100 percent my thoughts, where I am at, and things I think about, except I only have a year left. Your comment about college was interesting. I'll have to look more into that. Maybe community College, stay at home more in my control and just 100 percent pay for everything and dis ourage a job to allow even a couple more years to develop herself emotionally? IDK.
So a bit of a tangent. I’m a pediatrician. Today there was a case presentation of a teen who overdosed in a suicide attempt. She was noted to be ‘non binary’ whatever that means. However in the presentation she was referee to as ‘she’ and not ‘they’ multiple times because no one can really keep up with that stupid language pronoun crap. Also her main problem is severe mental illness. I view the non binary as a symptom. Not a diagnosis.
You're in a position of authority as an adult doctor of children and one of your patients has a suicide attempt and your first thought is to denigrate their sense of self because it challenges your assumptions. This is practically the best chosen action short of anything overtly illegal to encourage future suicide attempts by demonstrating to this patient that the adult authority figure providing them medical care does not care about them. It is not only extremely unprofessional—and we are talking state licensing board issues level of unprofessional—posting this here is a potential violation of patient privacy. Why did you ever think this was appropriate? This is an active violation of your oath as a physician not to do harm.
Can you read? This isn’t my patient. There is no privacy violated. There are no identifiers in my post. I think it’s your assumptions that should be challenged. There is no such thing as non binary. It’s a fantasy.
You wouldn't have replied to me in a minute if there weren't a violation... and, as things stand, if you want to challenge my existence, the burden of proof is on you. So good luck with that... Your idea of sex/gender is a modern anachronism sustained through historical amnesia.
A violation of what? I reply because I’m on my phone.
Ah, I'm sorry. Phones make us do stupid things sometimes. That said, I'm also curious... have you ever had a DNA test? A lot of people have extra sex chromosomes resulting in apparently binary phenotype presentation while their underlying genetics are essentially intersex. So, unless you've checked your own genetic code you can't rule out that your own biology is non-binary, to borrow your anachronistic usage.
I’m very sorry that you actually believe this. Most intersex conditions don’t actually come from the chromosomal level. The most common is CAH which is from lack of an essential enzyme in utero leading to increased in utero testosterone and virilization of female fetus.
Yes, we've all asked ourselves this. Then I spoke with my sister who raised her daughter in almost the opposite environment of where we live, believed almost the opposite of me, and yet, her daughter went in the same direction as mine. Both of our girls are on the spectrum and I wonder if that is what it all came down to: quirky girls desperate to fit into some category and find the black and white thinking of trans sums it all up in a neat package. I've just resolved to stop thinking about the how of the past and laser focus on what in the hell happened to our society. We spend more time dealing with the trans stuff then being able to focus on her eating disorder (which could kill her). This is so not right! I spend countless hours a week navigating with a scalpel to find doctors who won't privately/boldly/naively tell them to go to a gender clinic to solve all their ills (I've found 2 out of 100's). And walking away from friends and family who have no idea what we're going through and think we're overblowing all of it. I feel rage. But I also feel proud and confident that I know that I'm doing the best for my child. She is very close to us thankfully and is starting to see just how badly these doctors have harmed her. All she wants is a doctor she can trust. Will these doctors ever wake up??!!
I feel rage too, between moments of intense anxiety and deep depression...