GENDER DYSPHORIA Truth and Love

“Loving a person means telling them the truth when their lifestyle and thinking are detrimental to their health.” — Brandon Sutton

“Mom, I’m trans.” Our daughter upended our world with those words in 2021. After transitioning from Christian school to public school, she faced bullying for her faith and weight. As a coping mechanism, she began to identify as a trans male, choosing a new name and pronouns. Hers was a clear case of Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria (ROGD) since she had never shown any even remotely masculine traits before.

Balancing Truth and Love

The good news is that parents don’t have to choose between affirming an illogical and harmful worldview and hating the LGBTQ community. We can interact with others in ways that are both truthful and loving. Neither loveless truth (hitting others over the head with facts and arguments) nor truth-less love (endorsing evil out of misplaced compassion) will build a better society.

Don’t Drink the Kool-Aid

Transgender ideology operates like a cult. It urges dysphoric youth to cut ties with “non-affirming” and brands dissenters as “transphobic.” It redefines “love” to mean unconditional agreement and “support” as compliance with demands. These could include puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, or irreversible surgeries. According to these definitions, we don’t love or support our daughter since we’re not ready to throw our faith and logic out the window. Cults harass members who have doubts or wish to leave. They isolate members from the ones who love them the most. They place members in “new” families that will support their views. Sound familiar?

Here are five lessons my husband and I learned the hard way.

Choose Your Battles

Although it may seem loving, never affirm gender dysphoria. Choose your battles carefully. Let cosmetic issues, like hair length, slide but draw the line at pronouns. Using male pronouns for our daughter felt like agreeing with an anorexic that they’re overweight. Truth must anchor our parenting and all our relationships. Pretending that switching genders (not that you can switch) solves kids’ problems is intellectually dishonest. For gray areas, like nicknames and clothing, seek wise advice and be discerning.

Maintain Strong Relationships

Kids listen to those they feel love them most. Not necessarily those that do love them most. This has to be you, not the trans community. Children aren’t the enemy. They’re victims of this harmful lie. Discover each child’s love language and speak it daily. Resist the temptation to resent them for the crisis they caused. As Barbara Johnson wisely said, “Never let a problem to be solved become more important than a person to be loved.”

Garner Support

In our progressive neighborhood, we constantly swim upstream. Our modern culture has traded long-accepted moral values for a lucrative lie. Gender clinics, Big Pharma, and hypocritical, non-Hippocratic physicians are the winners in this scenario. Not families. Refusing to “affirm” our child is the hardest thing we’ve ever done.

But we don’t have to walk this road alone. Early on, we consulted a counselor who refused to drink the gender cult Kool-Aid. We also reached out to caring family members and our pastor as we navigated these uncharted waters. To keep transgender propaganda from infiltrating impressionable minds, ensure your child’s doctors, teachers, and counselors share your values.

Pull the Plug

Shelter kids from harmful influences such as internet chat rooms like Discord, trans influencers promoting medicalization, “woke” TV shows, and peers celebrating dysphoria. Giving a dysphoric child unrestricted access to the Internet is like dropping an alcoholic off at a bar. Boost cybersecurity and consider “dumb” phones without web access. Be prepared for push-back since many teens are addicted to screens.

If possible, enroll your child in a private school that refuses to brainwash kids with gender ideology or consider homeschooling. I know it sounds overwhelming, but removing kids from the daily onslaught of harmful rhetoric is key to their care. My husband and I even had what we dubbed “the nuclear option” in our back pocket in case we couldn’t afford private school. It involved moving to a more conservative state. In the end, we sent our daughter to a conservative inpatient program for eighth grade (to address her long list of co-morbidities). Then she attended Christian high school for three years. When she got expelled for a low GPA, we worked together to homeschool her. The lives of our children are worth such sacrifices. I cannot emphasize enough that everyone influencing struggling children must be grounded in the truth. If not, false teaching could lure them away.

Get Off the Roller Coaster

When you’ve done all you can, acknowledge that the results are out of your hands. For years, my mood went up and down like a roller coaster based on our daughter’s ups and downs. I’d rejoice when she dug up artwork signed with her real name. Then I’d be too depressed to function if she mentioned wanting to take testosterone when she turned 18.

We can love our children fiercely, set firm boundaries for them, and surround them with caring, sane individuals. We can do our best to protect them from themselves and others. However, we cannot control the course of their lives. Being aware of crises and being unable to change them is a terrible place to be.

For those who believe in God, prayer can be a calming tool in our sanity arsenal. Many parents believe that God can change people’s hearts and redeem their lives. And faith anchored many grieving families. Even non-religious parents can benefit from releasing the need for total control. We’ve been battling this for five years. Early on, we resolved not to let our society’s madness drag our child down. We show our child love in every possible way except affirming what we believe harms her. Thankfully, she has made significant strides toward accepting who she was made to be and not hating her body. We’ve invested 17 years of sacrificing, loving, guiding, and supporting our child. And we cling to the hope that our beloved girl’s story will end well. This poem sums up some of our heartache and frustration.

THE WOES OF SOWING

Spring arrived; I planted seeds,
among my old ancestral fields.
I labored under wind and rain,
my eyes ablur, my spirit strained.
One year, a sunflower sprouted forth,
the golden sunshine of my youth.
Although it aimed to reach the sun,
it could not end what was begun.
Surprised, one spring, some wildflowers grew,
dainty bells of pink and blue.
I fertilized their barren clay
and sheltered them from winter’s rage.
I sprinkled on them tears of love,
but weeds attacked their nascent buds.
The pink blooms were the first to fall.
I feared the fate that would befall
my gentle sprouts, so wracked with needs.
A border made to block the weeds
was quickly set in place to save
my precious petals from their grave.
Each dawn and dusk, I linger still,
and I compassionately till
the clods of earth that stunt their growth.
I battle thorns with nail and tooth.
But many days, intent to die,
I fear my flowers cease to try.
With failing hope, I’m going mad.
All I want now is what I had.