My son desisted two years ago.
Last week, out of the blue, he apologized for putting me through hell. My son, a confident, charismatic young man, a volunteer fire fighter, suddenly looked like a little kid again—uncomfortable and fragile. “I’m ashamed I ever believed this,” he said. I reassured him that none of it was his fault. We both wanted to move on, but I’m grateful we had this short conversation.
I asked him what he thought contributed to his transgender identification. He said it was losing friends, feeling unconfident about his appearance, and being surrounded by transgender ideology online.
I asked him what he thought helped him leave the ideology. He said that the first factor was his therapist / life coach, who told him that human beings were infinitely adaptable and that he didn’t need to leave his family or make any rush decisions. His therapist also encouraged him to take small steps to counteract all the negativity in his life by noticing one beautiful thing about nature every day.
The second factor was meeting a girl on a gaming platform. She was very feminine and comfortable with her femininity, but still insisted on her pronouns being he / him. My son said that this helped him realise this was all "pretend.”
If there any lessons to come from these experiences, I would choose these four:
1. We never know what will help our kids desist. It can be something seemingly random and trivial, yet as time passes, it will stand out for them as important and pivotal.
2. Because we never know which factors will become important in their desistance, we should keep having difficult conversations about biological reality. If they don’t have the facts at their disposal, they will have no foundation to build their desistance upon. We should never give up and we should keep on trying to reach them.
3. We should try not to succumb to despair when things happen out of our control. These unexpected things might end up being for the best. I am sure I would have thought this girl was a bad influence on my son, but it turned out being the opposite. I recently heard of a young man who desisted after going to a very woke university—he started seeing the absurdity of it all when it was pushed on him from every direction.
4. Simple things might work the best. His life coach worked with him on so many issues which I thought would be so much more important, such as gaining self confidence, goal setting and decision making. Yet it was "noticing one good thing about nature" that stands out in my son's mind.
Several years ago, and a year into our horrid “trans journey” I wrote an essay for PITT which included this line: “From my position in the middle of the road, I try not to live in the past nor in the future. Yet I yearn for the time when we will be remembering this year or two or three as a minor bump that we weathered well—a part of the journey that made us stronger.”
I get emotional remembering how terrifying it was to write this paragraph. I feared that my hopes would never come true. And yet, we emerged stronger as a family and the kids’ obvious personal growth was definitely the silver lining in this nightmare. To all the warrior moms and dads—keep on fighting. There is hope.
Also by this author:
What Have I Changed My Mind About?
ROGD, AGP, Mothers, and Sons—Common Sense Thoughts by Not a Psychologist
I feel like you are telling my story. My son went away to college 3 years ago and in 2 months said he was non binary,then a girl,and dropped out of school because he was suicidal.He was already in therapy and on medication for anxiety and depression.What broke him was the trans group at school said he was faking. We got him home ,therapy that stressed non affirming and was eventually titrated off medication. He went back to college but lives at home, and about 1 year later dropped the trans talk. Currently has his 1st girlfriend,in ROTC and has dropped 50 lbs. What a difference in him. He said the trans identity was an escape ( he was heavily in computer games and Amine) and he was holding on to some trauma we did not know about from high school.
All I can say is that we kept telling him he was not a girl , we loved him ,and would support anything except medication and surgery.
I am grateful we are passed that dark period.
I can’t help feeling so exasperated that any kid would encounter people with authority and extensive training who gleefully affirm their delusions about changing sex. This authority disables parental authority and destroys healthy family relationships. The blame for this misery and destruction falls squarely at the feet of the teachers, counsellors, agencies, and physicians. The parents are living through an unimaginable nightmare, watching their kids fall prey to a disfigurement cult that all authorities and governments seem to endorse as a justice movement.