In my experience, what adds to the distress for parents is the feeling of isolation.
My FtM daughter is doing great at college, celebrated for being stunning and brave and all that. (I believe she’s using a trans ID to hide).
But I’ve never felt so out of step with the times. Beyond what’s happening with my kid, I feel betrayed by doctors, psychologists, political leaders, teachers, journalists. These have been the worst years of my life.
I am with you Sad_Mom. It is just so isolating and it's hard, me thinks, for others to understand what is happening for us. People want us just to go out and 'have fun' in our retirement. The world has changed so much since the internet took over our lives. People around the world who we will never meet hate us and say vile things about us based on our kids posting about us. Betrayal comes from all sides, right, left, up, down. At the end of the day no one can bring him back but him.
My ‘adult’ child’s transsing has brought out a very self centered part of him that I had not seen before. His need for validation for his differentness and for a variety of self diagnosed maladies is profound and confusing to the rest of the family. My deep sadness is in direct proportion to my age, 67, and the loss of much of my family to his behaviors. For better, or worse, right or wrong, I had expected to continue to be connected to my kids in my ‘golden years’. I miss the child I love and who I believed loved me.
It's a natural and noble instinct to expect a satisfying relationship with our adult children. It's actually quite common for this not to unfold but it seems like it's still taboo and we don't speak about it much
I too feel profound loss my child is 17 & is planning his first appt with his GP to discuss transitioning he socially transitioned 6 years ago. I’m 61 and hoping to retire soon. I love & miss the child we adore. We support but do not affirm. I’m utterly terrified of the next step coming.
I think I am deeply deeply distressed. But I also see our daughter filled with so much self-loathing that she honestly can't imagine giving up an identity that's not really improving anything. So, I would have chosen equally distressed if it were an option. The parallel lonely suffering is devastating-- once because suffering is horrible, and a second time because it's so ironically tragic that we can't comfort each other.
That hits on an important catch 22 that many parents experience. We need to analyse the impact of this a good deal more. It's akin, on one level, to the frustration felt by people who love addicts or other mentally ill people who refuse to acknowledge any problem
My daughter had me watch Beautiful Boy with her (a dad stops at nothing to save his son from addiction), and I was sobbing at the end. She just loves the young actor Timothy Chalemet, being the gay man that she is, but to me it was a total metaphor for what we’re going through. I couldn’t answer honestly when she asked about my tears! I just said you’ll understand when you’re a parent.
I think that at the time my daughter adopted a trans identity, she was in acute distress. We made the grave mistake of allowing a social transition, as I know so many parents did in the last six years. We have gone to great lengths to prevent her from medicalizing, which to date have been successful, although I think she could at any moment go against her promise to wait until at least 25. The thing is, she is thriving now. She actually will tell me that I am more focused on all of it, “it” meaning her trans identity and my fears of what she will do about it in the future, than she is, and she questions why I am so sad and worried all the time even though I try to show her all of the good parts of my life and of being a woman. We saw the Barbie movie separately, her first, and she loved it and thought it was fun, and I left in tears, wondering how my daughter could watch that movie and then not reclaim her female identity. I believe if she had medicalized and had excess testosterone coursing through her body, she would actually be quite a wreck. She got through the difficult years of puberty with the belief that pretending to be a boy is what has made her strong and happy, and I am still weeping through these years worrying that she is still in danger of concretizing this. She gets to be angry and indignant that I still do not truly affirm her, while I get to be devastated that all the love I put into mothering her did not make her strong enough to resist this cult that deceptively offers an easy way out of vulnerability.
I feel like your story is almost exactly mine too, except my daughter is just turning 14. We just saw the Barbie movie too and I balled my eyes out. My daughter says she doesn’t want a medical transition anymore but I know she’s still in danger of getting sucked into that. I socially transitioned her because that’s what our doctor told us to do, and now I can’t roll it back, not even her school will let me roll it back. So I’m just trying to lean in with extra love and model being a healthy happy woman, even though on the inside I’m a disaster because I’m desperately trying to rescue her without any help from doctors, therapists, school, or peers.
I don't know if it can be measured and I don't know if it can be compared. I suspect my distress is more constant / chronic but as an adult I probably am a little better in managing it, like people manage chronic physical pain. My daughter's distress probably comes in shorter stronger bursts, as young people's emotions do. I don't think she lies in bed sleepless as I do but when she feels it, the distress is sharp.
I'd say both. My kid was depressed and anxious before she went trans. And now she's even more depressed and anxious. I was sad and worried before because of my daughter's mental issues, and now I'm more worried and depressed.
That is the same with my now 19 year old son, with depression, anxiety, ASD and also identifying as trans female the last 4 1/2 years. Sometimes I do well-ish, as I have a wonderful support network to walk through this with our family. But then like this morning I wake up with a sick dread, wondering if our son will ever be healthy, and how long we’ll be fighting this battle.
When gender distress hit my family I was a wreck. But from the beginning I recognized that I need help regulating myself. As a teacher who works with students with special needs including emotional issues I have always said “Dysregulated parents can not regulate dysregulated children.” And here I was having to follow my own advice. I can honestly say I am healthier and a better parent to both of my children since I learned strategies to ground myself and clean up my own patterns of anxiety. I am thankful for the therapy I received from an understanding therapist and the gift that practicing yoga regularly had granted me. Taking care of yourself isn’t selfish it is essential. My daughter is showing many signs of desistance. More than 2 years after this hit our family she is healthier, happier, and way less confused. I feel grateful and positive about my role in her progress.
Good for you. I hope lots of parents find a good therapist for themselves- I often think this is more valuable than finding a therapist for the young person
We were in a stable place with my son’s autism and depression that had been diagnosed in his childhood and the slow launch into adulthood that was coming, but his out-of-the-blue announcement last year that he was trans threw me into a complete depression. He refuses to see that there might be negative long term consequences. Our inability to have a conversation about anything around transness is exhausting. We’re at an uneasy détente, but I worry constantly.
I’ve been in this trench for 7 years and now feel I’m less distressed than my daughter, but I would have answered very differently a few years back. It’s an interesting question from a snapshot-in-time perspective.
For me it’s feeling like I failed or missed something I should have caught. I try to remember that we all went through a self discovery. But this one has life long implications with hormones and surgery. I am afraid for him. I am saddened with the feeling that I am losing my son, my baby boy. I just want him back. We used to be close he would tell me just about everything. He has spent the summer in his room. Rarely leaving the house.
Now that my child has an autism diagnosis, I can understand why she feels distressed. But having that diagnosis made her happier because she now knows why she is struggling. Hopefully she will see her way out of trans.
I think I'm in AS MUCH distress... although a different type. My kid is seriously distressed and not functioning because of the myriad causes of her gender dysphoria, as well as by the focus on the body based distress. I am distressed because of grief, worry, frustration, isolation and despair at the world. I'm not sure how we weigh up the two as they are on different scales.
I for one am distressed, and have been for more than 6-7 years.
But it’s little like being in a holding pattern, like a plane circling around looking for a place to land, not finding a landing strip acceptable enough for landing, and feeling like I’m running out of fuel.
My FTM child is affirmed by my ex, and me - her mother, fights daily migraines not knowing where she is, and trying desperately to make contact, but restraining myself from trying. I have sent random messages by text, which I feel are unseen, and I’m still clinging to hope, that someday... someday something will change.
I always wonder how she’s doing, but am drawing on the strength of my deceased mother’s spirit to sustain my own.
My poor mother lived through many trials with me, and yet still loved me unconditionally. I never transed though. Although when I was a prepubescent girl I was determined that I wanted to be a boy. Luckily there was no internet nor outside influencers to pull me into transitioning. Nor would I have done so. I grew up - and grew out of the Tomboy phase, am heterosexual, dated boys/men, married and had a child! (But am currently divorced, and have not yet remarried.)
And deep in my heart, I know my daughter never truly wants to be a man. She was a typical girly girl. She’s just going with the present tide... constantly looking for outside validation. I wait patiently for that someday to arrive.
I just don’t know if I’ll be around for that arrival. That’s distress alright.
I had to say I don't know... I hear one thing from my daughter yet her actions seem to say something else. Do I trust what she says or do I look at what she is doing? And how much pushback do I give to what she is telling me? When she says all is well and I question that all is well she gets mad....
I wonder if we are a generation of parents who thought we could control so many aspects of our children's lives and when we discover that we can not control their internal lives we become distressed. We can't make them happy or completely well adjusted or brave or wise. Those are things that have to be forged by living......and that we can not do for them, nor should we want to. We protected them for so long and now realize with sadness that we can no longer do that. I also know that parents (in our case MOM) gets the sob stories and the woe-is-me stories then the child goes off to happily do her thing, leaving Mom to worry. Sigh....
I think you make a good point. We parents feel helpless in the face of our lack of ability to help our children's internal world. Perhaps it would be easier if took ourselves off that particular hook?
I’m not sure how to measure relative distress between different family members. Adopting a systemic approach I see distress, sadness, anger as being co-created and, wherever practicable, by working with whole family systems.
In my experience, what adds to the distress for parents is the feeling of isolation.
My FtM daughter is doing great at college, celebrated for being stunning and brave and all that. (I believe she’s using a trans ID to hide).
But I’ve never felt so out of step with the times. Beyond what’s happening with my kid, I feel betrayed by doctors, psychologists, political leaders, teachers, journalists. These have been the worst years of my life.
I am with you Sad_Mom. It is just so isolating and it's hard, me thinks, for others to understand what is happening for us. People want us just to go out and 'have fun' in our retirement. The world has changed so much since the internet took over our lives. People around the world who we will never meet hate us and say vile things about us based on our kids posting about us. Betrayal comes from all sides, right, left, up, down. At the end of the day no one can bring him back but him.
I am in the same boat with my trans-identified daughter doing fantastic in college yet it just all feels so wrong and tragic to me
Such a good point. It's chilling to watch how isolated the parents have been in this context.
My ‘adult’ child’s transsing has brought out a very self centered part of him that I had not seen before. His need for validation for his differentness and for a variety of self diagnosed maladies is profound and confusing to the rest of the family. My deep sadness is in direct proportion to my age, 67, and the loss of much of my family to his behaviors. For better, or worse, right or wrong, I had expected to continue to be connected to my kids in my ‘golden years’. I miss the child I love and who I believed loved me.
It's a natural and noble instinct to expect a satisfying relationship with our adult children. It's actually quite common for this not to unfold but it seems like it's still taboo and we don't speak about it much
I too feel profound loss my child is 17 & is planning his first appt with his GP to discuss transitioning he socially transitioned 6 years ago. I’m 61 and hoping to retire soon. I love & miss the child we adore. We support but do not affirm. I’m utterly terrified of the next step coming.
I hope things go ok for you. This sounds incredibly hard. xxx
I think I am deeply deeply distressed. But I also see our daughter filled with so much self-loathing that she honestly can't imagine giving up an identity that's not really improving anything. So, I would have chosen equally distressed if it were an option. The parallel lonely suffering is devastating-- once because suffering is horrible, and a second time because it's so ironically tragic that we can't comfort each other.
That hits on an important catch 22 that many parents experience. We need to analyse the impact of this a good deal more. It's akin, on one level, to the frustration felt by people who love addicts or other mentally ill people who refuse to acknowledge any problem
My daughter had me watch Beautiful Boy with her (a dad stops at nothing to save his son from addiction), and I was sobbing at the end. She just loves the young actor Timothy Chalemet, being the gay man that she is, but to me it was a total metaphor for what we’re going through. I couldn’t answer honestly when she asked about my tears! I just said you’ll understand when you’re a parent.
Exactly. Because we want opposite solutions (trans vs. embracing one's sex) for this distress.
Yes, that is the essential point. Well said.
Agreed.
I think that at the time my daughter adopted a trans identity, she was in acute distress. We made the grave mistake of allowing a social transition, as I know so many parents did in the last six years. We have gone to great lengths to prevent her from medicalizing, which to date have been successful, although I think she could at any moment go against her promise to wait until at least 25. The thing is, she is thriving now. She actually will tell me that I am more focused on all of it, “it” meaning her trans identity and my fears of what she will do about it in the future, than she is, and she questions why I am so sad and worried all the time even though I try to show her all of the good parts of my life and of being a woman. We saw the Barbie movie separately, her first, and she loved it and thought it was fun, and I left in tears, wondering how my daughter could watch that movie and then not reclaim her female identity. I believe if she had medicalized and had excess testosterone coursing through her body, she would actually be quite a wreck. She got through the difficult years of puberty with the belief that pretending to be a boy is what has made her strong and happy, and I am still weeping through these years worrying that she is still in danger of concretizing this. She gets to be angry and indignant that I still do not truly affirm her, while I get to be devastated that all the love I put into mothering her did not make her strong enough to resist this cult that deceptively offers an easy way out of vulnerability.
I feel like your story is almost exactly mine too, except my daughter is just turning 14. We just saw the Barbie movie too and I balled my eyes out. My daughter says she doesn’t want a medical transition anymore but I know she’s still in danger of getting sucked into that. I socially transitioned her because that’s what our doctor told us to do, and now I can’t roll it back, not even her school will let me roll it back. So I’m just trying to lean in with extra love and model being a healthy happy woman, even though on the inside I’m a disaster because I’m desperately trying to rescue her without any help from doctors, therapists, school, or peers.
I don't know if it can be measured and I don't know if it can be compared. I suspect my distress is more constant / chronic but as an adult I probably am a little better in managing it, like people manage chronic physical pain. My daughter's distress probably comes in shorter stronger bursts, as young people's emotions do. I don't think she lies in bed sleepless as I do but when she feels it, the distress is sharp.
Chronic pain is a very good analogy... chronic and acute mental pain
I agree. It's a very good comparison to chronic pain.
I'd say both. My kid was depressed and anxious before she went trans. And now she's even more depressed and anxious. I was sad and worried before because of my daughter's mental issues, and now I'm more worried and depressed.
That is the same with my now 19 year old son, with depression, anxiety, ASD and also identifying as trans female the last 4 1/2 years. Sometimes I do well-ish, as I have a wonderful support network to walk through this with our family. But then like this morning I wake up with a sick dread, wondering if our son will ever be healthy, and how long we’ll be fighting this battle.
Yes, true for me too.
When gender distress hit my family I was a wreck. But from the beginning I recognized that I need help regulating myself. As a teacher who works with students with special needs including emotional issues I have always said “Dysregulated parents can not regulate dysregulated children.” And here I was having to follow my own advice. I can honestly say I am healthier and a better parent to both of my children since I learned strategies to ground myself and clean up my own patterns of anxiety. I am thankful for the therapy I received from an understanding therapist and the gift that practicing yoga regularly had granted me. Taking care of yourself isn’t selfish it is essential. My daughter is showing many signs of desistance. More than 2 years after this hit our family she is healthier, happier, and way less confused. I feel grateful and positive about my role in her progress.
Good for you. I hope lots of parents find a good therapist for themselves- I often think this is more valuable than finding a therapist for the young person
We were in a stable place with my son’s autism and depression that had been diagnosed in his childhood and the slow launch into adulthood that was coming, but his out-of-the-blue announcement last year that he was trans threw me into a complete depression. He refuses to see that there might be negative long term consequences. Our inability to have a conversation about anything around transness is exhausting. We’re at an uneasy détente, but I worry constantly.
Utterly exhausting. Take good care of yourself x
I’ve been in this trench for 7 years and now feel I’m less distressed than my daughter, but I would have answered very differently a few years back. It’s an interesting question from a snapshot-in-time perspective.
That's great to hear, thank you for commenting
For me it’s feeling like I failed or missed something I should have caught. I try to remember that we all went through a self discovery. But this one has life long implications with hormones and surgery. I am afraid for him. I am saddened with the feeling that I am losing my son, my baby boy. I just want him back. We used to be close he would tell me just about everything. He has spent the summer in his room. Rarely leaving the house.
So sorry to read this. I hope you can access good support for yourself xx
Now that my child has an autism diagnosis, I can understand why she feels distressed. But having that diagnosis made her happier because she now knows why she is struggling. Hopefully she will see her way out of trans.
I think I'm in AS MUCH distress... although a different type. My kid is seriously distressed and not functioning because of the myriad causes of her gender dysphoria, as well as by the focus on the body based distress. I am distressed because of grief, worry, frustration, isolation and despair at the world. I'm not sure how we weigh up the two as they are on different scales.
Yes, that is a very good point!
I for one am distressed, and have been for more than 6-7 years.
But it’s little like being in a holding pattern, like a plane circling around looking for a place to land, not finding a landing strip acceptable enough for landing, and feeling like I’m running out of fuel.
My FTM child is affirmed by my ex, and me - her mother, fights daily migraines not knowing where she is, and trying desperately to make contact, but restraining myself from trying. I have sent random messages by text, which I feel are unseen, and I’m still clinging to hope, that someday... someday something will change.
I always wonder how she’s doing, but am drawing on the strength of my deceased mother’s spirit to sustain my own.
My poor mother lived through many trials with me, and yet still loved me unconditionally. I never transed though. Although when I was a prepubescent girl I was determined that I wanted to be a boy. Luckily there was no internet nor outside influencers to pull me into transitioning. Nor would I have done so. I grew up - and grew out of the Tomboy phase, am heterosexual, dated boys/men, married and had a child! (But am currently divorced, and have not yet remarried.)
And deep in my heart, I know my daughter never truly wants to be a man. She was a typical girly girl. She’s just going with the present tide... constantly looking for outside validation. I wait patiently for that someday to arrive.
I just don’t know if I’ll be around for that arrival. That’s distress alright.
This sounds heartrending. I hope it gets better xxx
Narcissism may not be genetic, but it's definitely hereditary.
I had to say I don't know... I hear one thing from my daughter yet her actions seem to say something else. Do I trust what she says or do I look at what she is doing? And how much pushback do I give to what she is telling me? When she says all is well and I question that all is well she gets mad....
I wonder if we are a generation of parents who thought we could control so many aspects of our children's lives and when we discover that we can not control their internal lives we become distressed. We can't make them happy or completely well adjusted or brave or wise. Those are things that have to be forged by living......and that we can not do for them, nor should we want to. We protected them for so long and now realize with sadness that we can no longer do that. I also know that parents (in our case MOM) gets the sob stories and the woe-is-me stories then the child goes off to happily do her thing, leaving Mom to worry. Sigh....
I think you make a good point. We parents feel helpless in the face of our lack of ability to help our children's internal world. Perhaps it would be easier if took ourselves off that particular hook?
I’m not sure how to measure relative distress between different family members. Adopting a systemic approach I see distress, sadness, anger as being co-created and, wherever practicable, by working with whole family systems.