Helping Your Transgender Teen by Irwin Krieger

Author:Irwin Krieger
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781784508197
Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Publishers
Published: 2017-12-10T16:00:00+00:00

Social transition

The next important and useful step is to support your teen in making a social transition. This is the point at which they are likely to request that you begin using a new name and new pronouns for them. You should do your best to always use their chosen name and pronouns. From a practical standpoint this is a difficult adjustment for parents, given the years of calling your child by the name you gave them and thinking of them as being fully in accord with their natal sex. And of course if you remain troubled or uncertain about your child’s newly affirmed gender identity, or if the name you gave them has a special significance for you, it is difficult from an emotional standpoint as well.

A social transition happens when your teen chooses a moment to begin presenting in public as the person they feel themself to be. This may be a binary transition from living as a girl to living as a boy, or vice versa, or it may be a transition to affirming a non-binary gender identity. At first this may be limited to only at school, or in some other specific context, but eventually the social transition will be full time.

If your child affirms a non-binary identity, they will most likely ask you to refer to them with the pronouns ‘they,’ ‘them,’ ‘their,’ and ‘themself.’ Some young people prefer pronouns that have been created specifically for non-binary gender identity, such as the pronoun sets starting with ‘ze’ or ‘xe.’ Do your best to honor your child’s pronoun request. As long as you have good intentions, your teen will understand that it may take a while for you to learn to use the new name and pronouns consistently.

You will be ready to endorse the social transition when you:

• feel fairly certain that your child should take this step to find out if their affirmed gender is authentic, or

• are aware that your child is in great distress over having to be identified by their assigned sex and you would like to give them the opportunity to experience some relief.

For most transgender teens, the primary challenges for social transition are at school and at extended family gatherings. One key indicator of readiness for a social transition is the child’s sense that the relief they experience as a result of being true to themself will outweigh any harassment they may encounter. It is difficult to know in advance the amount of harassment your teen may experience. Many parents expect harassment to increase when a teenager makes a social transition. In my experience, however, many kids who had been harassed earlier for being gender nonconforming were treated better once they made a confident social transition. It seems that peers respond positively to the youth being more outgoing and self-assured in their affirmed gender. An increasingly androgynous presentation (changing hairstyle, jewelry, clothes and so on) by the teen prior to the transition will give you some ability to anticipate the likely level of harassment and plan accordingly.

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