Reply to Daughter thinks she's transgender; in desperate need of counselor to help us

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]can I just ask, there is a lot of pressure on our kids today that creates gender confusion.  What if your daughter thinks she's transgender but actually is not?  Who can help her?[/quote]

She'll figure it out either way with support.  I don't believe there are any pressures to create gender confusion, but there are opportunities for acceptance and exploration. There remain huge pressures to gender conform.  No 13 year old wants to be transgender  -- it is a tough today despite the recent public awareness.   But when kids reach this conclusion in puberty it is more likely than not to stick, unlike with younger children. Protocols prohibit physical transitions before social ones (living as the opposite of one's birth gender) and some kids (and adults) reject binary gender Norns and treat gender as a spectrum between male and female. There is, unfortunately, no single medical diagnostic tool for this, but with assessments and counseling over time a relatively clear picture can emerge.  I commend the Charlie Rose special that aired this week to anyone wishing to learn the hard scientific work going on at places like Stanford, Harvard, Cambridge and Wisconsin to better understand the biological underpinnings of being transgender.  [/quote]

+1.

Charlie Rose just did one of his "Brain Series" episodes on gender identity on 6/16/15.  See http://www.charlierose.com/watch/60578677

You can also watch on the web or on Hulu.

Takeaways are -- 
1)  biological gender, i.e. sex organs and sex chromosomes are different from gender identity and don't always match up,

2)  everyone has male and female identity centers in their brain, one of which is usually emphasized during hormonal spurts during the prenatal or post-natal period (within the first year) and then again during puberty.  Because of either atypical or absent hormonal surges, kids may develop gender identities that don't match up with their physical sex type.  So, transgender feelings seem to be a result of biology, not necessarily "social" pressures.

3)  many kids experiment with gender identity during the course of their pre-pubertal development, but kids who are still interested in a different gender identity by adolescence may very well be transgender.  That is particularly true where they exhibit interest in wearing opposite sex underwear and sleepwear.

4)There is a protocol, developed and extensively studied by the Dutch and then copied and put into practice in the US by Boston Children's and being replicated in other major hospitals which delays puberty medically for a couple of years to give the adolescent time to consider feelings and decision options.  At the end of that time, kids can decide whether to unblock their own puberty or to move ahead with a different hormonal/pubertal transition.

5)  Trans kids have a SIGNFICANT suicide risk, and overall allowing them to develop according to their chose gender identity results in much happier outcomes with normalized suicide rates.

Very interesting program.  Quick overview.  Experts in research biology, medical treatment and a transgender person who happens also to be a researcher. 
[/quote]

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