Came here to comment because we have a family member who just transitioned but I'm seeing a lot of good, supportive advice here. So glad to see this!

Is he going to counseling, and are there other mental health issues not being addressed? Regardless if they decide to become the new gender, they should get support for existing mental health issues.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our son just told us that he is trans. What does that mean? This is an honest question. Please help us parents.

I’m so sorry. Can’t fathom what you’re going through

I think support with a dose of reality. He's almost 18, so I would explain he can identify however he so chooses. The reality is one cannot change their biology so he will be a bio male his entire life. He can change his name and his clothes, or even get life altering surgery which hopefully he never does.

Read the book "When kids say they're trans"

We were in the same boat last year OP and what helped most was just talking to our trans kid and showing our support as much as we could. We did find a therapist but they weren't a good match for our kid, so that wasn't hugely helpful except as another sign to our kid that we supported them. Be prepared for your kid to be excluded, ours definitely has lost friends over coming out as trans. And let them define what it means to them. I think I assumed initially that if our kid was trans they were gay too, but not so. Their gender identity is different than their sexual orientation. So that was probably naive or close minded of us, but we listened and learned.

This issue of pronoun is really fascinating and interesting. In my African native language there is no he or she. We only have they. And further the language is only spoken and not written. But in English this issue is really a hot button issue.

Funny, in my language, every noun has a gender associated with it -- it is either male, female, or neutral. And then the rest of the words we use around the nouns have to be inflected to reflect that gender. All I can say is that America would go effing NUTS if this concept was in the English language!!!

Good for him