This week @ProfTanya failed a dad, who'd asked him for help about his 6th former child who IDs as non-binary. We'd like him to know he's welcome in our group, & we offer some advice, parent to parent. Tanya, please read it too if poss. thetimes.co.uk/article/my-chi…
Firstly, your evident closeness with your daughter is a strong protective factor. It's also excellent that you're trying to meet them where they're at. Your child needs you, and keeping that dialogue going will be vital in helping them overcome their distress about gender.
You're right to be alarmed that they might remove healthy body parts for the sake of "authenticity".
Here's the reality as experienced by a mum in our group only weeks ago:
Here's how it looks from the other side - as told by @ImWatson91, a young woman who showed her mum the results of the double mastectomy she'd got when she understood herself to be a man:
So please get support for yourself. You face much bigger problems than pronoun etiquette. Who'll listen without judgment to your confusion, rage & loss when hormones break your child's voice? When they come home having removed their breasts in the name of "authenticity"?
Incidentally, there's no evidence that hormones and surgery for non-binary identities help. Here's Dr Leighton Seal, consultant endocrinologist at the gender clnic @ProfTanya pointed you to: "we have to accept that there is no robust literature on this subject"
Dr Seal again: "there are no clearly established guidelines for the hormonal treatment of non-binary people, and a lack of empirical evidence on which to base practice".
"the off-label use of drugs that occurs in gender dysphoria largely means an unregulated live experiment on children", in the words of Oxford University's Professor of Evidence-Based Medicine.
You mention a difficult adolescence, & divorce. So please support the broader developmental & mental health needs.
Whatever route your child takes in life, having explored these issues will leave them in a better place to take sound decisions that will serve them long-term.
With luck they will find new ways to understand and manage their distress about their female body, which do not involve these hugely invasive experimental medical approaches that are rightly a huge concern for you.
You say she's introvert, academic, anxious, lonely. Consider if she's on the autistic spectrum, much under-diagnosed in females. If so it can have a powerful explanatory effect on a young person who's struggled & couldn't understand why.
Many autistic women spend some time identifying as trans - read some experiences here:
If your child's in year 12, don't approach GIDS, whose years-long waiting list means that referrals aged 15+ won't be assessed by them, but are bumped up to the adult service, whose "new streamlined service model" is underpinned by "minimal evidence" (the clinicians' own words)
Gender clinicians themselves admit that the "model of care in adult GICs is based on experience with older transwomen, not younger transmen or non-binary service users" like your child.
Rates of detransition or stopping treatment, as measured in two recent studies, are very significantly higher than historic estimates, and are as common as 20%.
Be in absolutely no hurry to know the eventual outcome of your child's gender exploration: "young people's development does not have a fixed time frame attached. Much of this development will take place after reaching the legal age of adulthood at 18."
Set aside empty flattery from @ProfTanya for your 'open-mindedness'. Trust your parental instincts & keep your eyes wide open. We wish you and your child luck.
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We hear often from parents that schools' view of their child's gender ID issues made an already complex situation worse.
We ask schools: please understand gender identity problems from a child development & mental health perspective, not solely as a minority rights issue 1/6
Work with parents, and do everything to strengthen family bonds, not undermine them. Vulnerable adolescents need their parents, even as they may be railing against them. 2/6
It is staggering that schools need parental permission to take a pupil on a trip, yet can transition a child's gender without the parent's knowledge. Information-sharing is critical for safety. 3/6
We're glad Sonia Appleby got justice from @TaviAndPort. Genuine concerns about GIDS were dismissed as transphobia - an accusation @PaulJThinks has levelled at us too recently. We publish our correspondence with him below, in the public interest. 1/
Last yr Dr Heather Wood of GIDS told 3000 UK psychologists that we were "not an appropriate resource" for parents & our website was "blatantly transphobic". Her problem stemmed from our link to @Transgendertrd, a site many parents find helpful and informative.
2/
We're parents devoted to our kids in tough times. Our doubts about the efficacy of life-long experimental drugs are reasonable. We're proud NHS users. As we told the BMJ, the NHS should work with us, not point judgmental fingers as Dr Wood did. 3/ doi.org/10.1136/bmj.m2…
A thread about unsafe prescribing and the exploitation of children for money.
A thread about a rotten apple in the midst of the LGBT advocacy sector.
A thread about GenderGP.
GenderGP feeds off the GIDS waiting list: without it, the rationale to go private is much reduced.
Advocacy groups offer parents no other way to understand a child's distress, than that they must ‘b’ock’ the emergency of a 'wrong' puberty, which lead to a lifetime's medication.
But puberty blockers are not an elixir that unlocks a child's 'true self', they are an experimentally repurposed cancer drug of now dubious legality that offers indifferent results.
Recently, @BBCNewsnight reported on a 2005-6 review of @TaviAndPort ’s Gender Identity Development Service (then known as GIDU), by Dr David Taylor. We have obtained the report via FOI and are publishing it below.
Taylor’s report was prompted by staff disquiet at GIDS, which has continued ever since. @sueevansprotect was the whistleblower then, and has continued her work to safeguard children at GIDS most recently by launching a judicial review with Mum A and @keira crowdjustice.com/case/protect-c…
The report’s concerns are ominously familiar to those raised by staff more recently. As The Times reported in April 2019, many more staff have turned whistleblower in the years since.
The ‘social laboratory’ of the internet is widely acknowledged. GIDS itself sponsored a D.Psych thesis by Xinyi Lee, on “transgender youths’ experiences of using social media”, based on 11 patient interviews. Download it here:
As Dr Lee wrote, “parents & clinicians [should be] working together in ensuring that social media use does not pose a risk… it is important for parents to be equally aware of the nature of social media platforms and the potential benefits & risks posed”