When Your Child Has Gender Issues

By Joan Pickett, LPC

With schools “teaching to the test,” and sports chewing up huge amounts of time, and worries about safety growing, most parents have moments of feeling overwhelmed. Single parents double this with the necessity of doing it all alone. And this goes not just for those who have lost a spouse through divorce or death, but for those whose spouse is deployed elsewhere in military service.

So what happens when your child comes to you to say that he or she has a gender issue? This can be your child telling you that he or she is attracted to the same sex, which is not a gender but a sexual orientation matter. Gender issues involve the existential awareness that the individual does not and never has felt comfortable in his or her body. The feeling is that he or she was born in the wrong body. That he or she is in fact she or he.

Parents are usually caught unaware by this, although after deeper discussion they frequently can point to signs that something was unusual as early as childhood. This is because the children are aware even then that they are either male or female. And when this feeling does not match what their friends feel this causes a subtle but real feeling of disorientation. As the child grows the problem becomes even more troubling until finally they begin to explore the Internet for evidence of what they are experiencing and finding others with the same issue. Ultimately they must share this with their parents.

The first step in good parenting in this situation is to listen and question in the most gentle fashion. It has be excruciating for the child to get the courage to talk with the parents and only the most loving and accepting reaction at this time is healthy. Judgments and disbelief are unhealthy in the extreme and can lead to the end of the parent/child relationship and severe injury to the child.

Parents begin their own research to understand and gain knowledge of this phenomenon. The child has usually been doing a great deal of research for some time. As discussion begins it is wise to seek the help of a therapist who works in this field and often the parents may want to get their own therapeutic help as they move with their child through the stages of growth as suggested by their child's therapist.