Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Ep. 100: Navigating your teenager's LGBTQIA+ challenges
0 Plays2 seconds ago
*TW - Suicide and self harm
This week's guest is the parent of a 17-year-old transgender boy. She talks about how it felt to support her son as they came to the realisation that their assigned gender did not match who they knew themselves to be. She describes how difficult it was for her son despite her family's acceptance and support of his decision, compared to other teenagers she knows of who have not been supported by their families. I ask her why she thinks some parents don't accept their children's LGBTQIA+ feelings.
Heidi told me the hardest part of her son's transgender journey was their decision to change their name. She says she went through a period of mourning for the daughter she gave birth to. We talk about how difficult it can be as parents to allow our children to determine for themselves who they're going to be, without trying to influence them. She gives some insight into what age she thinks is best for a teenager to undertake surgical transition, the controversy around puberty blockers and how normal gender and sexuality changes are to our own teenagers' generation.
Heidi also talks about her own teenagers years growing up with undiagnosed bipolar, and how easy it was to miss amongst all the teenage hormones.
Who is Heidi L Gross?
Heidi published her first personal and heartfelt work, Embracing Love: A Parent’s Guide to Nurturing and Celebrating LGBTQ+ Identity. Inspired by her journey as the mother of a transgender son, the book aims to support parents who are navigating similar experiences, offering them insight, compassion, and guidance.
More from Heidi
- Embracing Love: A parent's guide to nurturing and celebrating your child's LGBTQ+ identity - https://amzn.to/42nGW5E
Also listen to
- What your transgender teen wants you to know
- Overcoming self-harm
- Mental health, sexuality and self-harm recovery
More teenage parenting from Helen Wills
Thank you for listening! Subscribe to the Teenage Kicks podcast to hear new episodes. If you have a suggestion for the podcast please email helen@actuallymummy.co.uk.
For information on your data privacy please visit Zencastr's policy page
Please note that Helen Wills is not a medical expert, and nothing in the podcast should be taken as medical advice. If you're worried about yourself or a teenager, please seek support from a medical professional.
Episode produced by Michael J Cunningham
Recommended
Transcript
Season Introduction and Helen's Journey
00:00:00
Speaker
The best thing I did was realize I don't know what to do.
00:00:07
Speaker
Welcome to Season 9 of the Teenage Kicks podcast. I'm your host, writer and psychotherapist Helen Wills. Can you believe it? When I started this podcast, there was nothing much online for parents about teenage mental health. Still less about how to cope with our own anxieties when our teenagers are going through difficult stuff.
00:00:32
Speaker
Since then, I've spoken to over 100 guests about struggles they had in their teenage years, how they've coped since, and the advice they'd offer to young adults and their parents today. We've talked about all the difficult things, from anxiety, to being diagnosed with an illness, or getting kicked out of school. Spoiler alert, it all involves a bit of anxiety.
00:00:57
Speaker
and many of my guests have told me the conversations have felt like therapy. It's what led me to think about training as a therapist and I'm happy to say that I'm now a fully qualified counsellor. I help my clients with anxiety and depression, lost grief and bereavement, clinical illness, trauma and relationship issues and especially parents who are finding the teenage years tricky.
00:01:25
Speaker
If you think counselling might help you, you can find me at HelenWills.com. That's Helen Wills W I double L S dot com. I offer a free initial conversation to see if we're a good fit.
00:01:40
Speaker
Now, on to Series 9, and I have some fantastic guests for you.
Upcoming Topics and Introducing Heidi L. Gross
00:01:45
Speaker
We're going to talk about what it's like to grow up with a disabled sibling, the teenagers who are embracing a sober adolescence, how to support a child who's questioning their gender or sexuality, and teens who are people pleasers.
00:02:00
Speaker
Yes, they might be ball breakers at home, but lots of teens feel under pressure to perform for other people. And they need our help to help them stop. Says one of my guests.
00:02:13
Speaker
Today's guest is a parent for a change. Normally we talk to someone who's been through something difficult in their teenage years, but today we're talking to a parent who's been through something difficult with their teenager. Heidi L. Gross is the author of Embracing Love, a parent's guide to nurturing and celebrating your child's LGBTQ plus identity.
Heidi's Family Challenges and Mental Health
00:02:37
Speaker
It's a heartfelt resource designed to support parents and family members as they navigate the journey of understanding, accepting and loving their LGBTQ plus children.
00:02:50
Speaker
Heidi says that the last five years have been hard for her son and her family, and they've had to deal with trauma, suicidal ideation and self-harm. So if any of that is a trigger for you, then you may want to skip this episode. What is important though is that Heidi says that both she and her son, who's now 17, have grown in resilience through the difficulties of learning to live with each other all over again. Heidi, welcome to the podcast.
00:03:20
Speaker
Thank you, Helen. oh It's really lovely to have you here, Heidi. um We have talked about transgender once before on the podcast, and I will link that episode. I always think I need to get that episode number in my head before I start these intros, and then I never do. But I'll link it in the show notes. um That was um a transgender teenage girl who told me about her journey. um But I'm really interested to hear the story from the the side of the parent as well.
00:03:53
Speaker
Before we get into that though, Heidi, as is tradition on this podcast, I'm going to ask you to tell us a little bit, if you will, about your own teenage years. What was it like for you growing up?
00:04:05
Speaker
um It was interesting. I mean I'm ah in my 50s now probably shouldn't broadcast pro 50s So I grew up in the 80s and I was a latchkey kid um As the term goes for Gen Xers spent a lot of time You know sort of growing up on my own with my brother uh sort of with a very independent kind of a an upbringing two parents hooked out of the home kind of a a situation and um, so It was good on one hand because you get a lot of self-reliance and things like that But what I didn't understand at the time was I was struggling um emotionally, uh because I was
00:04:53
Speaker
undiagnosed bipolar. um ah So it was a little bit of a struggle as a teenager trying to figure those normal teenage things out while also having this um additional maybe challenge. But I didn't know what it was. You didn't really talk about it back then. It wasn't really identified. um And so it wasn't actually until ah I got divorced about 15, 16 years ago, um I was going through a depression and started to seek counseling and um I then was diagnosed. And I was like, well, this makes a lot more sense.
00:05:36
Speaker
I have been feeling this way since I was a teenager. So um It was interesting um to look back on my teenage years more through the lens of more ah I guess knowledge about mental health and um What types of forms it can manifest itself in um particularly as a teenager ah So, it was it was very interesting to look back. When I was going through certain things in my teenage years, I didn't know it was maybe different. um you know i but This is how all teenagers maybe felt.
00:06:18
Speaker
And ah so it was interesting to to look back yeah on it. And I'm you know ah very balanced now. I had a wonderful um GP who has just embraced my journey, trying to figure it out over the last ah over a decade. And and I'm great.
00:06:38
Speaker
but uh looking back um yeah being undiagnosed and unmedicated it was it was a challenge and I and I think it in a way has helped me in being a little bit more aware or a little bit more uh focused on understanding what I don't know um so my journey uh with my son has sort of followed that same kind of track of, wait, something's happening, I don't understand it.
Understanding Teenage Phases vs. Mental Health Issues
00:07:10
Speaker
Let me do a little research and try to figure it out so that I can maybe make their teenage years a little bit better than I was. I wanted them to feel a little bit stronger as they were a teenager rather than become an adult and look back and go, oh, that's maybe why I was feeling the way I was feeling.
00:07:33
Speaker
um So it it actually was a ah big help. um yeah yeah yeah Yeah, isn't it always the way the hard thing, well you're going to talk about this I'm guessing, I've got an inkling. um The hard things are what help us with the things that come to us later on. I don't know very much about bipolar so um I ah don't really understand whether it's something that is genetic, it's in inherent, it's in you when you're born or I mean, I'm guessing or if it's a response to trauma, how did what's your take on how? There definitely is a genetic component to it. It does run in my family. um But again, it wasn't something that you talked about.
00:08:19
Speaker
30, 40 years ago. Not in the 80s. No, there was no such thing as mental health in the 80s. It actually took me to get diagnosed in order for my mother and my uncle to actually speak because similar things. they um It's really more of a chemical imbalance that because of that imbalance, your your mood tends to swing. ah You can be what's called manic, um highly either like overly but ah exuberant or overly aggressive, depending on how it manifests. And then it swings back to acute depression.
00:09:03
Speaker
where you know you don't want to be out and around people. and um So it's that swing that makes the imbalance. I'm guessing as a teenager, I think you said it sat it felt like that was just normal teenage stuff. Exactly. Were people around you just putting it down to being a teenager? because they Exactly. Because that kind of happens to us anyway because of hormone swings.
00:09:30
Speaker
And I and I think that's part of the reason why I decided to do research and then eventually write the book Was to help parents identify those distinctions That it's not just teenage behavior because that's why I think the last five years has been a little bit more protracted is because I was not blowing off, but I was attributing certain behaviors as, oh, that's just all teenagers are like this. Yeah. And conversely, it makes you go too far the other way in being a little bit much of a helicopter parent when they start to see, you start to see these swings and you're like, now I'm blaming it on their mental health and oh, they're having a bad time when actually, no, they're just being a teenager. Oh my God, as a parent, you cannot wing, can you? No, no. so is it Is it a problem? I mean, the over-medicalization is something else that you just don't get me started on because I've done my fair share of that. And then I have also stepped away and said, no, it's fine. It's just a bruise, a sprain, blah, blah, blah. And lo and behold, someone else insists that I take my child to A and&E and it's a break. yeah yeah Exactly. You really can't... you Like you said, you can't win sometimes and it's a very fine line because it it's sort of like the medical community when you have a headache and you have maybe a fever. It could be any number of things. We went through this with COVID where you have all these symptoms, but is it really what you think it is or is it just the common cold?
00:11:08
Speaker
yeah Yeah, so in mental health it's very much the same way particularly in adolescents and teenagers because their body is just naturally almost chemically imbalanced um Where they do have mood swings and they do feel a lot of insecurity and that's part of growing up Yeah, but so it's hard to maybe identify where your child is maybe struggling more than what would be the norm. And yeah I think it's important when you have a child that is within the LGBTQ plus community, they're going to have the same stressors as any other ah teenager.
00:11:56
Speaker
Yes, they may be exacerbated by the confusion or awkwardness or insecurity that they might be feeling um
Gender Identity and Parental Reactions
00:12:06
Speaker
With that taking it up another level so um Just to have that awareness when you're talking with your child um You know, I was very lucky and I have always had a very close relationship with my son so at the age of 12 and 13 when they started having these strange feelings um They were comfortable enough to come and talk to me um And even that was difficult for them They were scared there then when we got to the point a few years ago when they decided to actually tell me No, I'm not just gay. I actually Don't believe I should have been born in this body and and they
00:12:55
Speaker
said, I think I might want to transition. They were terrified yeah that I was going to like disown them. yeah And I find that I am a particularly progressive parent compared to some. And so that really troubled me that as close and as supportive as I think that I had been, they still were very afraid of disappointing me or You know, so it it made me really think about and they've had friends who've come over to my house who may be going through similar types of situations But they are not allowed to discuss it in their homes so at all um Their parents don't refer to them with the pronouns that they they
00:13:42
Speaker
prefer, they absolutely don't even acknowledge right that they want to be a different gender. yeah um So if my child in a, you know, maybe ah even more so loving, supporting environment still has those fears, what must children who know that their parents are not going to accept. yeah like How do they feel? Exactly. I'm going to take you down a bit of a tangent, actually, now that you've just mentioned that. Why do you think parents do that? Because I i totally get
00:14:20
Speaker
that there are some parents who are able to accept. um i'm I will talk to you about how it felt for you ah further into the podcast because I kind of want to know that because I imagine that it feels challenging for any parent to hear that their child is different from the stereotype norm who um because we've built up a perception, haven't we, since our child was before they were even born of what that that child's life would be like. Yeah. Which is, you know, our bad. We do that. It's it's quite natural. Absolutely. So it must feel challenging for anybody. But why do you think those parents fight who who who find it so challenging that they cannot accept?
00:15:07
Speaker
what their child is telling them. why what happens What's going on for them? Well, I think it's somewhat generational. I think I'm in a in a generation that really is bridging the gap between you know my mom's a baby boomer,
00:15:23
Speaker
My kids ah I have a 26 year old at two 17 year olds ah by marriage and um My husband and I my second husband and I have a 14 year old so in that blended family they have so much more awareness of these types of um I guess classifications, so Back when I was growing up, you were either gay or straight. That was it. that yeah you didn't had There was no in-between. There was his who was one or the other. yeah And then I think my generation kind of moved the needle a little bit in being able to talk about, are you gay or not? um And that became normalized. um Now, with the expansion of those categories of
00:16:17
Speaker
Being just part in whatever capacity of the LGBTQ plus community The next generation is going to work to normalize that but if you still have generations within my age group as well as grandparents and parents who are raised in a time when these issues were just not talked about. They were not the norm. In some cases, it might be a religious perspective where it's just not allowed. you know um It's not acknowledged. It doesn't exist. It's considered a mental illness because of choice. It's not something you
00:17:05
Speaker
are born with. um And I don't know if you can ever really get rid of some people's perspectives on that. It's the way they were raised and they ah choose to evolve their thoughts or not.
00:17:20
Speaker
and You know, yeah i like to think that we are moving to a more progressive state Where people are it's a little bit more mainstream to talk about these things and it's okay to be that But part of what you know, I try to identify in the book is that I know we're not there, you know um um There's a lot of people right not there. Yeah, and part of it I think is denial like you said we have a preconceived notion of what our child is going to be. And when they ah approach us with this alternative ah narrative, we're kind of like, but that's not.
00:18:00
Speaker
what I envisioned for you. if It's quite shocking, isn't it? It's quite painful, actually, to then conceptualize a wholly different life for your child. And that was, I think, the hardest part of this whole journey. I totally accepted when they said, I think I'm gay, and then when they even came to me with being transgender. Honestly, it wasn't the fact that they thought they wanted to be a different gender.
00:18:28
Speaker
It was strangely enough and it sounds absolutely ridiculous, but the hardest thing I had was that they wanted to change their name. That doesn't sound ridiculous at all to me. It was such an odd thing because i'm like I totally support the person you want to become.
00:18:49
Speaker
But I realized I went through a period of literal mourning. Yes. For the daughter that I gave birth to. Yes. Because they didn't want me to have pictures up of them as a kid. They didn't want to. I've got goosebumps hearing you say that. Yeah, it was it was hard. And my mom, um who is very close to my kids and has been really supportive, but it is from a generation where you want to be a you want to be a boy. I don't understand that.
00:19:19
Speaker
You know, he totally doesn't get that. I'm thinking about my grandparents. no Yeah, I mean, it's just beyond. But they've been really good um about using the pronouns and and trying to refer them by that their chosen name. um um But they have a similar thing where they're like, you know, my my child's birth name is Lillian Evans. And I was very and any any Harry Potter fans out there will make you know, pick up on Lillian Evans, but ah but it was my great-grandparents' names. So Lillian was my great-grandmother, Evans was my great-grandfather. I'm a genealogist too, so, you know, this whole family history, I went yeah yeah and a lot of thought into naming them. And so the fact that that they didn't want to be that, I was like sad. I was like, oh.
00:20:17
Speaker
But yeah know that makes complete sense. I remember sitting for weeks going through baby books and I'm a very spreadsheety sort of person. So yeah I even but I i had narrowed it down and took names out. And then I went for the meanings that meant something deep to me. And my daughter's not mad about her middle name.
00:20:38
Speaker
And if she changed it, I'd cope. ah But ah even that just a middle name, I still get a little pang because it's not about the name and who they are for us as parents. yeah It's about those months of what and even years for some people of dreaming about the child that they might have. And of course,
00:20:59
Speaker
I do understand how the the kind of almost hypocrisy in that and i I will own it because it's not my life, it's their life and they are their own person and that is one of we could we could I could really go off on a tangent but that's one of the things that we talk about on the podcast a lot is how hard it is for parents but how crucial it is for children that we get this separation right eventually when they push away from us as teenagers and we we we step back and let them become whoever they want to be without trying to mould them back into the image that we had created of them. Yeah and one thing I i found very interesting in this journey and
00:21:45
Speaker
with the book particularly is I found that I'm not really alone in this because for a while I was like nobody's going to get this nobody's going to understand and I was astonished at how many kids uh during their teenage years right now may not end up being committed to being transgender, but they're like exploring it during these years. And it's not unlike any other teenage period um where you try to identify, you want to be your own person, right? So you're like, I'm never going to be part of a clique.
00:22:24
Speaker
But yet, even when you are the outsiders, you have your own. I mean, you're still ah being attracted to certain characteristics of other people that you want to be around. So I think with all of the information that is available about being ah maybe a different gender, a different sexual orientation,
00:22:49
Speaker
and um You know, I remember when they were like 13 or 14, they came to me and they said, at first they told me that they were gay, which I'm spying with. um And then they said they were pansexual. And I was like, I had never heard the term. What is that exactly? I was like, what does that mean? And that means, well, we love everybody. It doesn't matter what their gender is or their sexuality. We just love everybody. And I'm like,
00:23:17
Speaker
Okay. I mean, like, everybody has to have it a label for something. Sure. Why not? And you know so I think there's a lot of experimentation during these teenage years. And I think parents particularly I found because transgender is such, it's more than just like oh a lifestyle or a way of living. yeah There is a physical component and a medical component. it
00:23:49
Speaker
to transitioning that goes above and beyond just normal sexual orientation. So, um you know, I think parents struggle that, oh, they're going to outgrow it, or this is just a phase. um And I touch on that in the book because it's it's something that I still struggle with every day, is, are you sure?
00:24:14
Speaker
Because you've got to be sure I mean you can decide I'm gay. No, I'm not hmm. No deal. Yes when we start augmenting our body yeah in order to represent that and we then change our mind Yes, huge. It's a much-figured decision. So, you know, we have consciously worked with a doctor and said when is it appropriate to Hmm physically. Yeah, you start making those decisions and you know, we're getting to that time um You know, what we've been told Everybody has a different opinion in a medical field, but we've been told some as soon as 16 can start doing it but our Doctor said really you need to wait until they're fully out of
00:25:04
Speaker
you know puberty, and I would say 18 to 20 is probably the earliest you want to start doing it because your body is going to normalize in terms of the hormone fluctuations. You don't want to be injecting alternate form forms of hormone to their body when they're not quite fully developed yet. And so, you know, a lot of parents might be, well, ah they're just going to outgrow it. And maybe some will. i Who knows? But it's so, so hard. When they make that drastic of a declaration, yeah yeah there's usually some commitment behind it.
00:25:46
Speaker
so Yeah. And I guess going back to the the question of what makes some parents refuse to accept, I'm guessing that for many it's fear a lot of yeah the time. Yeah, absolutely.
Parental Fears and Social Acceptance
00:26:00
Speaker
um Not just of what people will say, what people will think, which is our own stuff that we carry around with us, but of Yeah, how their family will change and what will happen to their child physically, especially um especially once you get into the realms of surgical intervention. I um i met a transgender woman who is really interesting um and she told me, I mean, there's a huge debate. I don't know how it is in in America, but um see she in the UK, there's been so much debate and controversy over puberty blockers.
00:26:41
Speaker
And she was adamant that they they're not harmful, that they just delay, so they give a child a bit of time and space to um make up their own mind. And then if they decide that they're not transgender, after all, they can go through puberty at a later stage. and that the ah you know And ah maybe maybe she's right. Maybe that's absolutely true. But there's so much controversy for a reason. And I guess it's untested. It's new. Like you're saying, it's the generation. We're the generation that's well, every generation above us has struggled with this as a concept. um But you talk to my kids who are 17 and nearly 20. And um it's just they don't they don't they don't flinch that it's just like,
00:27:26
Speaker
oh Harriet yeah she's transgender because I noticed that somebody sang on stage with quite a deep voice for a girl yeah oh she's transgender that's all it is exactly and they're very normalized it's very normalized um and even the naming thing um I would say of all of their friends, um they're now homeschooled, ah but when they were in regular school, I would say four out of 10 wanted to be called something else.
00:28:03
Speaker
And I was like, what, not even for gender, just because. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Even when, I mean, I'm very conservative, so there was no way I was ever going to change my name. And that probably speaks to my relationship with my parents. I would have probably thought I would be in serious trouble, but I started spelling my name with two L's instead of one, which I look back now and I see my signature and go, oh, you were such an idiot. but But it's just an experiment, isn't it? ah Exactly. It's another form of expression ah and it's so widely embraced by our kids' generation that they don't
00:28:44
Speaker
flinch at it, like you said, like, oh, that, oh, there's that. yeah I mean, it to them, it's so it is it is what it is. That's just normal. Which is fantastic that that yeah how that's how things are going to be so much more acceptance, hopefully.
00:29:00
Speaker
um But yeah, go just to to get back to the question of where it's hard for parents, and we haven't even talked about your son yet. how When was the first time you knew that something was different than you'd imagined about them? Honestly, I had a very rude awakening ah when I found out. I thought I was pretty um in touch ah with both of my kids as they were growing up. And um when they were about 12 and a half, 13,
00:29:38
Speaker
um they had They had told me that they were gay and I was like, okay, no big deal. and and But I got a call. I remember everything about that day in detail. I got a call from the nurse's office at school to tell me that she had found cutting marks on my child oh that I had never
Discovering Self-Harm and Past Trauma
00:30:04
Speaker
noticed. And that was the first time that I realized
00:30:12
Speaker
something is very, very wrong. yeah and With all of my own history with mental health and things like that, that was never something that I experimented with, had any knowledge or concept of.
00:30:26
Speaker
um you know i I maybe be manifested things in a different way, um but So I had a hard time wrapping my head around why someone would purposefully hurt themselves. um And it took a lot of research and looking into it to really help me to understand why people do this. And I think it's another example of the widespread information that is out there.
00:31:01
Speaker
that yeah maybe give kids ideas that they probably wouldn't have come up with on their own. um So it's sort of a blessing and a curse to have that sort of information at their fingertips all the time. um But regardless of where the thought came from, they they were manifesting with it. and And to this day, five years later,
00:31:29
Speaker
You know, medication therapy, they still sometimes sort of fall off the wagon. um But they they tell me, they're like, hey, either I had these thoughts or I did something. ah And it's never life threatening, but it's... It's a cry. It's a cry for help and it was not the kind of cry. I was expecting or prepared for um So those are the kinds of things that you know when I started looking into How do I support my child? How do I prevent things like this happening? I think that was one of the
00:32:14
Speaker
motivators that I had that I wanted other parents to know. If you are dealing with this, you are absolutely not alone. There are thousands of people who are having the same situation with their child.
00:32:30
Speaker
ah And it might be earlier, it might be later. Every child is different, but to kind of be aware of those warning signs because cutting or self-harm is one of those more pronounced, I guess, symptoms of when your child is struggling with their mental health as a result of whatever stressors they might be under. um and So that was really the hardest thing for me
00:33:05
Speaker
ah when I first found out. it was It was more of a physical support. I have to protect my child physically from themselves. ah But then through you know research and talking about it, I learned that this is just a manifestation of a mental condition. um so i wanted and i And I was absolutely astonished on how many kids are out there doing this.
00:33:33
Speaker
Yeah, yeah ah I mean it's a a lot of people, I've talked to a lot of people about self-harm. We've got two particularly good episodes actually, one of which is a lady who who doesn't do it anymore but will not allow herself to say that she doesn't.
00:33:51
Speaker
yeah Because she needs to know it's always there as a possibility. um But she talks about how she stops herself and it's really interesting. I'll link that one as well um in the show notes. But ah what they all have in common when we talk about it is that it seems to be A physical manifestation of emotional pain because the physical pain is easier to bear than the emotional pain. Exactly. Would you say that's what it was for your son? Yes, absolutely. and Absolutely. um And that was sort of like the trigger, right? When they're when they're having
00:34:31
Speaker
a particularly difficult time, that is a release. And like I said, it was not a concept that I could really understand. um So it it took a lot for me to um look into that and really understand what is the motivation, why, um and how do I help, right? i you just How do I alleviate the stressors? And you can't. It's it's such a hard period of time for teens because they're struggling regardless of what extra things they're going through. I mean, it's just teenage years are just full of angst and uncertainty and ah you know even the most
00:35:25
Speaker
well-adjusted, appearing ah kids out there are harboring things inside. um You know, you see these high-achieving students who are, you know, high on the Dean's list and um great in sports. so they're They're high achievers inside.
00:35:49
Speaker
They're struggling and you and you don't you but on the surface they're like this person no one bal us about knowing for them You just yeah never tell what somebody's dealing with under the surface So how did you help you said you know, you just wanted to help in this awful situation. How did you? um Well, I think the The best thing I did was realize I don't know what to do, right? Yeah, and and looked at ah They immediately started going to therapy um And we met with their their doctor their regular doctor um medical doctor and um I just started researching and it it
00:36:36
Speaker
was the best and worst um thing to know because during very early in that ah first ah therapist, ah it was discovered that um they had had an incident of inappropriate touching when they were about five or six. ok And I had no idea. They never told anybody. um And it was devastating that I was not aware of this situation. and um you know So there was a lot to unpack for them as a child. And so for a while, um after learning that,
00:37:24
Speaker
And I even started to make all of the same assumptions that most parents make is that it's because of this trauma that they want to change genders. They don't really want to change genders. It's because of this trauma. So if I fix right the trauma, they'll want to go back to being a girl. ah hi you know So you make all of these like excuses and bargains. and And at the end of the day, nope. Nope, mom. I totally committed to this. yes yeah Yes, I did experience that. Yes, I've gone through that. And yes, that might be what is triggering me to do these other things, but that has nothing to do.
00:38:10
Speaker
with my sexual orientation or my gender. yeah yeah And so it's it has been a lot of those, I think i there's every type of situation that I talk about in the book that I personally had gone through and and said, well, it's not that, it's this. How can we stop this? Yeah. how could ah you know And you try to rationalize something. And you know what I realized, unfortunately, more recently, is that it doesn't matter. It really doesn't matter. If they decide that this is a phase, great. If they don't decide that this is a phase and this is something they really want to do,
00:38:54
Speaker
You have nothing to say. there's there's it's ah Just as you had alluded to before, is we're we're trying to make this person able to leave the nest in the best, most well ah-established way that we can. yeah And putting our own wants, needs, fears into the situation is not going to help them in the long run. yeah so you know If it is a phase, then let's just write it out. and i it I don't mean to make it trite or cliche, but if you had a teenager who just went through this period where all they wanted to do was wear pajama pants and slippers, even when they went out to a store,
00:39:45
Speaker
You know, some parents would like push back and say, no, go put on clothes. And then you you know, at some point you're going to go to Wal-Mart and see every other teenagers wearing, you know, pajama pants and yeah yeah you're like, oh, OK, why am I fighting this? Yeah, it's a phase.
00:40:02
Speaker
you know At some point, this it's the same thing. You have to let them figure it out. yeah any you the The most important thing that you can do is support them and nurture them through this, like it's any other thing in their life. If they had some kind of physical illness, cancer, or some kind of ah you know disease, you would approach it completely different. But for some reason, when it comes to something like gender like sexual orientation or any kind of mental illness, we treat it like it's not a real thing. It's it's taboo. it's It's something that they can prevent or and just choose to be happier. Well, because we don't want it. I keep going back to this but and and I think we have to be honest with ourselves. If it were me in that situation and I was struggling to accept it, it would be because
00:41:06
Speaker
I'm scared. I don't want something for my child to be really different from the average, which is all about my fear. And it and that's what we have to get over because none of this is about our fear. Even if your child really loves to go clubbing and not come home before 5 a.m. in the morning,
00:41:34
Speaker
that I was going to say there's nothing you can do about that. there There are things you can do about that but only to a certain extent and they will circumvent you if they can. most of them and actually the healthier ones will the ones who struggle and may have emotional problems further down the line are the ones who toe the line which was me as a kid and did everything my parents said even though i didn't want to do what they told me to do so there is no point so what you just said about ride it out and just wait and see how they turn out and it's about sitting with that uncertainty i think
00:42:11
Speaker
and just allowing your child to be whoever they want. The most important thing for me and the hardest thing to achieve is that my kids know that they can be whoever they want to be and that I will accept all of it whenever they choose to share it with me.
00:42:27
Speaker
Yeah. It's really, really hard. So I don't want to sit here sounding smug. Anyone that's listening, i'm not I'm not saying this, saying, I've got that nailed. I know what I'm doing. This is what you need to do. It's really, really hard. now But it's it's the most important thing we can do, right? Yes. Yeah. I mean, it didn't. I got to ah a point when I realized it really doesn't matter how I try to fix the situation.
00:42:57
Speaker
It's just being there that matters. you know Just being accessible, being supportive. As they navigate through this now, obviously like arab every other parent like you said you don't I was scared when they even when they back when they said i'm gay And that was it I knew from my own personal experience You know, I mentioned this uh in the book that a good majority of my oldest and tears friends just happened to be gay And I remember being in high school being in college when they
00:43:36
Speaker
didn't feel comfortable in coming out yet. um And it was a big deal when they finally decided to do that. And that was the thing that scared me because I realized that even though I'm supportive of it, not everybody is going to be and their life is going to be a little bit harder yeah as a result of this you know, path that they were going to be on. And as a parent, obviously you want to shelter your child from any kind of discomfort or, you know, difficulty. And, you know, that was the only thing that at first I was really like, oh, this is going to be tougher for them.
00:44:18
Speaker
um and you don't want that and then to take it on to a new level of discrimination and um Bullying by being transgender. I was like, oh Are you sure? like Sure because I knew that there was going to be times when they were not going to be accepted and and that you know You don't want that for your child. You want to try to carve the easiest path for them. And at the end of the day, you can't protect them from everything. yeah So um you know I have made certain decisions.
00:45:00
Speaker
to shelter them a little bit. For example, going the route of homeschooling because they're a very bright child, but they were struggling the last two years um with going to school, you know not missing time, yeah um feeling bullied.
00:45:20
Speaker
um not feeling protected in the school district. um you know So I decided to make the change and do a homeschool private academy and they are an A student. But that has a drawback too because they don't get the socialization they did cool yeah either. So you know as a parent, you're constantly juggling what is the best yeah you know thing to do and you know, I think the The most important thing to know is you're not alone. You you are not the only person who is struggling with these ah Different issues and I think the more that we talk about You know more parents of teens talk about these things. Yeah, you know you can you
00:46:10
Speaker
get sort of a support you know community of well this is important for me and you know this is helpful and yeah well that's um what you just said there about things being harder and life not being perfect i think that's the other hard thing for parents to accept that there is no perfect um i don't know about you or any and anyone else listening who's a parent but as a mum i I remember striving really hard every day to make my daughter's life, she's my first child, as perfect as it could possibly be. I'm being crushed whenever something went wrong for her. um And actually, the sooner we get used to the fact that our kids' lives are not going to be perfect, they probably are going to be hard, whether they've got something different or difficult or challenging or not.
00:47:04
Speaker
um just because life is not easy and there's no such thing as perfect, but as a parent accepting that, it's harder than an individual accepting it for ourselves. It was it wasn't until I went through therapy that I realised that what I was trying to do for my daughter was create the perfect fairy tale that I wished I'd had as a child and still wanted as a grown-up.
00:47:31
Speaker
Exactly. um and But you know the other side of that, and this is something when I was doing the dedication, I dedicated the book to um my son, you know it really was I was awed by looking back through this journey of ah writing the book. I was looking back over the last five years and everything that they had gone through. And I just said that you are a warrior. The resiliency that
00:48:07
Speaker
my child has demonstrated yeah um is pretty remarkable. And so as a parent, you know you want to shelter them, but at the end of the day, I think that they are actually better prepared going into young adulthood because they nothing really came easy. in And nothing was handed. you know they They had struggles and they overcame them. and You know, I was very proud to say you are doing great, even in this imperfect world, in this imperfect situation. um And i I think that's what parents kind of have to do is embrace the
00:48:55
Speaker
the supportive side of being a parent while allowing them the space to it's okay to have some struggles because you know I have other people in my spear my social spear um whether it be family or friends who have children that maybe as young adults are struggling a little bit more because everything else came easy to them. And it's like, well, because they never had to like overcome anything. Well, and that's that's not to say that we should be forcing our kids to overcome difficult things before they're ready.
00:49:35
Speaker
But um I totally get it because we've had some difficult stuff too. And um I do think it, ah you know, I was lamented that it made my kids grow up before they should have. um And that is a downside. But equally, like you said, like I said in the intro that you told me, that it makes you more able... Well, it's less shocking when things don't go entirely your own way all of the time, because that shocks... What I want to say, I think, is that probably all of us, it would be a very charmed existence if we didn't, all of us is going to have something shocking and difficult to deal with in our lifetimes. But once we've had it, then the other things that come after get easier, not easier, that's the wrong word, but we're able to approach it
00:50:23
Speaker
with more fortitude. Yes. Yeah, absolutely. Yes, I certainly don't want to give the impression that we should all make challenges for our kids. No, and and I don't want to brush that pain because it's painful and don't want to brush that off. And there's, um you know, as a therapist, I'm very into, you know, we need to acknowledge the pain you've been through. We need to grieve, like you said, mourn what happened to you and and feel those feelings. It's important they must not ever be invalidated. but um
00:50:55
Speaker
There is something that we can take from it that will help us from going forward. so How is your son now, Heidi? um you know i think After everything that they've gone through over the last five years, I think they're doing probably the best that they have been in five years. um They're still struggling um socially because being um not in a school setting, they don't have the same
00:51:27
Speaker
friend group than they did before and they don't have um ways of of meeting people. So that is sort of like our priority for the next few months is to actually um connect them with people their own age um in different ways and so I've actually done a lot of community research of you know places they can go ah things they can do programs we can join so that they have that interaction um but other than that I mean I
00:52:07
Speaker
they Like I said, there this is probably the longest um period of time. um So they their last hospitalization was in ah February of this year. And this is probably the longest period of time that they've been completely stable and happy. And um you know I feel like we've turned a corner.
00:52:32
Speaker
ah So I i think, um you know, their mental health is becoming much more stable and um they're they're looking to the future for the first time, not just
Improved Mental Health and Future Hope
00:52:48
Speaker
existing. um And great should I think it's great. I think it's um really great yeah and to witness.
00:52:55
Speaker
And just as important a question, because this is really hard stuff, right? As a parent, how of how have you coped with your own feelings? And what would you say to parents that are just and going through this at the moment? ah Yeah, ah I think it's very important for anybody who is going through some of these these challenges uh self-care is a big thing because Uh, it's sort of I equated to the the airplane, you know, uh You can't help somebody else until you help yourself. Yeah, um so put your own mask on. Uh-huh And then put somebody else's mask on um, and that was something I kind of was like it's not about me It's not about me. And so I sort of ignored
00:53:53
Speaker
some of my own struggles. Like the mourning of the loss of my daughter, I put that aside and kept saying, it's not about you, it's not about you. Get over it. The reality is, I can't help but look at pictures and you know something will come up on Facebook and you know they're dressed in a frilly little dress and they look like the perfect adorable little girl.
00:54:20
Speaker
yeah And then it comes back and it hits me. And so my own journey since, you know, ah probably October of last year has been, OK, you've got to get your own head straight and talk to somebody, not your child, about what you're going through.
00:54:41
Speaker
Because although we have a nice wide open relationship and I can tell them things and they can tell me things, it's not really appropriate for me to put my baggage onto them. So it was really important to have a third party and they have the same thing. You know, there are some things I think they struggled a little bit about how they felt when I wrote the book.
00:55:03
Speaker
And so I was like, okay, you have your own therapist. And for the last year, I've been trying to step back from interacting with the therapist and allowing them a safe space to talk about whatever they want. That's important. Yeah, so unless it's something you know really serious that's between the two of them. So for myself, I think it's been very helpful in gaining a purpose, gaining a um some self-awareness of my own needs. um That's been very important for me. And so I think that's one thing parents should definitely take into consideration um because you're going to have your own feelings.
00:55:52
Speaker
about these situations, it's okay to have them. You're entitled to feeling how you're feeling, you're entitled to maybe not agreeing with it. Absolutely, yeah.
00:56:05
Speaker
You know, it's not for you to have that necessarily conversation with the child. No. Take a third party, whether it be a therapist, whether it be a friend, what whatever you're most comfortable with, but you need to get it out otherwise it just sits there. Yeah. Well, manifest itself in a bad way. Yeah. The least awkward moment. You said that it's not okay to dump your emotional baggage on your child, but it is okay to want somebody to help you carry the baggage.
00:56:35
Speaker
Absolutely. I think it's really important that you have conversations with your child of what you're going through. um i you know That was important for me, for them to understand, particularly like getting rid of all the pictures of Lillian,
00:56:51
Speaker
Um, I I had I pushed back I said I want to be here i'm going to be supportive of who you want to become yeah But i'm not going to bury the person that you used to be if you want to bury them. That's Your choice. Yeah What they existed? Yes, I had them in my life for you know 13 years so You have to understand that i'm going to respect and support the person you're becoming but I'm not gonna forget that you existed in a different capacity before that. yeah um So I think it's important for for parents to to communicate what their reservations are. It's okay to be scared. It's okay to be like confused. you know I talk about my confusion with my son every day because there's something new that comes up every day and I'm like, I don't know what that means. It's a normal human emotion anyway.
00:57:47
Speaker
Yeah. um But yeah, self-care I think is definitely something I would encourage all parents and and ah get to know whatever community your child may be identifying with. yeah Get to know that community because I guarantee you there's going to be a support group for parents yes who are in that community.
00:58:07
Speaker
ah because yeah you'll you're all going through that same kind of questions and what do I do and yeah and and you know so for you to have that um connection as well is really, I think, important for the journey. Yeah, yeah for sure.
00:58:26
Speaker
Heidi, is the book available in the UK? It is. It's on Amazon, UK. Okay. I'll put a link. And is there anywhere else that you would like people to connect with you? um Yeah, I mean, ah i the the book is published through my publishing company, which is HG Creative Works. And I have a blog on there and it links you to wherever.
00:58:52
Speaker
Oh, you gave me a blog post link, didn't you, that sounded like it would be something useful for yeah parents going through the same. I will um i will share that too. Yes. And you know i'm I'm on you know LinkedIn and Facebook and all of those ah kind those things. um So if anybody wanted to reach out, they have questions, they're yeah just concerned, um totally available. Yeah. Well, like you said, it's important to have somebody who's going who's walking the same path as you or has walked it before you. That is always really helpful. So I will find those links and I'll drop them in the show notes for anybody who wants them.
00:59:30
Speaker
Heidi, it's been really lovely chatting to you today. I wish you every luck with you and and your son, all the luck that they need for their future. This this has been wonderful, Helen. This is an absolutely wonderful platform that you're doing, and I am so grateful for for having the opportunity to come on.
00:59:51
Speaker
Thank you so much for listening. If you've enjoyed this episode, please give it a rating on your podcast app. And if you know someone who might benefit from listening, do share it with them.
01:00:02
Speaker
It also means a lot when you give me feedback. So if you have comments or suggestions for another episode, or know someone who'd like to tell their story on the Teenage Kicks podcast, do get in touch at helen at helenwheels.com or come and find me on my blog, actuallymommy.co.uk. Head over there now for more articles on the joys and there are many of parenting a teenager. Bye for now.