Thank you, Brie, for this beautifully-written account on how your daughter found herself attracted to this identity and how she wisely turned away.You were fortunate that she was young and that you were still influential.

One cannot over-estimate the power of the online world in forming this identity. It can be absolutely brain-warping, the sites that teens are on. Most parents haven’t a clue. These online sites can completely infiltrate and overwhelm a young person. Extreme hostility might be a parent’s first clue that something is terribly wrong.

And then there are the peers at school, they can be highly influential. Some of them are SJW allies. What do they get from the affirmation they provide your child? I do not know. Parents on this site have something in common, they are trying to keep their kids from falling over the trans cliff. Those of us with older teens or young adults will find the going difficult.

There are many different types of kids that get caught in the trans stream. Brie mentions that her daughter sits at the end of a bell-curve’s tail of female behavior. I think one aspect of this that does not get mentioned are the ideals and models we supply our children. I will confess to being the type of mom who didn’t have Barbie dolls in the house. We explored science and nature with our children and they adopted those interests. We also had typical girl toys in the house and my daughter loved her dolls, playing house, and having tea parties.

I guess what I am saying is that we have an innate temperament but much of our personality develops in response to environment. So, we had a daughter who was not gender-atypical, and she got caught up with this later in her teen years. Many of these kids have significant mental health problems. Did any of these mental health problems develop because of exposure to some mind-bending internet sites? A possibility? Some of these kids are exceptionally bright, highly-sensitive, some kids sucked in are on the autism spectrum. Perhaps they are just kids seeking a strong identity?

Sexuality? Many of the teen girls considering the trans world are first declaring lesbian, then genderqueer, then trans. This fluidity can all happen very quickly–downstream they go. Dysphoria. Some of us have the experience of seeing no gender dysphoria in our child. It is more like Sudden-Onset-New-Identity. Again, thank you to 4thWave and Brave Brie for sharing your story and being our spokesperson.