- Our daughter was always a delight.
- Then adolescence brought new changes.
- But whether trans or cis, all children grow and change. That’s not a bad thing.
As a child, our daughter was about as easy-going as it is possible for a child to be. She walked happily to school and back, chatting about Greek myths or gardening or whatever hippie Waldorf things they did in her hippie. Waldorf classroom.
She hung out with her mother and watched “The Last Airbender” until there was no more “Last Airbender” to watch. When her friends from high school When she started getting involved in tricky extracurricular problems, like putting fireworks in bottles to see what would happen, she would consistently tell them it was a terrible idea and disappear before the fireworks exploded, spreading glass everywhere.
She practiced her cello without complaining. She kept her room spotless because she liked it to be spotless. She always remembered to turn in her homework. She was a dream.
And then adolescence hit.
We were not prepared for our daughter’s teenage years
As a parent you naturally expect the teenage child to be more sophisticated and less compliant than the pre-teen child. We should have been prepared.
However, we had become complacent, because while her peers in grades 7 and 8 were starting to become cranky and recalcitrant, our daughter was still happily trotting to class well into high school.
The big change came during junior year (which also happened to coincide with the pandemic shutdown, just because of the bonus woes). That’s our year daughter came out as trans.
My wife and I were knowledgeable about trans issues, and we were both very supportive as she began the lengthy and frustrating process of finding a health care provider and gaining access to hormones. And when she got access to it, the hormones did what hormones do to most adolescents.
Slowly, and then suddenly, our daughter practiced her cello without complaining. She wasn’t cleaning her room. In fact, she seemed to be actively doing so against cleaning her roomwhich descended into an abyss of dirt and rubbish that threatened to swallow the cats, and even the large dog (which she no longer wanted to walk).
She did not necessarily in all cases distance herself from the more ill-advised activities of her peers. She was less interested in watching “The Last Airbender” with her mother, and was suddenly much more interested in girls. There were radical wardrobe changes. There was dating. There was fear. There were parties. There was one memorable example when she dropped her cell phone into a deep lake from where there was no return. And There was less interest in school. So much less interest in school. But the parents of her peers also experienced similar problems with their children..
The transition was a big step for our daughter, but she is still just like any other child
Scholar Jack Halberstam points that it is not uncommon for trans children to have delayed adolescence or experience developmental milestones at different rates. And of course, many parents of trans children believe that their children are, well, transformed.
Public discussions about trans children often tend to focus on how different they are from cisgender children, and how parents face different challenges in supporting them. And trans kids are different from cis kids in some ways. Transitioning is a big step that changes people’s relationship with their bodies, their sexuality, their past and their future. It makes sense that it could change other seemingly unrelated things, like your interest in school or your enthusiasm for cleaning your room. Or your interest in communicating with your parents, aside from the occasional grunt.
But also the fact that our daughter switched Around adolescence it really became clear to what extent the transition, while a big step, is quite comparable to many other big steps that are quite universal correlates of growing up. Children don’t stay the same; This is a good thing if you can stop changing their diapers, and then maybe not so good if they no longer want to watch TV with you because they’re going to see a queer hardcore band with their girlfriend.
However, there are also positive sides. We love her friend, who is more willing to talk to us than our daughter, maybe because we are not her parents. And we are proud of our daughter for discovering who she is, just as many parents are proud of their children for rising from childhood and discovering who they are, even if the person they are doesn’t keep their room very tidy holds. as they once did. A big challenge of parenting is adjusting to the fact that children are growing up, and as they grow up, they shake up your life and surprise you. But that’s also one of the great joys of parenthood.