Experiences of parents and carers of young trans and gender diverse people

I don't live with my child's mother. We split up when my child was six months old, but have been a very hands on parent. We've had a 50/50 split from the word go. Child spent time with both of us on a three, four day split. So he'd spend three days with me and three days with mum and then four days with me, four days with mum, cause I didn't wanna end up being a weekend dad and just picking him up at the weekend. I was involved in school, in nursery, the same as mum. We literally had 50/50 over 14 days we'd get seven days each. And it kind of changed the weekend thing. So, it could be Thursday, Friday, Saturday that I'd have the child and then the child would be Sunday, Monday, Tuesday with mum, so it kept everything, Christmases, everything were always jumbled up. So we'd literally have a 50/50 share. Mum was always absolutely anti transition from the word go, will not use, even to this day, we'll not use correct pronouns. Won't even accept the Deed Poll changed name. So, there's always been a bit of a clash where I just accepted the transition completely and utterly and was 100% supportive where mum, still to this day, still doesn't accept the transition even though we're quite a long way through the journey now. But still won't accept it. There's always been a lot of friction between my child and my child's mother, where me and my child have always got on brilliantly. And I've got a very, very good, strong open relationship and talk about everything where with mum it's very polar. It's completely different. The transition began when they were at secondary school. There was a lot of bullying from other students at school. A lot of isolation and that ended up with a suicide attempt and at that point, social services became involved and I was then granted 100% custody, cause it was deemed they were unsafe with mother, because mother was actually causing a lot of the arguments or not helping and not supporting. So they were deemed that they should be with me full time, which they did for about a year. Then the transition moved on a lot. At that point, both of us were attending CAMHS with our child, but separately. So we didn't go to the meetings as a family unit, because we weren't a family unit we were two individual parents with a child in common. So we did both attend CAMHS at various times and we were eventually referred on to the [GIDS], where initially I wasn't allowed to go and only mum went. And mum being absolutely anti transition made every or all the very early [Gender Identity Development Service] appointments about her. So it wasn't directed at our child and our child got no benefit from it at all. There was just lots of arguments between mum and the specialist and therapists at the [Gender Identity Development Service], which didn't work very well for our child. Our child didn't feel was getting attention or moving forward or anything. Then after the suicide attempt, I started going solely to the [Gender Identity Development Service] and we progressed quite, quite well. We Deed Polled. At that point, they'd just left school, secondary school passed with some GCSEs. Not quite the grades that were expected. But a lot of that was sadly down to the school who didn't deal with the bullying issues, put my child in the isolation block. So my child didn't attend lessons, they just went to school and done their own thing in the library, which meant they got, they passed GCSEs which I'm really proud of, but didn't get the grades that the school were expecting. And it also put them off education. So although they'd been offered a college place, they decided they didn't wanna go to college, cause they'd lost faith in the education system, had just assumed they would get bullied. Although I assured them college is very different to school and certainly being trans, you'd probably be really popular at college, because it's cool and kind of fashionable and you'll probably be fine, and it's a totally different experience. But they'd been put off completely. So ended up leaving school with some GCSEs and just getting employed, which they have always been employed, well not always been employed, but they've had periods of employment, periods of unemployment. A lot of that was down to mental health, because their mental health declined quite badly. They had low self-esteem and low confidence. And found friction at work. If there was any sign of bullying they would fold their cards and leave their job rather than deal with the bullying, because they'd been bullied at school they decided they wouldn't get bullied any more, but left the job rather than going to an employer and dealing with it and getting it sorted out would just jack in the job and leave, which was okay and as I say was supportive of the whole thing and because of the trying to build their self-confidence and self-esteem, it's kind of you've have actually got mental health issues that need focusing on and you need help with and you will be okay. You will get through it with help and with time.

I mean it’s a huge amount for someone to take on at such a young age. I mean, it just, when people used to say things to me, ‘Well, it’s just a phase. How could you, how could you let them do this, that and the other wha, wha, wha.’ I said, ‘Do you think any child would choose to go through this? Do you genuinely. We’ve all been through it. Do you think that you would choose. We all, at that age just kind of wanna fit in and be accepted and belong.’ You don’t, you would never choose to do something just so difficult, so life changing, to everything and everyone. But I think, yeah, just managing that anxiety was tough for her and for us to continue to be supported. And I feel that we all, as much as we could just held, held her and held her sister and just held the space as best as we could and give her, because sometimes she would be prone to outbreaks where she would just sort of scream. She would scream or she’d roar or she would burst into tears and, which was understandable, and be moody. She was just carrying like all this stuff [softly]. And I heard her not knowing how to express it, you know, at that time. But, on the whole, we didn’t, there was no sort of self-harming. No depression as such. No panic attacks. Nothing else. No other sort of major symptoms that I keep hearing time and time and time again. And no other like mental health diagnosis that says she’s not being diagnosed with autism of any kind or any sort of personality disorders of any kind.

Nearly all of them are suffering depression and suffering anxiety certainly for mine, still telephone conversations, they can't do telephone, because they've got a female voice. They sound like a female when they talk on the telephone. So then the person on the other end of the telephone will miss-gender them, because they sound female. I know that is gonna change with the testosterone. It will have an effect and their voice will hopefully get much deeper and then they'll start using the telephone. But that's an issue at the moment is, they refuse to do anything on the telephone. They'll send emails, they will send text. But they won't talk on telephone, because their voice sounds female.

At the moment she's, at the moment she's okay. But I do feel like she could be susceptible to a deterioration in mental health, because she's quite, she's quite sensitive. I don't know what will happen if and when puberty starts happening. I know that she is, as she's getting older, because she's just becoming more aware of everything. And I think the more aware she is of her peers and how they're developing. She's always felt a little bit different anyway. She's always felt like she didn't fit in with the boys and she didn't fit in with the girls. And now that she's a trans girl, she doesn't, I think that she has got a fear that she's not quite like all the other girls and that she wants to fit in with them. And she just wants to be normal and just do all the things that all her peers are doing. And I can see as well that she's noticing that other girls are developing in a different way, because they get, they're shooting up. They're getting, developing breasts and all those things that go along [with] it. I think she's just, things becoming a little bit more acute for her and she's not distressed as yet, but I think there's a potential there. So I am just keeping an eye on her really and making sure that she's okay and if anything happens where I think her mental health is deteriorating then I would be quick to try and sort it out in whatever way I could. So I don't know what that would be if we hadn't reached the point where we were in GIDS then maybe I would go to CAMHS, maybe. You know, there's always these options available. So, I, I'm just waiting to see what will happen and just keeping an eye on, on how she is. Just answering all her questions and making sure she knows that we're there to support her.

How has her mental health been since she started on that journey?

It's much better. It's gradually improved and I haven't had any self-harm. I know, she hasn't been self-harming for [sighs] it's probably a good year. And even then, it's, (it had) slowed down, considerably. She was having terrible panic attacks and but she got herself back on course when she went to sixth form college. And her academic side really picked up. And she really seemed to be starting to pull herself together. And she got the confidence to come out completely, socially. And she's so much more positive about herself. She's still, you know, the dysphoria is still there. She still gets angry. And she's a typical teenager, she’s really grumpy [laughs]. But, yeah, she's becoming more, she's, there's fewer panic attacks. She's less anxious about things. She's prepared to go out and meet people. She’s prepared to go out as herself. And, I mean, she flew off to [name of country] to see one of her friends and they were going out together as themselves. She's just blossomed, absolutely. I could still throttle her sometimes, but it's like a normal, you know, teenager. And it's so much better. I’m not worrying that the police are gonna come to my door and say that she’s gone, anymore. So it's much better.

The challenge has been extraordinary. The long waiting list to be seen by the Gender Identity Services for kids. We waited for twenty months from the first referral through to our first appointment with them. This was always approached from a cisnormative perspective. So the assumption that maybe it was a phase or he would grow out of it. There was a perspective that the norm is to be cis. And because he was involved with CAMHS for a long time they put it down as part of a mental health difficulty. We didn't really approach the GP until we were trying to manage his periods and the GP was amazing. We talked about it and she put him on the pill, which made things worse for a while. But she was trying.

Well partly it was the case but there was a lot of increase in dysphoria and he had made several attempts to take his own life. There was lots of things like self-harm and overdose type stuff going on.  I felt part of it, I felt, was around him being trans and it not being supported and validated in that way.

GIDS couldn’t expedite his referral, because of his mental health, it was deteriorating. So after six months they, they chased it up. It was roughly about that time that we decided to go for a private assessment. If we didn’t do something, he’s not gonna survive. He’s not going to live. He was going to end up taking his own life. 

We looked at the pastoral support, in general. The emotional support what they offered students. We had already moved schools once and the jargon from the second school was all about individualised wellbeing support and stuff like that. And I was sold on that. I thought this is fantastic. But in reality it didn’t fit with they said they provided and what they did provide had huge discrepancies. So with this school, I went to great lengths to make sure they provided what they said they provided That’s the bit that’s made all the difference. He’s got a pastoral support, a named pastoral support, that he could link to at any point. He was able to manage himself and his emotions during this time and during the day. And they have been great.