You're a genderfluid teenager. How do your parents best support you?

January 19, 2020 2:26 AM

My amazing 13-year-old kid is genderfluid and newly out about it. My spouse and I are both cis and straight. If you're genderfluid: what do you wish your parents had known about that? What did they do wrong? What did they do right?
posted by anonymous to Human Relations (9 answers total)

I work with genderfluid teens; there's a lot of good information at genderspectrum.org--for both them and you.

You're already doing enough right that they're talking to you, which is great. What you can continue to do right, from the website: research shows that the most crucial thing we as parents can do is to allow our children to be exactly who they are. So you let your kid be who they are, you love them, you let them guide these conversations and actions.

I know the website has helped other parents and kids--a few things to bear in mind that my genderfluid kids taught me:

1. Be incredibly mindful of the signals they're getting at school from staff members, but do it as unobtrusively as possible. Kids can be jerks and that's one issue, but teachers can be far worse, and that needs to be put on notice. Beware of teachers using gendered language and lessons and being terrible about preferred pronouns, but try to do it by working with the admins. Do not let these teachers get away with this.

2. Not everything is a gender struggle--sometimes kids are cranky and it's not necessarily related to gender. Sometimes kids are just teens. I worked with a great kid, Roman (not their real name), who said it was exhausting to come home and want to relax on the couch and be crabby, but their mother insisted on framing everything into the Mighty Gender Struggle when it wasn't that. They just wanted Netflix and pizza.

3. Along the same lines, do not get excited or weird about clothes shopping or makeup, or other heavily gendered signals. Just let the kid pick what they want and don't raise your eyebrows at pink sneakers, etc.

Let them lead and love them.
posted by yes I said yes I will Yes at 5:27 AM on January 19, 2020 [13 favorites]

When I was 13, genderfluid wasn't a label that was available for me. But I was definitely always a little queer in a bunch of different ways that my parents seemed to intuit. Over my life they have been really solid about it and as I've become more clear with them about how nonconforming I really am, they've taken it almost entirely in stride.

13 is such a difficult age for gender things, though, it's going to be rough even for the straightest most cis person out there, you know? We're Jewish so I had my bat mitzvah at 13 and it was a relentless press of gendered things. There was the dresses, the decor and theming for the party, the gendered prayers, the drama of dancing with boys that somehow wasn't supposed to apply when dancing with girls? One time I shouted to my female rabbi "if I have to hear about how I'll be becoming a woman one more time I'll scream!" and she just sort of chuckled and we moved on to practicing my favorite prayer, the mourner's kaddish, instead.

I remember during the gauntlet of attending everyone else's b'nai mitzvah that I felt extreme pressure at moments that made no outward sense - but in retrospect they were all times when I was being lumped in with the girls or having to make choices about my presentation where none of the choices were more neutral - because they would have been perceived as too casual and therefor rude. God, I had this huge fight with my mom about how I wanted a pantsuit. We eventually found an eggplant colored one so I didn't "look like I was going to a funeral, not Adam's bar mitzvah!" So yeah, fancy events are a gauntlet of gendered nonsense at the best of times, and when you're 13 and don't know how you want to present and also don't know the possibilities and aren't adept at making it work and haven't come out to the universe it's a situation made to fail those of us who don't fit. But my mom also took me into DC to thriftshops and vintage stores to look for fun fancy clothes that fell into my art history and costuming interest. In retrospect she did a damn good job in a pre-internet world to help me figure out some kind of style that didn't make me want to die, and she never ever asked me to dress differently when the occasion was anything less fancy than a catered DJ'd event. I attended a concert at the Kennedy center in jeans and a button down! There was a time when I wanted to wear ties and my dad taught me how to tie them, and let me borrow whichever ones of his I'd like to, and answered all my questions about suits and shirts and stuff. There wasn't ever a moment of pause about my curiosity from him, which I absolutely didn't appreciate at the time.

I wish that my parents had known more about queer culture in general. I lived fifteen minutes outside of DC but I've never been a part of the community in that city at all. One of my friends had a mom who was an out and proud lesbian and she was evidently really active in a lot of charity events and groups for the cause at the time. They had more than a few chances to talk to her and maybe get some information but they never did, and when I was old enough to put this stuff together for myself I wasn't really close with that friend anymore, let alone his mom. I feel like if I were 13 now, I would be much more clear with my parents about myself and they would be much more into some information gathering about local resources and groups of interest for me. They were always good about that when it came to art stuff and nerd stuff for me. They'd always be offering things for me to try out and get interested in - and I was rarely interested. I do wonder a lot how much of that was simple puberty or my other mental health issues, and how much of that was the innate dread of meeting new people and those people not knowing I wasn't always a girl.

I was bullied somewhat at 13. My mom and dad were never really proactive about it, partially because it never got physical, partially because we're all nerds and it was just kind of expected to happen? Culture has shifted on this significantly, I think. I do remember though that my parents let me have numerous "mental health days" off of school. They also made our home really welcoming to my friends. My house was the one folks would hang out in after school - my mom referred to us collectively as "the children". I had a bulwark of friends that my parents welcomed and supported by making our house safe. It turns out, this will likely not be a surprise, damn near every one of my friends has come out in some way over the years. We were all little unhatched queer eggs. I don't know if my parents somehow understood this or if it was just accidental.

So I guess in summary, let's see. My parents have always been open to me talking about having a hard time. They've let me complain a lot about things that maybe don't bother them, and respected my complaints. They did a lot of legwork that only grownups could do to support my need for things that were harder to find, understand, or acquire, but they didn't get so super psyched about them that I soured and rejected everything, tween-style. They supported my friends and made space for them in our home. They answered my questions about all kinds of things without sarcasm or denial. They did force me to endure a highly gendered ritual and a whole bunch of other religious stuff that I was really upset about a the time and couldn't figure out the sticking points for, although they did try pretty hard to hear my complaints - I just couldn't articulate what they actually were. They didn't really understand me or my friends or my interests, and they didn't stick up for me in public very often. But they did respect me in private, gave me tons of space, asked about my interests regularly and always listened.
posted by Mizu at 6:03 AM on January 19, 2020 [15 favorites]

what do you wish your parents had known about that? What did they do wrong? What did they do right?

The biggest things for me (looking backwards 30 years to my teenage years) that would have made a world of difference are:

a) more routine exposure to queer people (we had literally one out queer acquaintance when I was growing up)
b) not reinforcing gender stereotypes
c) hearing/knowing that anything I was exploring was "okay"

There are a myriad other awful things unique to my family of origin that intersect with this, but echoing the idea of allowing them to be who they are, no matter who they are is easily the most critical thing.
posted by hijinx at 7:17 AM on January 19, 2020 [5 favorites]

And that it is really 100% okay with you that "allowing them to be who they are, no matter who they are" might mean that things change over time. Being held accountable for being consistent about one's sense of self as a teenager isn't that reasonable.

I might say it more strongly. That you will love them exactly how they are, no matter what that is.
posted by lab.beetle at 8:45 AM on January 19, 2020 [8 favorites]

Compliment their outfits
posted by Sterros at 4:18 PM on January 19, 2020

One of your jobs, as a parent, is to teach your kid how to groom and dress themself. And even if you're not doing it in a traditionally gendered way, you still have to do it.

So like, okay, you shouldn't dictate what style your kid wears their hair in. But it's still your job to make sure they know how to take care of their hair — keep it clean, keep it healthy, comb it and/or braid it and/or condition it and/or whatever is appropriate for your culture and hair texture. If anything, them being genderfluid might mean they need a wider range of skills. And you might still need to push them to learn those skills, because right now they might prefer to show up to school looking like badass queerdo mayhem, but someday they're going to have job interviews and be grateful you taught them to project polish too.

Ditto clothes shopping. Ditto skin care. Ditto shaving whatever visible parts of themself they might someday need or want to shave. Ditto makeup if they're into that, including some ability to decide what counts as "respectable" makeup in a situation — because, again, job interviews: don't shame them into always doing it the "respectable" way, but teach them well enough that they have the option of looking "respectable" when they want.

None of this is about controlling how they look or present themself, which is totally up to them. It's about passing on skills.

I'm genderqueer, though I wasn't out as a kid
posted by nebulawindphone at 6:02 PM on January 19, 2020 [7 favorites]

Genderqueer. I can say, from mistakes I've seen parents in my social circle make: respect and use your child's pronouns at home. Allow them to talk about their genderfeels at home. I've seen at least one parent state that they want their home to be a "safe space from gender"--and so refuse to allow the child to explore their gender at home and continue to use old pronouns while allowing the child to use different pronouns at school. This is very backwards.

Stay away from anyone who claims that gender identity is caused by youtube or a socially contagious disease. We were out there even when you were a kid. We just didn't have words to articulate it, and it was awful.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 6:41 AM on January 20, 2020 [5 favorites]

Make sure your child knows that they're loved unconditionally, no matter what, full stop. Make sure they know the difference between being disappointed in their actions (rule breaking, bad grades) vs being disappointed in them.

The feeling that you know your parents will always love and support you even if you make mistakes is valuable for any kid, especially one who doesn't conform to social norms.

Signed,
A grown up with awesome parents
posted by luckynerd at 3:49 PM on January 20, 2020

It's possible you've seen this question already, but it not, it may have some helpful answers for you.
posted by moira at 10:38 AM on January 21, 2020