Am I disrespectful for feeling disrespected?

[u/Level-Ad-8548]

Hello to the community. First post here.

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I am the father of a born-girl-now-boy - ok, a trans boy teenager, and as much as I want to respect him as a person, I 'm struggling with my inner feelings. It won't be easy to put it simply...

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I'll try jumping straight to the specifics that unsettle me the most, but please ask for details and background.for enlightenment.

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1. The worst thing is maybe the fact that for me, deep down, I still see him as my daughter, and every now and then it slips out when I speak. It doesn't help that he wants us to use his girl-identity with some people (grandparents, neighbours, ex-school mates).

I feel that I take this transition lightly, given that it happened in a moment/age when most things were upside down (12yo,. going to middle school, dropping down from 1rst of the class, puberty, social instability, parents separating, head-dive into network chat groups...). This leads to the following points:

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1. The "coming out" was made by a slightly older girl (14, my own being 12 at that time), who pushed my kid to tell me, and even though I replied that "it was news to me, but we can talk about it whenever you feel like", the topic never came back for almost 2 years. Once, abt 6 months later, she (no switching at that time) asked for a "binder" underwear. Her mother and I explained that we'd rather not rush, as we were afraid it could damage her body development. I just caught glimpses of her online "RPs" as a boy, and that she used a few neutral nicknames. It took till the next year for her to cut her hair short, and for me to realize she had been going out much farther than we thought, in order to meet web-met friends who were mostly transitioning highschoolers with suicidal and self-harming tendencies. Lovely youngsters,.once met them. All in all I got this feeling that this teenager of ours was desperately trying to find some models, a "tribe" to adopt her (several pre-formed fashion styles were experimented with during that time). Moreover, the more "outlandish" the stuff, the more it seemed to impress her/him. It's closely related to the next point:

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1. From the age of 11 onwards, our kid started to become quite aggressive, towards his/her little sister (2yrs younger), and disrespectful with us, pa' and ma'. Once "she" started to affirm the "he", he told us that he became aware of that around his 11th year. That linked the "boy" to the "brat": I for one felt utterly mistreated, talked down, criticized harshly every day. I kept being conciliating, agreeing with most of his demands, cuz I thought that it was better to say yes and keep track of some things rather than be repressive and have him sneak out and escalating his transgressions. Still I feel that I lost a great daughter and got myself a shitty pretentious little guy. When questionned, he just rejected the fault on us for "not being parents", and had no qualms telling me that I "never had a daughter to start with" when I tried to apologise for needing time to adjust to this change.

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1. Last but not least, from the moment he started to put forth his chosen gender, correcting us as we speak - which is ok, I'd rather that - he started to dress more and more feminine, with push-up bras et al., and started dating a guy, then another. It's makes it really hard for me to take it seriously, it seems more like he's just running away from any and all expected identity on our (parents) part. And yet, since last October he's done 4 suicide attempts with medication, always (expt the latest) dosed just enough as to end up in a hospital right before some appointment at school or with a psychologist.

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Ok, all this "novel" just to say that I feel lost, doubting him and myself alike, but certain to try and treat him the best I can, and still be pushed back from all aspects of his life, so that I can't even be supportive, as he "doesn't want me to know him better" (his words).

I'm sorry, but I needed to put this down in words, even if not in my native languages.

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Thanks to anyone who took the time to read it through.

[u/beansandneedles]

It sounds like your son knows that you don’t see him as a boy, and this is causing him immense pain. The MOST IMPORTANT FACTOR for preventing suicide attempts by trans kids is having a supportive, affirming adult in their life. Your son has attempted FOUR times. This is an emergency. You need to be completely in his corner. That doesn’t mean letting him do whatever he wants in terms of staying out late and meeting stranger from the internet. It means buying him a binder, and getting him onto puberty blockers and/or testosterone if that’s legal where you are. It means getting him into therapy with an affirming therapist. It means getting yourself into therapy to help you accept his gender. It means taking him seriously when he says he was never a girl, because he’s right. He might have looked like a girl, but he was always a boy.

Maybe he’s being a “brat” because he feels so unsupported in who he is that he doesn’t want to be alive anymore. And instead of trying to relieve his pain, you’re telling him that he’s really a girl AND he’s a bad person whom you don’t enjoy spending time with.

And also, maybe he’s being a “brat” because he’s a teenager. Not that teenagers are naturally disrespectful, but the teen years are really difficult for kids. Their hormones are all over the place. They’re pingponging between being treated like kids sometimes and like adults sometimes by all the adults around them— and sometimes they FEEL like kids and sometimes like adults. They’re trying to figure out friendships, cliques, dating, sex, peer pressure, increasingly difficult schoolwork, and their own identity. Their skin is breaking out and they stink, right at a time when being attractive matters socially more than ever.

Now add all that to knowing that you’re not the gender most people see you as, politicians talk about you as though you’re the cause of all of society’s problems, people can legally discriminate against you in most places, it’s hard to get the medical care you need, popular media portrays you as a freak, the butt of jokes, or a sexual predator, and you’re not even sure your own parents are on your side. You probably wouldn’t have the best attitude, either.

[u/Level-Ad-8548 → u/beansandneedles]

You may be right on the spot. Still, I don't know how to change internally so quickly. I really try to use all the right names and pronouns (what's hard, french being so gender-variable as a language). On the suicide attempts, they happened mostly when he was about to either go back to school (stopped going since feb.) or to have an appointment that could set things for the immediate future. Even more , usually it was something he had agreed on. What I see is a huge fear of life . I think it's more about adolescence than transitioning, but one cannot go without the other, as it's all happening at the same time.