The Girl who would be a Boy
 

My now teen aged daughter has a diagnosis of high functioning autism. When she was around kindergarten age, for several years, she was obsessed with dogs. She wanted to be a dog. She pretended to be a dog. She got other children to play along, to treat her like a dog. She would chew sticks. Dig holes. Growl playfully.

The other children eventually stopped enjoying this "game" and she was more or less an outcast, until we told her to stop pretending to be a dog when around other children. She resisted this for a long time. She prefered to be an outcast over giving up on her dream of becoming a dog.

At some point she also became obsessed with the movie series, "Land Before Time" and wanted to be a dinosaur. Specifically, a Brontosaurus. She started eating grass. She told me that she thought that if she ate enough grass, she would actually become a Brontosaurus.

You can see the recurring theme here. She wants to become things that she can never become. I'm sure there are some surgeries and drug protocols that would turn her into a more dog like human than any other human but she will never be a dog. She will also never be a boy and her desire to become a boy is as much a sign of mental dysfunction as her desire to become a dog or a dinosaur. Only now she has a plethora of other children, and even adults, cheering her on, telling her this is great, go with it.

I am not making a general statement about all trans people, I'm just saying that for my child, this trans drive seems to be caused by a mental dysfunction. She never had any signs of this until one of her grade school friends came out as trans, then another, then suddenly she was as well.

Comments?

I'm not really sure what kind of comments you are looking for, and I'm not really sure why you posted here. But as a parent and a teacher, I would say love and support your kid no matter what. If they are trans, they will be persistent over time. Whether trans or not, teens are trying to find themselves. Eventually they will figure out who they are, and they remember those who were supportive and those who weren't. As a parent, I hope I am always my child's soft place to land.

Good one, Gal220.