Supporting A Gender-Expansive Child

A Q&A with family therapist and gender identity specialist Laura Anderson.

Last week, I wrote a story for The New York Times about the various ways parents and other adults can support kids who are on the transgender spectrum. But this is a complex issue, and there was a lot from my interviews that I couldn’t include in the piece.

So today, I’m running an abridged Q&A with one of my sources, Hawaii-based child and family psychologist Laura Anderson, who specializes in gender identity development and parenting. She shared so much insight with me on the issues families face when a child questions their gender, what parents can do to best support a gender-expansive kid, and why gender therapists and gender clinics can be helpful for both kids and parents.

What should if a parent do if their child says they don’t identify with their assigned gender? What’s the best way to respond if you don’t know what to do?

My first advice to parents is to stay curious and connected. Think: What is my child trying to communicate? How can I stay curious and be open to hearing what their experience is? And I think there's a really important piece in the energy you bring to the questions. If you're asking questions to try to disprove them, or because you think this is all contagious TikTok malarkey, then that's going to come through, and you're going to get exaggerated, defensive, argumentative explanations back. The energy with which you ask your what, where, when, how, and why is really important in gathering information from your child, because how you respond can really help set the tone.

What are some reactions you commonly see from parents that are counter-productive?

Very often, the emphasis gets put on “How do we explain this?” or “Oh, no, this is not what we expected” — it's like preparing for doom and gloom and difficulty. And I don't mean to minimize the fact that families on this journey do face struggle. But first, try to learn about your child's experiences. And know that there are some kids who do explore this, and who don't identify long-term as other than cisgender. There are.

There's a parent fear that if they that if they're too affirming, then they will set a path in stone that wasn't going to be. But we don't have data that suggests that permission to explore a gender identity locks that individual in forever to an other-than-cisgender identity. We just don't. In fact, the information we do have says that kids need space to explore.

Curiosity, support and learning are the most protective things that can be done so that their journey doesn't take a shape it’s not supposed to — in either direction. We don't want kids to assert an identity based on peer pressure. And we don't want them to assert an identity based on a power struggle with you.

When might families want to get outside support or guidance?

If your child is asking for decisions to be made around their gender that have implications in their social life, and in their body and biology — like if your child is asking to go to school identifying with a different name, and different pronouns and to play on different sports teams — those decisions have impact. I think if your child is asking for specific things to feel aligned in their gender, that’s a great time to seek out support from folks who understand how to help families think through the implications. Parents need space to process all their questions. They need reassurance and they need support.

It's important to find providers who understand gender identity development and have spent time learning about this stuff or work a lot with families and kids. It’s also important to find somebody who understands child development. How an 8-year-old thinks about things is different from how a 15-year-old thinks about things.

How should parents find these providers? Should they be looking for a gender therapist or a gender clinic?

Gender clinics are good places to start. Your local gender clinic may have a recommendation for a therapist in your area who specializes in this. You can also ask school counselors, and you can ask pediatricians. You can also make a call to the local gender clinic — it doesn't always have to be an intake appointment.

Gender Spectrum is also great. They've been doing a lot of work in this realm around gender identity and young people for a long time. They have webinars, they offer parent support groups, they have resources to read and online courses.

There is this idea that this is contagious, and it's a fad and that we're losing our girls or boys and that it is harmful. And that anytime you take a kid to a gender therapist, you're going to lose control of the situation and lose your child — and that’s just not fair. It's not fair to the community and it's not fair to parents. It's become sensationalized. It's become oversimplified.

What are some common ways that parents and kids fight over gender identity?

By adolescence, what we very often get is a young person who is genuinely deep in their feelings. “You can't possibly understand my experience around my gender identity — it's personal, you're not in my body, you're not in my head. How can you tell me that this isn't real?” And then you have parents on the other side of the table saying, “You can't possibly know the enormity of the responsibility of decision-making that we feel in this regard. You, not yet being a parent, can't imagine how we lay awake at night wondering what the right thing to do is or how to help you feel better. Or how much ‘yes’ is too much ‘yes,’ and how much ‘no’ is too much ‘no.’’

And there they are, in this shared space, trying to make decisions together in a way that everybody feels respected.

Often, parents look back on decisions they made when they were an adolescent. Parents will often use an example like “I wanted a tattoo, and if I'd gotten that tattoo, then now I might not like it.” But it is not the same thing to talk about tattoos or hairstyles as it is to talk about, “I'm internally feeling this core piece of who I am.” There's an intensity, and there's an internal piece to gender identity that is bigger. And we know that there is so much harm that has come to young people when this isn't recognized. Not getting a tattoo is not the same thing as being forced to live in a way that is incongruent with your gender — that creates shame and guilt and anxiety and depression. Those are completely different scenarios.

So yes, parents and kids sit in this challenging place where they truly can't know each other's learned experience. So they need help coming to understand each other's vantage points. That’s why you want to folks who understand child development, who understand gender, and who understand that the kids who are forging this path need connected adults who will see them and support them and help understand what their child is asking and why their child is asking for it. And what are the reasonable, thoughtful, carefully considered ways to show support.

You say parents tend to gravitate towards worries and concerns when a child questions their gender. What are some reasons we might instead want to celebrate a child’s gender expansiveness?

If you're parenting a child who will remain on a journey around gender identity that isn't cisgender, there are so many beautiful opportunities. You are going to see some examples of courage and creativity and community that you wouldn't have seen before. You're going to go places you didn't go, meet people you didn't meet, and your kids are going to get connected to places and spaces they would not have had the opportunity to be connected to before, as a cisgender kid. There is hope, happiness, thriving beauty, diversity — there are all of these glorious things associated with kids living in a gender identity that isn't what you expected.

Did you miss last week’s paid newsletter on the science of how to support kids at the doctor when they get shots, blood draws or other potentially unpleasant procedures? Subscribe today so you can read the full piece.

I am a guest this week (again!) on Cool Mom Picks’s podcast, Spawned, talking about how to talk to kids about what’s happening in Ukraine. Listen here!

For The New York Times last week I also wrote about why the film “Turning Red” is an excellent opportunity to talk to kids about bodies, puberty, relationships and choices — and how to start those conversations.