Ep 52: What do I Say? My Child Is Confused About Their Gender!

If you're a parent looking for sound, solid advice on how to raise your child in an ever-increasing dangerous world, then this podcast is for you. So here's your host, Richard Ramos.

Hey everybody, welcome back to the Parent Whisperer podcast. I'm Richard Ramos. So we've been talking about this issue. This is the 3rd episode on the gender dysphoria, transgenderism, whichever term you prefer. And if you've listened to the last 2 episodes, we've talked about what gender dysphoria is and why identity questions are showing up More often today in the lives of our children. I mean, this issue has soared from where it used to be. I mean, it didn't even really used to be that big a deal. And in her book that I've been quoting from, Dr. Miriam Grossman, *The Lost in Translation: A Child Psychiatrist's Guide Out of the Madness*. She gives some pretty startling statistics, which of how it's this issue has gone up, and I'm trying to find it right now where she gives a pretty let's see. It's a few years ago. She says the world's largest gender clinic, London's Tavistock Gender Identity Disorder Service. Was overwhelmed. They saw only 18 patients in the 5 years between 2000 and 2005. In 2009 to 2010, they saw 77. By 2021 and 2022, that number exploded to 3,585 patients. An increase of 4,555% in just over 10 years. But the true number is even higher because the waiting list in 2021 exceeded 5,300. So there you get an idea of what I'm talking about. This has just become a major thing that many, many parents are dealing with. And so I've just been trying to Speak to it, help you out, give you some input, some insight. And I mentioned some of the key responses as parents that we can have in dealing with what can be a very worrisome, troubling, and let's be honest, foreign territory for parents dealing with our children. You know, what do I say? You know, what do I do? How do I respond without either freaking out or freezing up or Totally isolating my child, which we don't want to do, and then just making them feel maybe worse than they already feel because they're already in distress. So let's look at some of these responses that I talked about in the last couple of episodes. The first one was, don't panic in front of your kid. Now, you know, that's easy to say, maybe not easy to do. I mean, inside, yeah, we're going to panic internally. You know, we're probably— maybe not. I shouldn't say that. Maybe some of you won't. But a lot of people would kind of get really nervous. And, you know, hopefully we can do that on the inside. But outwardly, if we can maintain a calmness, a steady energy, that would be helpful. To our children because they're not just, you know how kids are, they're not watching what we say. They're reading the tone of our voice, our posture, our facial expressions, you know, our breathing, our body language. So we want our kids to look at us and see that they're safe in telling us the truth about how they're feeling. I mean, that's what we want in any situation, not just this situation. So our number one job there is emotional regulation, emotional maturity that we talk about a lot in Parents on a Mission. We can respond with maybe something like, you know, mijo, thank you for telling me. I'm with you. We're going to, you know, walk through this together. We're going to learn together step by step. And that way, you're just trying to give them that emotional safety. Secondly, I talked about being curious. We don't want to be combative and argue, you know, and deny and dismiss what they're feeling. And you know, oh, that's ridiculous. Oh, that's crazy. No, you don't. Come on. Give me give me a break. That's just you know nuts. Rather, we can respond with something like you know me home. By the way, when I use mijo and mija, those of you who might be listening, in Spanish it just means my son, my daughter. Okay. You know, son, help me understand what you're feeling. Or, you know, when did you first notice this? What does it mean to you? Are you talking about this with somebody else? Have you talked about it with your friends or your teacher? Or how long have you been thinking about this, and you're just showing your son or your daughter that you're curious and you're not against them, and you want to explore this with them together. Both of you want to— let's explore it together. So staying curious. Third is We're not rushing into any conclusions. Okay, we're not going to right away decide, oh, you know, all this is nothing; it'll pass. And this, you know, I don't want to talk about it anymore. Or, oh my God! This is going to be for the rest of his life or her life or our life, and we have to do something right now. We don't need to rush into any conclusions. Some of this identity thing is just a short-lived thing. It's being talked about a lot. It's all. Over social media and the internet, on TV shows, movies. So, you know, your child may just be curious. So there's no need to rush into any conclusions. And sometimes it's just peer pressure. Maybe they're being pressured at school or, you know, with friends about talking about this, or that they should explore it and think about it, etc. And some of it may be a real The dysphoria that I explained in the first episode. So the point I'm making is we don't need to have any answers right away. We don't need to jump to any conclusions. We're not trying to be the identity police. Our job is simply to be the safe place, as I already mentioned, until we can just figure things out. Now, what all these things help our kids with, which I think is the heart of this issue, is that we want to be a help to them, be a support to them, be a safety net for them. And they're questioning their identity and what they're needing from us that's going to help them most Is our stability and our expression of empathy. And as I mentioned, emotional safety and having healthy boundaries, that this is okay to talk about this. And maybe talking about some boundaries of who you would rather them not discuss this with, that you'd rather not them be discussing this with other adults that are influencing them that may not understand or may not have a healthy response or may have an agenda. And they're, you know, we'll talk about that in another episode. This agenda that some schools and doctors and pediatricians, and as I read to you from the book by Dr. Grossman, there's an agenda out there. And so you want to try to set some healthy boundaries. Let's talk amongst ourselves. So if we're going to go to a counselor or a teacher or somebody else, I want to be there. That kind of a thing. And we're not going to melt down and, you know, get all crazy. Kids, we want to be a help to them. And so that we remain present even though it's uncomfortable. And Mom and Dad, this is not something that we should feel like we need to fix. You know, I know a lot of times as parents we want to, you know, right away we want to jump in and fix everything. This is not one of those things. This is a very important and difficult situation. And there's no sense in feeling like I need to fix this or giving our son or daughter the, you need to be fixed. Rather, we're honoring something that they're feeling. We may not like it. We may not agree with it. We may have some real problems with it. All of that's fine. That's normal. That's natural. I know I would if it was me. I would be really worried. I would be sad. I wouldn't want that for my child to be confused about whether they're a boy or a girl, wanting to be called by a boy's name, or a boy wanted to be called by a girl's name, and then wanting to start taking drugs. I wouldn't want any of that, but the fact is it's happening. That is what's important. It's happening with a lot of parents. And if you are dealing with it listening to this episode, I just want to support you. This is not easy. And so again, it's not about fixing it. It's about dealing with it calmly, being present, and giving our children a sense of support and safety. If we can remain calm, And this is why in Parents on a Mission I talk so much about this issue of emotional maturity and how key that is in so many situations in the parent-child relationship. When whatever problem we might be having and other things that may be going on that I've mentioned before, it always is going to come back to our growth, Our maturity, our ability to respond and not react, to be calm, to take a breath, to slow down, to not react and try to fix and solve everything. Because when that happens, that's telling you more about you, that you're uncomfortable and you want this to go away and you want to fix it or ignore it or just squash it. And I'm trying to communicate to you We don't want to do anything that's going to push our child away, divide us, cause isolation and that feeling, because they may already be going through that out in the public, at school. People might be bullying them, making fun of them. They might be, you know, isolated from— in the class and outside of class and things like that. So The home, we want that to be a refuge. And so much of that is going to come down to how you and I respond to this. Again, I want to say I know this is not easy. I know that. But I just want to encourage you, you can handle this. You can do this. We don't need to be perfect. That's not what kids need— perfect parents. There is no perfect parent that I know of anyway. There's just not. There are no perfect parents. And that's not what's needed when our kids are dealing with whatever issue it might be. But what we need is to be connected, to be curious, steady, and leadership. This is when your leadership matters more than ever. And I want to leave you with that thought about leading through with your child through this time with your son or with your daughter. You've been listening to the Parent Whisperer podcast. I'm Richard Ramos. This is the 3rd installment of the episodes that I've been speaking to about transgenderism, gender dysphoria, And I probably will speak to it at least one or two more times to try to cover all the bases. And in our next episode, I want to talk about how schools are handling this issue. And you as a parent, you need to know what is happening if you don't already know what is going on at the schools because I know here in California, they've been mandated to start talking about this and teaching this to kindergartners, kids that are in kindergarten. And so we'll talk about that and some of the things that are going on there, just again to raise awareness. Thank you for listening. Leave a review, ask your questions. You can go to my website, richardrramos.com. For more parent resources, my books are there. My online course is there. You can also leave me a voice message on this the parentwhispererpodcast.com website. There's a way to leave me a voice message with a question, or you can email me at pom the letter p the letter o the letter m pom at richardrramos.com. So website richardrramos.com. Resources are there. If you want to email me, pom@richardrramos.com, or if you scroll down to the bottom of the parentwhisperer.com website, you can click on a button and leave me a voice message, and then I will get back to you. So I leave you as always with this: Parents on a Mission, Mom and Dad, is not for bad parents. It is for good parents who want to get better. See you next time.

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