“How do I know if my child is really transgender?” is the most common question I’ve gotten since I started my sex educator and sex therapy training program at the University of Michigan school of social work. The question is coming from caring parents who are afraid that their kids are going through a phase and aren’t really transgender. Parents are worried about the long term consequences of body altering drugs and medical procedures. I get the concern. .

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Transgender children are so important that we started talking about how to support them on the first day of my sex educator training. Dr. Eli Green taught the class and he literally wrote the book on teaching transgender. (link here).

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Dr. Green made two points that really hit home for me. First, transgender kids know early that there’s a disconnect between themselves and their bodies. Their complaints about this disconnect will be insistent, consistent, and persistent. Second, puberty suppressing drugs can buy precious time for parents to catch up to their kids’ gender identity before sex hormones change the game..

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The drugs are administered to the kids but they are really for their parents..

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It takes parents more time to wrap their minds around their kids being transgender than the kids themselves. It makes sense when you think about it. Yes parents are adults, chronologically anyway, and have more life experience but transgender kids are the experts in themselves. They’re the ones living in their own skins. Parents will often need more time to adjust the visions in their heads of their children to the realities of the people right in from of them. It’s been the same story of parents and kids for generations. Some parents believe their kids to be what they want or need them to be and they have difficulty reconciling those fantasies with who their children really are. .

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My advice to parents is to listen to your kids. When they are saying the same thing to you insistently, consistently, and persistently, believe them. Listen. Be open. Be kind. Educate yourself. Get your own support. Trust your kids. Help them be who they are.