Trans Parents

Being a trans parent is a difficult situation and is one addressed every day by many individuals, only you understand your children sufficiently to know how they will react to the news

Please refer to the other Support pages particularly the Families page, this page addresses specifically the issues that confront transgender parents and has been mostly provided by individuals in the same position.

It can be very difficult to come out to your family as an adult but even more so when you have children yourself as these are the people that mean the most to you and losing them, their respect or their love must be topmost in your mind.  Please be aware that there are so many transgender people in that very situation and most who have come out have managed to without losing their children.  If you join our group we have members you can talk to and their are organisations that can help, please look at the Links page for these.  Here are some points of advice from a single parent of two kids under 10, her advice may not fit your own family but hopefully there will be something you can take from this list - and don't worry if you make mistakes, feel at a loss, exhausted, exasperated, or just not able to find a solution, parenting is difficult:

• Get therapy/counselling - there is no stigma and no shame in this and as a trans parent you have more emotional and psychological issues to process, manage and be responsible for whilst possibly facing more adversity, with fewer resources, tools and time.  It may be difficult to find but it is worth the effort.
• Be prepared for new levels of parental toughness but also some things may be easier than you thought
• Be risk aware, build event management and crisis plans for the whole family.
• Build a "resilience bank" and more wellness into your everyday routines than you think you need, including days off.
• Love, celebrate and healthily reward yourself for your daily existence, achievements, overcoming adversities and growing the community as natural valid and diverse human beings.
• Educate yourself on our collective rich history and normalize accessible information being around for the kids to learn from at their own pace.
• Define, set, maintain and share your own worth, healthy limits and boundaries.
• Create and seek safe or safer spaces for the kids to independently explore what our identities and their connection with our community means.
• Get creative, it may be needed when the things you need are just not there yet.
• Know it's alright for everything to be tough as much as they can be wonderful
• Forgive yourself for feeling isolated or needing space - parenting is often isolating for cis folk and "networking" can be much more difficult for an "out" parent or family and many of the barriers are out of our control.
• Allow the kids to know it's OK to stay in the closet and when discussing you or another trans person could be harmful, dangerous or unwanted.
• It's OK to make mistakes - we all do.
• Be prepared for managing experiences unique to being trans:
• people fearing or demonizing
• people being overwhelming or unmanageable
• closet friends - people who are friends on the surface but won't acknowledge you in person
• people who want to tokenize, exploit or expose for their own profit or benefit
• people claiming the right to discuss, challenge, debate our validity in front of the kids

Kids will often find that the online resources from Mermaids, the "gender-bread" man, Stonewall and the in-person events from local LGBTQ+ groups and Prides are enjoyable ways of understanding the situation.  As a family you should be able to access different parts of the Mermaids and Metro charity which can be life-saving.  Please see the Support pages for more links

Here's a couple of messages from the children of a trans parent

The most important thing for me is for you to be truly honest with yourself, and truly honest with me so that we can have a really honest and open relationship where I can feel close to you and you close to me. It’s difficult to do that when you don’t know such a fundamental part of someone. You should know that I am really proud of you

My perspective as a member of the LGBTQIA+ community myself (I identify as bisexual/pansexual) is that what you've done and what you want to do is incredibly brave, and I am definitely very proud of you

There's loads of good things about it than I can't fit into a text: one really important thing I want you to know is that I can see the changes where you're embodying yourself more and it's amazing to witness, but I also see the parts of your character which have always been there and will continue to be as they always have been - just you - and that's great