Many parents these days are asking this question. What should they do? Should they ignore their daughter’s feelings — even if they see that she is unhappy? Even if she could become suicidal? Wouldn’t it be better to accept her feelings and let her dress as a boy, play with boy toys, and change her name to a boy’s name? Shouldn’t they let her transition to a boy??
Christian leaders and counselors are asking the same questions. Recently, in every Christian leadership training class I have taught, nearly everyone in the group knows someone who identifies as transgender and was unhappy — even suicidal — until they “transitioned” to the opposite sex. Then they were happy. If this is the case, mustn’t recognizing and dealing with the issue in this way be the right thing to do?
A recent article on an Australian parenting web site is entitled “My 15-year-old transgender son is going through menopause — and I’m so proud of him.” The photo at the beginning of the article shows the author and her teenager, both smiling broadly. The mother explains that the teen has been on puberty blockers to stop the development of normal female puberty. The side-effects, she says, are minimal: just a “short and sharp menopause” and “potential bone brittleness from a loss of calcium.” “Where he was once depressed, disengaged and — as doctors put it — ‘ambivalent about living’, he is now happy, comfortable in his own skin, and optimistic about his future.”
If you as a parent are faced with this issue, where do you turn for advice? If you are a counselor or pastor or youth leader, parents will probably come first to you. What will you say? On what will you base your advice? Read and reflect on the article by Michael Cook, author at Mercatornet.
As a Christian, in whatever role you find yourself, you know from God’s Word the truth about gender: that God created us either male or female (Genesis 1:27; 2:22-23). But what advice will you give the parents of a little girl who “knows”that she is really a boy, born in the wrong body? Or the teacher of a boy who from age two has loved to wear a pink tutu and play with Barbie dolls and now, in fourth grade, tells his classmates that he is a “boy-girl”?
To be continued …
Related post: Becoming Nicole
