1. Do not think of them as a transgender child! Your child only thinks he or she is transgender. And, transgenderism is just a feeling.
  2. Avoid ‘affirming’ any incongruent gender identity – that means do not use pronouns other than the ones that you have always used for him or her. Resist calls to use a new ‘transname’.
  3. Keep a level head. Having a child with transgender ideation can be worrying and a source of anguish at times. Keep conversations adult.
  4. Educate yourself. Excellent resources exist at Genspect, Transgender Trend and 4th Wave Now. And we are building our own repository of useful information, too.
  5. Provide space for your child to work things out. Too much pressure, and they’ll push back.
  6. Be curious and non-judgmental. Ask open questions, avoid challenging the answers.
  7. Be there for them. Do your best to keep everything as normal and real as you can.
  8. Identify any underlying causes of their transgender ideation and address those. This might be removing your child from a toxic peer group (either online or at school) or getting therapy for anxiety, depression, autism, or past trauma.
  9. Accept that they might well be homosexual – many youngsters who think they are trans are in fact just gay or lesbian.
  10. Be patient, and don’t give up.
  11. Join Our Duty

For a longer read, please see How Can I Help My Child?

Note: We do not consider there to be such a thing as a ‘transgender child’. See Inventing Transgender Children and Young People by Michele Moore and Heather Brunskell-Evans. This terminology is being used on this webpage so that those people who do use that phrase can find us via internet search engines.