Supporting Parents and Trans Youth

Working with trans youth and their families - Part 3: Working with Families

Estimated read time: 1:20

Summary

In the final installment of the three-part series on supporting trans youth, the focus is placed on working with families. Sally Guy introduces Annie, a professor with a background in social work and ethics, who shares her insights on parental support in a gender affirming care approach. The webinar explores the variety of parental reactions to their child's gender identity and the impact of supportive family dynamics on trans youth's wellbeing. It highlights the challenges families face, particularly the stigma and lack of resources, and emphasizes the importance of education and advocacy for both parents and young people.

Highlights

Many parents struggle with fully accepting their child's gender identity, even when accessing gender affirming care. ❓
The process of acceptance for parents can involve grief and takes time to reconcile their expectations with their child's reality. ⏳
Stigma and lack of resources present significant challenges for families of trans youth, exacerbating stress and isolation. 🚫
Education and professional support can greatly aid parents in understanding trans identities, reducing stigma and supporting their child. 📖
Parents face unique barriers, like co-parenting struggles and the stigma of having a trans child, impacting family dynamics. ⚖️

Key Takeaways

Parental support is crucial for the wellbeing of trans youth, with affirming care significantly reducing adverse health effects. 🌈
Parents often face a journey towards acceptance, influenced by social contexts and their feelings of grief or loss. 🤝
Education is key for parents to understand and support their trans children; many struggle with acceptance due to lack of knowledge. 📚
Support for parents, including mental health resources, is crucial yet often lacking, impacting their ability to fully embrace their child's identity. 🧠
Advocacy and systemic change, like policy reforms and inclusive practices, can help improve the lives of trans youth and their families. ⚖️

Overview

The final session in the series zeroes in on the experiences of families raising trans youth. Facilitated by Annie, a seasoned social worker and ethics professor, the discussion centers on the transformative journey parents embark upon as they come to accept and support their trans children. From denial to advocacy, the webinar unpacks the myriad responses parents have and the critical role education plays in shaping these experiences.

With statistical evidence underscoring the benefits of supportive family environments, the session highlights the adversities unsupportive contexts create for trans youth. It delves into the challenging realities parents face, including grappling with societal stigmas and the emotional toll of accepting a new family dynamic. The emphasis is on understanding these hurdles and fostering a collaborative effort towards gender affirming care.

Despite strides in awareness, the road for many parents remains fraught with obstacles, notably a dearth in mental health resources and educational support. The webinar calls for systemic changes and advocacy efforts to enhance inclusivity and support. By the end, it underscores the importance of unconditional acceptance and love in nurturing safe and affirming spaces for trans children.

Chapters

00:00 - 00:30: Introduction and Overview The final event in a three-part series is focused on trans kids, led by Sally Guy, the Director of Policy at the Canadian Association of Social Workers. The tone is bittersweet as this marks the end of the series. The speaker expresses enjoyment in learning from Annie and acknowledges the positive audience feedback.
00:30 - 01:00: Speaker Introduction The chapter provides an introduction to the speaker, Annie, who is a full professor at the University of Montreal with a PhD in social work and ethics. She is also a founder of Gender Creative Kids Canada. While most of the audience is familiar with her from previous sessions, new attendees are encouraged to read her full bio. The speaker values the opportunity for interactive sessions where attendees can ask questions.
01:00 - 01:30: Webinar Focus: Working with Families The chapter titled 'Webinar Focus: Working with Families' is part three of a webinar series and is introduced by Annie, who takes over from Sally. The focus of this session is on understanding the parent experience, specifically parents and caregivers of transgender youth. The discussion aims to explore this topic from a literature perspective, including new findings from a recent study.
01:30 - 02:00: Supporting Trans Youth and Families The chapter focuses on the stories of gender-affirming care related to trans youth and their families, based on a study conducted in Canadian clinics. It aims to explore ways to better support parents of trans children. The speaker briefly discusses the context and objectives for supporting trans youth and their families.
02:00 - 02:30: Challenges in Parental Support This chapter discusses the importance of a gender affirming approach in parental support, highlighting evidence for best practices. Various organizations, including the Canadian Association of Social Workers, Canadian Pediatric Association, and World Professional Association, support gender affirming care.
02:30 - 03:00: The Role of Social Context This chapter discusses the importance of recognizing and respecting gender identity, especially in the context of transgender health. Drawing from the Canadian Association of Social Work's statements, it emphasizes that gender identity is a fundamental aspect of the self. The chapter clearly critiques any professional efforts to alter a young person's gender identity or expression to fit societal norms, labeling such actions as unethical and an abuse of power. Social workers, in particular, are urged to reject any attempts to prevent children from identifying as transgender, transsexual, two-spirit, gay, lesbian, bisexual, or queer, reinforcing the importance of supporting diverse gender identities.
03:00 - 03:30: Parental Experiences and Reactions The chapter 'Parental Experiences and Reactions' explores the significance of parental support in the lives of children, especially in contexts of transphobia and unsupportive environments. Earlier webinars have emphasized the need to support children according to their individual trajectories. The chapter highlights the negative impact that transphobia and a lack of support from parents and family can have on the well-being of youth.
03:30 - 04:00: Negative Neutrality and Rejection The chapter "Negative Neutrality and Rejection" discusses the adverse health effects on transgender youth and emphasizes the significance of parental support. It highlights the alarming statistic that suicide attempts are around 42% but decrease dramatically by 93% for those who receive strong parental support. The critical question raised is how to effectively manage and provide support for transgender youth, emphasizing parental involvement as an essential protective factor.
04:00 - 04:30: Positive Reactions and Acceptance The chapter delves into the reactions and processes that parents and caregivers undergo when supporting their transgender children. It emphasizes the importance of understanding how parents navigate societal pressures and transphobia. The chapter also highlights that parents' reactions are sometimes shaped by the prevailing social context and their own preconceived notions about gender identity.
04:30 - 05:00: Understanding Parental Struggles The chapter discusses the various challenges and responses parents have when dealing with their child's gender identity. It introduces the concept of 'negative neutrality,' which refers to parents acknowledging their child's gender identity but not actively supporting or opposing it.
05:00 - 05:30: Stigma and Isolation The chapter 'Stigma and Isolation' discusses how young people often face inadequate support when it comes to their gender identity. While some environments may offer a minimal level of acceptance, they frequently lack affirming support. This could manifest as a passive tolerance, allowing the individual to 'stay' but without engaging or acknowledging their identity. Many young people experience outright rejection or are pathologized for deviating from their sex assigned at birth. This resistance can lead to barriers in accessing gender-affirming healthcare, as some family members or guardians might refuse to support or accompany them in seeking treatment. The chapter highlights the significant impact of these attitudes on the mental health and well-being of young individuals struggling with gender identity issues.
05:30 - 06:00: Parental Advocacy and Support The chapter "Parental Advocacy and Support" discusses the varied reactions of parents towards their children's gender identity. It highlights that about one-third of parents exhibit immediate positive responses, such as showing love and supporting their children's gender identity. These parents often take an active role in advocacy and activism. The chapter underscores that this process is a journey towards acceptance.
06:00 - 06:30: Challenges in Accessing Resources The chapter titled 'Challenges in Accessing Resources' discusses the difficulties parents face in accepting their child, which can take time. It highlights feelings of isolation, helplessness, and loss of control as common experiences for parents. The chapter also notes the challenge of discussing the situation with extended family, suggesting that understanding and acceptance within the family can be a lengthy process.
06:30 - 07:00: Specialty Clinics and General Services This chapter discusses the complexities involved in social work, particularly when dealing with transgender children and their families. It emphasizes the importance of understanding the multitude of systems that influence acceptance, noting that acceptance can vary among family members. The chapter highlights the need for a broader perspective in handling these situations, including the process parents undergo in coming out and the role of gender creativity advocacy.
07:00 - 07:30: Parental Needs and Support Systems The chapter discusses the concept that when a child undergoes gender transition, it necessitates a transition for the entire family. The focus is on how parents have to adapt to affirm their child's gender identity and manage social interactions, including potentially having to 'come out' as the parent of a transgender child. It also touches upon the potential stigma and oppression parents may face during this process.
07:30 - 08:00: Research Findings on Parental Experiences The chapter titled 'Research Findings on Parental Experiences' discusses a study in Ontario, specifically from the TransPose study, focusing on the level of parental support perceived by trans youth. The findings reveal that only about one-third of these youths felt strong parental support during their transition. In contrast, 67% perceived a lack of full support, which encompassed feelings of rejection and experiences of violence, highlighting the negative aspects of their parental relationships.
08:00 - 08:30: Acceptance and Denial This chapter, titled 'Acceptance and Denial,' highlights the challenges faced by young individuals who come out to their parents. It underscores the importance of providing support to parents, often with the help of social workers, to create an affirming environment for their children. The chapter emphasizes the need to affirm the gender identities of young people, allowing them to live according to their authentic selves without unnecessary interventions.
08:30 - 09:00: Barriers to Acceptance The chapter titled 'Barriers to Acceptance' discusses the challenges faced by families in supporting children. It highlights that a significant focus is required on educating families to better support and understand their children. The chapter notes that only a minority of parents offer strong support to their child, and even fewer are willing to advocate or engage publicly for them. Consequently, many young people end up being unsupported. The chapter explores the reasons behind this lack of support for the younger generation.
09:00 - 09:30: Facilitators of Acceptance The chapter, 'Facilitators of Acceptance,' delves into the experiences of stigma faced by families with transgender children. It highlights the negative perceptions and adverse social effects these families encounter, and how these perceptions can make managing their family dynamics particularly challenging. The chapter references research published in 2015 (conducted earlier in 2012), where parents expressed the difficulty in discussing their situation with others. The overall theme emphasizes the social challenges and the need for acceptance faced by these families.
09:30 - 10:00: Needs for Mental Health Services The chapter "Needs for Mental Health Services" addresses the ongoing challenges and stigmas faced by parents and their gender creative or trans children. Despite advancements in time, the transcript reveals that not much has changed from 2012 to 2018 in terms of societal acceptance. It emphasizes how some parents feel that their children are still perceived as 'contaminants' due to their gender identity. The language around these issues remains stigmatizing, highlighting the persistent need for increased visibility and acceptance of gender diverse youth.
10:00 - 10:30: Conclusions and Recommendations The chapter titled 'Conclusions and Recommendations' addresses the dual nature of increasing visibility as a method to combat stigma, especially for children. It argues that as visibility and discussion increase, so does public understanding and education, leading to more inclusive environments. However, it cautions that heightened visibility can also raise the risk of violence. The chapter references a citation from a book titled 'Far From the Tree' by an American anthropologist, which explores related themes.
10:30 - 12:00: Q&A Session This chapter titled 'Q&A Session' discusses the experiences of parents whose children are significantly different from them. It talks about various scenarios, such as parents with autistic children, and how these experiences are akin to having children that are 'far from the tree'. This concept highlights the challenges in understanding and connecting with children who are drastically different from their parents in various aspects.

Working with trans youth and their families - Part 3: Working with Families Transcription

00:00 - 00:30 foreign and welcome to the final event in this three-part series and we're going to be focusing today on trans kids and so I'm Sally guy I'm the director of policy here at the Canadian Association of Social Workers and it's it's a bit Bittersweet I have to say introducing this final webinar um I so enjoyed learning from Annie uh and I know from the feedback from the audience that a lot of you have really
00:30 - 01:00 really appreciated these sessions and having the opportunity to ask your questions um so with that I'll say that I I know that most of the people in the audience today have attended both of the prior sessions and so with that Annie needs no introduction but uh for any new folks in the audience you can read her full bio on the widget on the side of your screen and quickly Annie is a full professor at the University of Montreal she has a PHD in social work and ethics and she's also one of the founders of gender Creative Kids Canada so um we'll take up any more time and
01:00 - 01:30 I'm it's my pleasure for the final time to be passing it over to you Annie thank you very much Sally so hello everyone so part three of this webinar series uh today we're going to focus on working with families um so today's webinar will focus on understanding the parent experience parents NK Giver of trans youth we're going to look at it from again from a literature perspective and we're going to look at what's new in the same study
01:30 - 02:00 that I discussed last week that is the stories of gender affirming care which is a study that we do in Canada in different clinics that work with trans children and their families so I will tell you a little bit more about that later and hopefully we are going to be able to uh to see how we can better support parents of trans kids at the end of the session so for those who joined that just got like a couple of slides for the context
02:00 - 02:30 because I think it's really important we've seen so far that evidence for best practice points toward gender affirming approach uh to working with children you will remember that I was naming last week uh lots of different organization that have uh you know affirmed the importance of going towards a gender affirming care such as the Canadian Association of Social Workers the Canadian Association of Social Work education Canadian Pediatric Association World Professional Association of
02:30 - 03:00 transgender health and so on and if I'm just citing directly from the Canadian Association of Social Work statement they say clearly that gender identity is a core aspect of the self and that any professional attempting to alter gender identity or expression of a young person to align with social Norm is considered unethical and an abusive power and authority and especially social workers should reject any attempt to prevent a child from growing up transgender trying transsexual to Spirit gay lesbian bisexual or queer so this is very clear
03:00 - 03:30 you know so far from the first two webinar that you know the way forward is to support the kid the children where they are at in their in their trajectories um and we've also seen that transphobia and unsupportive social contexts have an important impact negative impact on on youth well-being we specifically see that lack of Parental support and family-based rejection was uh you know
03:30 - 04:00 increasing adverse Health effect on trans Youth and we saw that you know parental support is a important protective factor for Trans youth I was citing last week the fact that while uh suicide attempt is about 42 percent those who have strong support by their parents decreased by 93 percent so my question is that now we see that that parental support is extremely important so how do we manage to support those
04:00 - 04:30 parents and caregiver in the process of supporting their kids and so for doing that it's about trying to understand how they navigate those new realities because you must understand that if we live in a society that still have you know high level of transphobia obviously parents when they hear about their kids gender identity might have some reaction you know because the parents will be influenced by the social context around them so
04:30 - 05:00 we're going to have a look at their uh their role and their experience so um parents can have different response to a child gender identity it can be negative I think a lot of parents will have what we call negative neutrality negative neutrality is you know basically just having a child you know telling about their gender identity and then offering
05:00 - 05:30 some sort of support but it's not strong affirming support it might be just okay that's okay you can stay here no problem but don't talk about it um so we see that you know lots of young people in our research talked about that they can also reject a plainly reject or pathologize the child's attempt to convince them of their gender identity to conform to their sex assigned at Birth they might impose barrier on gender affirming health care for example support you know refusing to support them and accompany them to get those
05:30 - 06:00 care and we also see that some parents will have more positive reaction in in the study we're going to look at later it was like about one-third I would say of the sample but we get like some parents who will be showing straight away some love some careers back affirming gender identity following the child leads and some of them will engage in advocacy and activism so it is a journey towards acceptance so
06:00 - 06:30 even some people will have a positive reaction a lot of them will take longer to be able to accept their child so we see from literature that it can be difficult and take a long time um parents might experience isolation helplessness and a loss of control this is a new situation they might not understand it um it's often difficult to um to kind of talk about it in the extent family extended family and it's going to be often difficult for the extended family
06:30 - 07:00 to accept the situation so in social work we need to see it as something like really made of different systems and and when you work with trans kids and their families you can really see that you know so if someone starts not accepting often you can have like a lot of different like ways and sometimes the parents will accept but the extended family might not so we need to kind of look at it from a much more broader perspective parents have to do coming out um some a co-founder of gender Creative
07:00 - 07:30 Kids was always saying that when a child transition the whole family has to transition as well because you know the child will want to have their gender identity affirm perhaps and uh so the parents will have to talk to people around so they will let them self up to do a coming out as a parent of a trans kid and so often they will indirectly experience the same stigma and oppression uh there than they did as children
07:30 - 08:00 so um what do we know about what sort of support is given if we look at the study in in Ontario that was from the transpose study we see that a strong parental support was only felt by about one-third of trans wet transition with 67 percent of Youth perceiving a lack of full support from their parents so this can include either you know those rejection and violence base I was talking about all that negative
08:00 - 08:30 neutrality so we can see that you know there's still like two-thirds of young people who don't get the support they need when they come out to their parents and that's that show why it's so important to support the parents a social worker and work with them and we'll see you know especially when they're small you know it's just about affirming the gender identity of the kids so the kid there's not no intervention to do to them yeah they just want to experience their gender identity they just want to live according to their authentic self so
08:30 - 09:00 most of the word will be about working with families around that child to educate them for example so that they can understand you know educate themselves and and better support their kids so I think we can see that only a minority of parents would offer strong support to their child and even a smaller number will go on to Advocate and publicly engage in in different action for their children so you know lots of young people will be unsupported and why is that is that we there's a lot
09:00 - 09:30 of experiences of stigma so when a child is out as trans and parents may feel that their situation is viewed with negativity leaving them in their family to deal with many adverse social effects and perception on their child as particularly difficult to manage um I've pulled a citation from a past research we did in I mean it was published in 2015 but it was done earlier than that in 2012 but the parents were talking about how it was difficult to talk about it to others and
09:30 - 10:00 you know we'll say well you know this is 2012 now with 2018 surely in six years things have changed not so much and that parents were saying there are some people who think that if their children are exposed to us they will be contaminated so you can see by the the language that is used how stigmatizing that experience can be for the parent okay so increasing the visibility the visibility of gender creative children or trans youth is perceived by parents
10:00 - 10:30 usually as a key in challenging stigma because more we talk about it more people understand more people get educated so it creates more inclusive space for children but increasing visibility may increase also the risk of violence and I have here um I have pulled out a citation from a book um which is called far from the tree which is a book by an anthropologist an American Anthropologist who looked at
10:30 - 11:00 different experience of parents who have a child that is very very different from them so you might have um you know parents who's got like an autistic kid or you've got in that that book you've got a chapter about all sorts of different parents who've got children that are far from the tree which is the opposite of having you know a child really close to you not close in term of Mind affection but really someone that you might not be able to understand fully um and so there were lots of different
11:00 - 11:30 cases there's a full chapter on having a trans kids in there so I invite you to have a look at that book if you want to really go into in depth in terms of like some family's history but you can see here one who add like to move because of threats of violence and so it says that one military family station in Okinawa for example was reassigned to base in Arizona because the Army claimed that it could not protect their transgender daughter from enraged parent after she started to dress as a girl she was five
11:30 - 12:00 another family finds itself almost totally dependent on the aid of social assistance when driven out of town by Angry mobs they include the member of the Klu Klux Klan the father who had stayed behind for work came home several days later and I will you know leave you read that um that citation to the end but you can see that it can be very very difficult and you've got like example of three uh parents here um so is that just happening in the
12:00 - 12:30 United States uh the answer is no we've got evidence in Canada that family also add to erase themselves from community in order to protect their children so um so some parents will engage in Parental activism um so there are some evidence of that um but it's not so easy for them uh it's
12:30 - 13:00 here I've taken a citation again from a book uh we show some parents engaging in activism so when we met with the minister of Health we totally brought our kids along because they were like you need to see this who you are affecting these are the kids that when I say I fear for my son when he gets a driving license if you get pulled over is going to end up spending a night in jail because of his ID I want you to know who that child is so I have a seven
13:00 - 13:30 years old and I'm scared of him going out into the world even if he gets a library card because of ID out in so we talked about it about the legal transition last week so that's an example so there's some parents who have started challenging um you know laws in different provinces if you Google you might find lots of stories about that there's been some in nearly every provinces in Canada but again it is only a few parents okay
13:30 - 14:00 we know that parents I've got General needs of support education and resources such as peer support group community-based Services counseling to help reduce that stress stigma because even those parents who are doing advocacy will still experience stress and stigma so we really need to be there to support them and we also know that parents who found sorry Youth and their parents accessing
14:00 - 14:30 Care at overlapping concerns so when we look at parents and and you if you you know that there's like similarities in their needs but for youth it will be more focusing on transition issue why while parents prioritize safety and acceptance followed by transition so we know that from that Lawless study that parents will want to uh find ways of being supported so they can ensure more safety for their kids more acceptance and help
14:30 - 15:00 them with transition and it makes sense with the excitation I just showed you about parent activism that went to health minister to get the law change so that the kids could change their gender marker on birth certificate because this is a way of you know getting accepted and you know being affirmed in your gender identity and parents and youth are often left to educate provider and figure out the process alone so you know what happened is that often people who will welcome a social worker who will
15:00 - 15:30 welcome a trans kids in their office might not be prepared or you know someone who start interacting with their parents might not be prepared I have the background knowledge about gender identity and what will happen is that often is the parent who will have to start educating you know the young person for example if you if you've got like a family going to a care provider medical care provider and the secretary you know take the cards to register you don't understand about transgender you
15:30 - 16:00 know experience or you know trans existence she might question why a gender marker is not coherent to the child's you know gender expression and so often is the parents who will have to start explaining that the child is trans because otherwise the parents might not be able to get the service because they will say it's fraud they will say the card is not their card so often if the parent who will have to do a lots of advocacy work obviously the younger they
16:00 - 16:30 are the more the parents will have to do the advocacy it doesn't mean that when the kids grow up that they want need their parents to advocate for them but they might get a little bit more autonomy in getting their right defended but when they're very small you know it's parents will will have to educate the providers because providers don't understand so this is like very heavy on the parents who is already themselves often struggling with acceptance they are struggling with you know getting the service they need
16:30 - 17:00 so it is a very difficult process for those parents um there's importance of resources um community and health psychosocial resources support family in the adaptation and transition process and help them better understand their child's situation and we will see in a minute when I'm talking more specifically about the study that basically the the the parents often they will they will be accepting their children a little bit better when they get a professional for
17:00 - 17:30 example to affirm that it's okay to be trans because their parents might not know that so so to have that that that support might help even the parents to understand and accept their child however there's a few spaces and resources for those family and it's difficult for parents to find the support and what we get is um that there's generally two problem with accessing resources you've got the access to a specialty clinic we're going to talk about it in a minute Specialty
17:30 - 18:00 Clinic being clinics that will offer gender transition support so for example the kid will be able to access blockers or they will be able to access almonds if they need to so these are the specialty clinics these are difficult to find because normally they are concentrated in cities so in Canada you might have about 10 10 specialty clinics that really focus on trans youth um and so accessing them is already a big challenge because of limited staff because of limited resources and if you
18:00 - 18:30 you live outside the city it's going to be even harder but there's also a problem to access General Services as I explained last week with Trends you've experience is that you know even if you go for anything related to General Health you might have additional barrier to navigate to be able to access that service may that be just to be registered at the front desk or to have to explain to for example the doctor
18:30 - 19:00 that your gender identity has got nothing to do with your broken leg because the doctor might start inquiring about gender identity when you're going there for something totally different so people are there's really difficulty to access and as I was saying last week about young people you will remember is that most of them don't Access Health and psychosocial kind of services because of that so parents will have in
19:00 - 19:30 a way similar difficulty with their kids and will experience stigma stigma that will be different from a trans person themselves experiencing stigma but nevertheless you will have family parents if you had like imagine I don't know a six or seven years old gender creative kid with you who's expressing the agenda differently from what's on their ID card you know the parents will still experience stigma and the person in front of them might still think that you know they have influenced their kid
19:30 - 20:00 to be like that and you know they might not have the knowledge up to date so I'm just going to talk now about data that we presented actually not even a month ago at the world Professional Association of transgender Health in Buenos Aires so this is the um parents and caregivers experience accompany their children in the specialty clinic so so this is a research about parents and young people children going to Clinic to access
20:00 - 20:30 almond blockers ormonds and eventually surgery so I'm going to present you a little bit about what they experienced those parents in terms of accessing clinic but also in terms of accepting their children so this is the password sample just for your information so it's 35 parents it's qualitative studies so 35 is a good number to to be able to understand their experience and it was a diversity sample but not based on the parents but not the
20:30 - 21:00 children because to participate in the study it was the children that were looking at having you know children were more trans feminine transmasculine non-binary so which are and some of different ages and so we've got mainly some mothers participated in that study we had four fathers so now you might wonder why we've got 36 people and I say that it's a 35 sample it's because we've got the family over to to participate so the the two parents participated in that and we see that even in Canada there's
21:00 - 21:30 already some who might have access to difficulty to Access Health Service because even if like Health Service is universal the medication are not always you know covered and only 29 youth out of 35 had access to private health insurance so this might kind of increase the the stigma and the other interesting thing to know about those parents who were so I can't say that all parents who access clinics with their kids I've got that demographic it's too small of a
21:30 - 22:00 sample but if you look those are kind of quite a lot of like education overall so they were like parents who had access to supposedly some resources so what we've seen in the experience of parents um in terms of acceptance and access to gender identity gender affirmative care the child coming out was an important moment for the parents so that initiated the process of acceptance on their side
22:00 - 22:30 you will remember last week I was saying that the child often was talking about thinking about it much earlier but for the parents the journey starts really when the kids do their coming out because before that often they don't even know about that and initial parents reaction often influence all carry through latest stage of their child's transition including access to care so when you look at the data we've got here you know think that they were parents were already accessing care with their
22:30 - 23:00 children so one would think that these parents were fully supportive and accepted but when we discuss with them some of them were still in the process of accepting their kids at the time of interview so you've got kids you've got parents who were accompanying their children in the clinic but still not fully accepting their child's gender identity so the reaction are wide and ranging from denial to immediate and full acceptance of the child's gender
23:00 - 23:30 identity this is the sort of denial that we had in the study they appear to close to a quarter of parents narrative so it is still quite a lot uh you know a quarter of parents it took the form of either feeling of a Wham saying oh I've got too much to take in or disbelief we found that lots of disbelief not believing the youth story saying well you know we've got so much now I'm sure this is not that you know the kids must have I don't
23:30 - 24:00 know it must be because they've got an ADHD you know and so you've got the example here regardless it's like how we deal with this where do you go we had so many mental health issues prior to this with your ADHD behavior disorder and impulsivity and now we've got another I guess I hate to say it label but it's just more you know it's just too much for that parents at this point and these are the parents who's got an 11 years old say of course my reaction was not a
24:00 - 24:30 good one um and she said no this is uh this is how you were supposed to be born and you know because you're like a girl thing doesn't matter you're a girl so there's been a lot of denial when the you know the child came came out to the parents so that's the parents telling us about their study obvious this there's a there's experience some of them were surprised and some of them were proud so as I said we've got a
24:30 - 25:00 range of emotion about a quarter in denial we've got about a third of parents who were surprised that their child came out um they didn't see that coming um so the child was always dressed like a little girl always had until recently long hair so the parent did not see that coming so they were very surprised about the coming out and about nearly half of the participants say that they had a positive feeling or reaction when their kids are coming out so this is you know as I said it's qualitative
25:00 - 25:30 research so we can't generalize to the whole population but this is more than what it was in the transpose study so it might be an indication that perhaps um you know with education and the fact that people talk more and more about trans kids that parents when they hear about it the first time they're less surprised than they were six years ago and so you've got like two citations of parents here saying on the other hand when I learned that I was like phew I just realized that it was why things
25:30 - 26:00 were not working in the past year and a half so this was like the story of the uh the parents was telling us about their child having different difficulties and so when the child did the coming out it just all made sense they were like okay that's why you were not feeling good yeah um so they accepted the kid and we've got another one here um we say I looked and I say to you I am proud of you my child I am proud of the courage you had to express and to say what you were feeling and I'm proud of
26:00 - 26:30 the courage you display to move forward in all of this so you see this is like a really affirming example of of coming out what we found in the data is that there's different accepted barriers to acceptance so what we just saw was the the um the reaction coming out now how to get to acceptance because even if you have a positive reaction it doesn't mean that you accept straight away yeah so we need to be to make the difference
26:30 - 27:00 between you know reaction to coming out and acceptance process so um it talks a lot of time for most parents so most parents took time one of the barrier was experience of grief so this is something we've heard a lot in in the data that parents experience some sort of grief grieving process and so one parent explained here I saw the girl in the youth before I couldn't
27:00 - 27:30 see the girl it was like but you're a boy I know is a boy is my baby and it was my little boy we were very close and everything I love my boy I don't want him to go anywhere where is my and that's the dead name so I'm not where is my my kid so you can see it the parents is really trying hard to reconcile the idea that they had what they thought was a boy and now they have a girl and this is a process that feels like grief for them
27:30 - 28:00 um I had a tough time dealing with the fact that I had a daughter but I didn't have those five years of my daughter so this is the parent saying you know where is my daughter now I have no baby picture of my daughter as herself yeah so the kid transitioned now leave as a girl he's happy as a girl but the parents reflect and say this is not who I had as a baby yeah the thing you didn't get to do because you didn't know and also the loss of identity of my son
28:00 - 28:30 so there's a lot of grieving I think I hope you can capture that in those two citations other barrier to acceptance over and Beyond grief uh many parents talk to us about lack of knowledge of and information about trans identity so they could not accept their kids because they did not understand what was going on with their children so we didn't understand because we had nothing to do with transgender anything I mean I might have heard the word but I didn't know
28:30 - 29:00 anything about it so it's very difficult for parents to accept their child's coming out and you know accept through the process if they don't understand what is going on and then you can think about all the stigmas that that go around you know trans identities parents might have that so unless they get educated and understand themselves it's very very difficult for them to accept other barriers or struggle related to accepting the child um so these now are not barrier to
29:00 - 29:30 accepting the child so the parents might accept their child but they will have like different struggle around it for example co-parenting struggles so you might have a parent who have you know had a negative reaction you know finally accept their child but the co-parent don't so this is going to be a really big struggle for the parent they are recounted in relationship to the level of involvement of each parent in the child transition process they
29:30 - 30:00 might have affected the parents capacity support the child so here you see I wish a husband would talk about these things because I want you to feel more supported but I think I just end up doing the best I can for Youth and hoping that he knows that I'm there and I've always said to him I'm here behind you 100 you know but the other parents is not so this is very difficult for the for the parents to kind of Juggle all of that and there's also another struggle for
30:00 - 30:30 parents in their journey to accepting and supporting their child is the use of write names and pronouns and this is not like a lack of of will or something malicious but some parents I say you know I really want to accept my my kid but I'm really struggling with using the right name and pronoun it slips off my mind I'm struggling with that so the parents say here you know I've been using male pronouns for 16 years that she is a boy and now she's asking
30:30 - 31:00 everyone to start saying she and call her you know or by her name overnight so when we sleep she gets angry she had to learn that we are a human being and that we need to get used to our new state so this is a parent that is really struggling with that the the use of name and pronoun you will remember from last week's webinar I was saying that one of the way to you know one of the protective factor of trans youth is to be addressed by using the
31:00 - 31:30 right name and pronoun so I think you can see how working with family might involve helping the parents to be able to do that to accept but also affirm the gender identity of their kids and using the right pronoun but this is a struggle for some I said given give me time little by little because as long as I see her as physically a girl it's going to be hard to incorporate the key pronoun even if I'm trying more and more so parents and this is also part of I
31:30 - 32:00 think of the grieving process but it is definitely something that occurred in the parents experience some aspects facilitating the acceptance of the child well education education education so parents told us that they tried to get educated about trans identities through researching documentaries TV shows they went on Google they did all sorts of things you know I found a couple of books that were helpful that kind of give you an idea of
32:00 - 32:30 what things are you know like it's not a phase that sort of thing parents wants to know that for sure so parents who understand that for example it's not a face that gender identity is part of human nature that it can be different from sex assigned at Birth that is very helpful to for the parents to accept their child if they don't believe that this is something that exists of course the parents will be in denial for a long time and you've got another ex parents here who explained that I explained to
32:30 - 33:00 him that the suicide rate for Trans kids is high and that's not going to happen in our house that is not an option and that we need to support Youth and like no question about that so that is uh you know the parents talking to their partner about it so it's really education is a theme that is very very important another aspect that facilitates the acceptance of the child is to allow oneself to take time to integrate the new reality so some parents felt guilty about it and and
33:00 - 33:30 some parents need to have the time take the time for themselves so not to say that it's easy because by no means there's a lot to take in a long time to wrap your head around and change your perspective on things then it's about receiving support from other parents um that was mainly through the online and face-to-face support group parents needed the help to navigate the transition and acceptance process but
33:30 - 34:00 what's interesting in the study is that only seven out of 35 families attended those group so this is something that I must say we were a little bit surprised because in all the literature um you know it's written parent support group pointer peer peer support group and and so we were surprised to see only seven parents attended those group in the study and as I said this is in Montreal Ottawa and Winnipeg so it's not because there's just one
34:00 - 34:30 place where there's nothing so that was interesting and so you've got a parent who say here uh that it was really good for them uh to try to uh to get support and parents also told us that it's important to receive support from professional and so they can get reassured by a professional that trance is okay and that is not a phase getting personal support by therapists although not many were you know accessing it their experience with clinics and staff
34:30 - 35:00 was overall uh positive they found it through a raffle TV show internet other parents come to organization uh they uh they wanted to contact the clinic you will remember that a lot of young people's uh came across Clinic because they were referred to the clinic I was talking about it last week so now you see that parents add motivation to access that clinic including wanting to understand what was happening and what they should do wanting to improve their
35:00 - 35:30 child's well-being and uh their child who wanted to access gender affirming care as I said overall they were very positive they said that they found the staff very helpful that the clinic was fairly rapid in many places that the staff was knowledgeable and that they didn't feel the pressure but rather they felt guided towards informed decisions so that is really important to know because you know when we have we often hear about clinic and have prejudices that clinical transitioning
35:30 - 36:00 kids well you can see that parents here they feel that it was done in a timely manner and that you know there were time to reflect on things and they felt supported and at ease and not judged by staff so this is very important but there's also some negative experience in clinics some of them took too long and this was really an issue for some parents and I wanted to put this um this citation here um
36:00 - 36:30 um I mean there are two examples of delays I think the second one is more striking but that parents really try to access the clinic one is because they were one long waiting list while the other could not access the care because of protocols and I was saying last week that often clinics work with protocols so they will say you know you can access blockers if you've got certain age or certain characteristic and so on so forth and that parents is explaining how it was difficult because she felt that
36:30 - 37:00 her kid really needed to access the services now and basically he couldn't because the protocol were rejecting him so we say the clinic still reject him and the staff member was like well I guess you will have to wait and I'm like are you guys insane talking about you read any of the documentation you you don't wait and at that time of extreme deep frustration uh you know I probably closer to rage I often think you know do
37:00 - 37:30 I say the funeral Bill to the clinic so you see that the parent is really in distress about their kids needing accessing care about the clinic not being able to fulfill their need so when I was talking about difficulty to access Services earlier you can see an example here of like issue accessing Services of specialty clinic either because they there's got two big waiting lists all because basically you know protocol restrictions some parents also complain about lack of
37:30 - 38:00 Mental Health Service for their child and other complain about language barrier lack of results to support parents or feeling that some of their concerns or need were belittled by staff but overall it was fairly positive what's the parents on net need well beyond the need to increase ease and speed of access to Medical Care and mental health for their child parents said that they need care for parents mental health and this was fundamentally
38:00 - 38:30 not being met in clinic so they really add difficulty to find support for themselves and I think this is like a fundamental to understand and you know I mean and you know when I was saying it's interesting that we read in the literature that parents you know use support group in our research they don't use support group yet they tell us they need that and I think you know maybe parents use a lot of support group yes because it's good for some of them but also because there's like uh you know
38:30 - 39:00 there's a real big need for parents to access mental health and it's not exist yet there's no there's no service like that so the problem is that you might get um you know private Service uh the private service costs money so it's already a big barrier for lots of parents and then it's to find professionals that are trained to be able to work with parents without having all the stigma and prejudices that they
39:00 - 39:30 may experience so you see one say I would like to see more therapeutic help for myself one-to-one not just in group group are fun but for kids we were in the circle where we had to say our name or whatever and who your child is so they were just talking about the group here again and I just remember when I got to me and it was my first ever experience and I just burst into tear I couldn't get the words out it was a hot mess I was a hot mess so I was just whoo I didn't get back after that so the parents never
39:30 - 40:00 went back to the group because this is not something that felt right for for her so uh so we definitely to need to increase men you know Mental Health Services for parents so you know with all of you here today at the webinar I hope we can stop catering more for those parents who come to Social Services um so the result from this study revealed that many parents struggle for a long time with fully accepting their child's
40:00 - 40:30 gender identity including those who access gender affirming care with their child so I think that's important to remember it's not because the parents is there that they are fully accepting their child so they might be still work to do knowing that we don't want to have parents who are just offering negative neutrality you want to get parents to be fully supportive and really kind of have a positive impact on their kids mental health and so there's four main pillar of acceptance education allowing oneself time to integrate a new reality support
40:30 - 41:00 from other parents but especially support from professional if they need that though most parents in the sample said they felt supported in clinical setting they also said their personal need as parents when not met and you know this is this is reality you know in gender affirming clinics there's no service for parents so maybe this is something that needs to be considered you know knowing that parental support and acceptance are crucial to youth well-being
41:00 - 41:30 um I think we can you know do more systemic and family approach to care it would be certainly more desirable so intervention support parents there's no other thing to say about it I think finding support and resources in order to better understand and support trans youth so supporting parents working with parents will have an impact on the youth as well because we know that those two are so into interlinked even if the
41:30 - 42:00 acceptance process can sometimes be long and difficult for parents or the family making sure that the young person is feeling supported in a firm in their gender identity peaceful but also professional support is needed and so this is the again the acknowledgment to the uh the team of people who work the research that I've just presented you with and that is it so we've got another nearly 20 minutes for question awesome
42:00 - 42:30 um uh thank you so much for the presentation Annie and so yeah it's time for Q a um before I launch into the audience questions I just wanted to note for the audience that as soon as the presentation concludes a survey is going to pop up um and we would love if you could fill that out it would help us design future continuing education opportunities on this topic or or others so we would love to hear from you um please do uh falletta when it pops up at the end uh also as always the stuff
42:30 - 43:00 you need to know about the slide deck how to get the recording and how to get your certificate of attendance that stuff is in the welcome and housekeeping widget that you that you have on your screen so that's my spiel about tech stuff and let's get to some questions before I actually even get to questions I just want to for you Annie to know that um people are are also I think just really appreciating the opportunity to share their experiences so people are are typing in their experiences um of stigma but also like of Hope um I'll just read a couple uh one is my
43:00 - 43:30 12 year old trans son this week was told by his friends that she could no longer be his friend because he was told that it was against her religion he was so saddened by this and he doesn't have many friends and this took a huge toll on him so that we have comments like that coming in and then we also have comments like um here at McGill University sexual identity Center or piloting a new group for parents of trans Youth and so far it's been really great working with parents at all the stages of the transition process and the biggest thing
43:30 - 44:00 that parents are asking us for is education so just I just wanted you to be aware of people sharing not just questions but um experiences and exciting things that are that are happening um okay questions the first one um I'm just gonna go heavy hitting right away they ask your example of the lesbian couple who had their child taken away made me think about how it should be the opposite when a parent refuses to affirm their child's gender identity isn't this
44:00 - 44:30 a form of child abuse yeah well um the example uh we need to note that it was from the United States and I said there's the book from Andrew Solomon however we know uh from inevitable evidence that you know some parents at the visit of Social Services after uh some parents some people kind of call social services to make allegation of child abuse when in fact the child was trans yes I mean this one is a difficult one
44:30 - 45:00 well it's not that difficult in fact because if we look at psychological mistreatment it would be denying someone's identity it would be denying how the person you know feel about themselves I mean I don't know Province to Province might have like really kind of um clear way of identify what psychological mistreatment would be so I think if we see not supporting a child as a deny of identity and you know I think it could
45:00 - 45:30 be it could be uh stated but I am not aware of any policy document at the moment or um I mean I'm aware of policy document because I said Canadian Association of social worker are clear that we need to afford General identity but I'm not aware of Social Services or yeah law Social Services law that that kind of articulated clearly like that so it would need to be the social worker who is interpreting the law in that way but
45:30 - 46:00 I think that's definitely material from evidence to go that way if it makes sense yeah I'm gonna this question I think is in line with your that last answer and they say I love this thought around mental health care for parents and Guardians and along that line I want to know more about how caregivers could be supported who hold different beliefs and values it's about I think it's about
46:00 - 46:30 um getting um and this is not from research evidence actually because I still do parents parents group I facilitate parents group every month and it's you know it's about I think working with the parents what they are but also you know being able to challenge them gently about their belief because often they are like really deeply Health belief so you can't just you know it's it's not by giving a research evidence that you'll be able to change the parents kind of way of seeing thing but it's about asking the right question for the parents so that they
46:30 - 47:00 could they can themselves deconstruct those those those deeply held values and also inform them about you know something that is very helpful often and we talk about it many many times in the groups that I facilitate is you know this is the suicide rate of children and this is evidence that when you support a kid how you know the suicide rate is decree so that 93 percent uh statistic that I've been presenting every week is a
47:00 - 47:30 very important one and often I think a lot of parents will start seeing that you know it's actually there can be some very negative consequences not being there for decades but you know we need to see as I've presented in the research that sometimes this is a long process so you know we need to keep kind of working with the parents and and and and supporting them in that Journey it's not an easy piece yeah because you know I know the evidence about you know
47:30 - 48:00 not supporting the kids but at the same time you can't change the parents mind from one day to the other yeah so it's about kind of being there to always challenge gently so that the parents can process [Music] uh it's um I mean that's why we're having the series right we know that this is not an easy thing and can I just say something more actually because this is something that I've presented in the PowerPoint but in our research of the clinic some parents say that they were
48:00 - 48:30 not going to support group anymore because they felt that actually they were too challenged you know so I mean this is just I'm just thinking about one interview in particular but the parents say you know I was going there I was talking about my my experience and you know the person facilitating the group kept correcting me on the use of pronoun and so you can see I mean for me it's like if you challenge too much you might just kind of get the parents away from the service so it's a kind of
48:30 - 49:00 very difficult balance yeah yeah me I mean balancing knowing knowing what's right and what's gender affirming and and also needing to meet people where they're at to not be alienating them in in their journey I guess yeah yeah that's it knowing that the kids need support yeah yeah yeah um this is totally Switching gears but I I it's an interesting question someone's saying uh there's they've heard from a
49:00 - 49:30 local doctor that many trans youth are on the Spectrum and I think they're referring to the autism spectrum and have you heard anything about this is this true um I did hear about that um I think there's some research starting to be done more and more about it uh it's it's not an easy one um you know I think you know gender identity is gender identity uh you know we could say that whatever kind of you know make the person Express their gender identity or
49:30 - 50:00 from their generatity we should support them in that way but there is a lot of of young people who will also kind of find themselves on the Spectrum in a trans youth in the trans youth um we've got like another study here in Quebec which is called digging beneath the surface I talked about it last week in that one we've asked young people to declare any disabilities okay so it was very broad the disability kind of range
50:00 - 50:30 but you know we had a few physical disabilities but a lot of them um talked about neurodiversity uh in their answer and it was like near 76 percent who declared some sort of disabilities you know it can be like neurosensitivity or but so there is a lot of young people but you know at the moment it's still something that it's not very clear what the link might be and I can't say anything else about that
50:30 - 51:00 because it happened yeah it's uh it's something we note here uh this one's more practice oriented um they say I'm not an expert in this area at all so I found this series really useful I'm a private practitioner who does family and group therapy would you have advice for someone like me if a child comes out as trans during a session maybe what you think is the most crucial thing to keep in mind
51:00 - 51:30 I would say just you know affirm the identity um you know comment on you know the courage probably took to kind of do a coming out you know I mean just created just create a space for the kid to realize it was the right thing to do and it's safe to do that here um I think this is probably one of the most important thing to do um because it might kind of just
51:30 - 52:00 set the basis for further intervention later um and if the person is doing that in the group that means that they probably really feel safe there so it's a good indication of good climate in the group but I would just like you know really thank the person for doing that and you know just just uh you know ask the person what pronoun they want us to use and uh just really go with what the person is saying and trying to support them you know
52:00 - 52:30 affirming their gender [Music] this one I I'm just very intrigued by and um so she comments I guess I'll actually I'll preface this because last time we talked about how how much we're all exposed through media and through Society to Notions of gender and so she says I am Bamboozled by the prevalence of gender reveal parties following an ultrasound
52:30 - 53:00 I'm not sure if I'm just noticing it lately or this was always a thing there was even a gender reveal cake for a couple in a popular TV series we're seeing this in the media so she didn't formulate that into a question but I just thought it was such an interesting observation that like societally in some ways we're moving towards a more fluid understanding of gender and at the same time we seem to be becoming even maybe more entrenched in you know obsession with binary with binary gender I'm just wondering like do
53:00 - 53:30 you have thoughts on that well I think it's a it's a it's a very kind of accurate observation yeah you've got like I mean even if some people and if like you know more and more people affirm that gender outside the binary you still got like a really important part of population resisting that yeah yeah I mean people are you know not comfortable with you know lots of people are not comfortable with with with gender outside the binary and a lot of
53:30 - 54:00 people are not comfortable with the idea that gender is different from sex yeah so I'm not surprised by that plus I mean there must be something about all the marketing the way that everything is marketed for the binary as well so but I saw something as well this week I I read the piece on Facebook about these gender reveal party and I'm like you will see you know I mean there's no way to know yeah with the gender identity of the kid will be and you know to start like
54:00 - 54:30 really gendering a kid from before they are born you know might uh make it more difficult for the kids I'm not saying that we need to be all gender neutral but it's just a thought right yeah yeah no it it came up and I just thought you know what it's true I've noticed it too um it does feel recent that this this thing about gender real party so I just thought I I would I would float the question to you um this one is is like a bit of a
54:30 - 55:00 well it's not I wouldn't say selfish but it's about what Advocates can do so what people who are working to change policy or legislation can do so if there was something that you would like to see changed on the policy level um something that would really help trans kids and their families at the provincial or the federal level what would you what would you want to see change well I think it's about you know you know there's so many things uh very
55:00 - 55:30 very quickly I would say it's important that every single kids should be able to choose their own gender on birth certificate and make it as accessible as possible because this is a big barrier and also you know why put a gender marker that is compulsory because we are forgetting a lot of non-binary folks in there so I think you know if it was a policy wish you know can we just like you know choose to have or not have a gender marker on on those uh you know
55:30 - 56:00 formal document another policy that would be important is that um you know people get trained so that this kind of compulsory training about gender identity in every Health and Social care profession so that that would help with access services you know those General and those specific service I was talking about earlier because at the moment this is not covered in many
56:00 - 56:30 uh discipline yeah so if you go like it's not something that is called curriculum to talk about uh Trends and trans Children and Youth and adults even so I think you know in terms of policy it would be good to to have a think about that and maybe my other wish list would be uh to make illegal conversion therapy you know like they did in Ontario because we see that there's um there's still there's still people doing that and weird that from parents
56:30 - 57:00 who had bad experience with therapists and so it would be important I think that you know government you know asserts that this is not only illegal but also unethical to do um so this would be my bucket list of three things but I might forget stuff but you know the most important thing if there's any policy makers there is not to do that on your own you know consult consult consult with the Trans population the trans people that you know the activists everyone wants to kind of participate in those policy
57:00 - 57:30 change and we should never kind of do those sort of change without involving people that are concerned in the these processes mm-hmm the uh I don't I don't know if there's probably a French translation of this but in English it's nothing about us without us exactly um yeah it's a powerful message no matter what the topic I think so I'm um I'm looking at the time it's 58 minutes so knowing that this is the last one in
57:30 - 58:00 the series I I want to ask you before we take off um is there is there something that you want to stress is there something that is burning within you that you didn't get to talk about enough is there a way you'd like to sum up well I mean I would just sum it like this you know every children deserve to be love for who they are whatever that is and I think if we just you know build our intervention based on that
58:00 - 58:30 idea that's going to lead you to trans affirming practice for children and their families yeah so just you know remember that I mean there's psychologists who've said that for a long long time you know Carl Roger was saying that you know I mean it's we're just going back to base it you know kids need to be loved for who they are and if that gender you know their gender identity is different than what we expected then you know it's not us to decide for them it's them to decide and US parents and caregivers and
58:30 - 59:00 professionals and you know educator to just Embrace those those you know those so important part of self yeah I um just we so like on behalf of the whole Federation the Canadian Association social workers our national office we really really appreciated you doing this for us Annie um I I the peop people are typing in
59:00 - 59:30 their thanks right now that they're pouring in I'll share them with you later and audience members I will make sure they all your comments get get to Annie um so this is just a huge thank you for doing this for us we've really really appreciated it and um maybe we'll get to do another one with you in the future thank you very much thank you for everyone participating thank you bye bye