“I would like to hear your thoughts on how parents can speak about the elephant in the room. 

My daughter is 15 and we have experienced school refusal for some years now. The lockdown has been great for her and she has enjoyed it. And yet. I know we, as a family, have colluded in her avoidance of any difficult  subjects. 

She rules the household.  If something comes on the TV and she doesn’t like it, we switch it off. We are pretty much forced to focus on the positive of everything. 

She suffers from anxiety and I hate to upset her. However the whole family is walking on eggshells around her. 

To be honest, I don’t think this approach has improved her. She now believes that can’t cope with anything difficult and yet, as a child, she was able to cope with lots of different things. 

I am worried about what will happen when school begins in September and we are forced to confront the school refusal and the fact that my child has narrowed her world.

I myself am coping with the death of my mother and my father’s ongoing health problems and so I’m finding it stressful to only speak about life in a positive way. It’s all a mess and yet from the outside we look like a happy bouncy family.”

My 13 year-old daughter is overweight and I don't know how to handle this. 

We have always had food problems in the family as  my husband has battled with his weight all his adult life. He is a great cook and I also battle with my weight. My daughter doesn't really care about her weight and just wants to be free to enjoy her food. I find it a huge burden to try to manage her weight as well as my own and I'm becoming resentful. I've always been very careful to talk about 'health' and not 'food' or 'weight' but it is failing. She is very confident and declares that she is skinny. She knows she's not skinny so she is just being defiant in the face of pressure to conform to  her super-skinny friends. 

I just don't know how to handle it, she is at an age where she can access food so my control over the issue is diluted. Until now I watched her  like a hawk and kept her weight in check but now, finally, just as she has more freedom to eat more, she has suddenly tipped into being overweight for the first time in her life. 

It's not a lot overweight but it is there. I don't know what to do - please help! 

“Hi Lisa and Stella. This is not so much of a question, but a warm and heartfelt THANK YOU. I think (hope!) that we're slowly getting to the end of some really tough years.

Two years ago our youngest daughter at 13 rapidly developed anxiety and then presented herself as trans. Now I know it was pretty much the usual ROGD-story of no earlier signs, lots of internet contacts and a withdrawal from the family. But we didn't know that at the time. We felt so lonely and desperate, didn't know how to help her. 

Our contacts with psychologists were the same: they went through their questionnaire, told us that she had anxiety and depression, affirmed her trans identity 100% and recommended us to contact a gender clinic. In a time where we needed to be at our best as parents, these meetings really made us feel like we didn't understand anything about our child. Then I found a group of ROGD-parents in my country and media started to investigate the gender issue. We slowly got back on our feet, set some boundaries (like not going to gender clinic), allowed her to use a boys name in school and dress as she liked, and found a way of not using ”she” and her birth name but also nut using her boys name at home (because we really couldn’t). We also found a better psychologist at last, who helped our child und us with a somewhat broader view at her difficulties. And most important for me: I found you Lisa and Stella, along with Sasha Ayad and Benjamin Boyce. You have helped me through this, sometimes I have literally felt that you're holding my hand. Your mantra “Stay connected” has helped me focus on the most important. I cried and laughed when you talked about adolescences, and said that about one out of three gets through puberty easily, one with ”normal” problems and one of three really has the shittiest time. My three children really tick those boxes. You have reminded me again and again that it's the world right now – not us parents – that is crazy. You have made me feel less alone. 

Now my daughter is slowly exploring the possibilities of being a girl again. She has started to wear more girly clothes, skirts, dresses, stockings and even underwear. I think she still identifies as a boy, but I also think maybe she has to do that for a while to be able to meet the world as a girl? I feel sure that she will do this in her way and her pace. She seems so much more happy, openhearted and confident now when she is experimenting with girl identity, than when she went down the trans path and didn't want to talk or even be with us. And of course, the other week Stella gave some really good advice about not asking or talking so much about this, ”saving face” and so on. Just in time when I needed it! 

These years have made me reflect a lot about girls adolescence, how shocking – almost violent – it can be for a young girl, and how all the new expectations and gender roles can be just too much to handle. This time has been really tough for our child, and by far the worst and hardest in my entire life as a mother. But in a way I feel proud today over her braveness. She refused to accept the rules, and now she is inventing her own, slowly adapting to her new body and person in a way that suits her. Standing up for herself. 

Thank you again, for your wisdom, warmth and experience. I truly don’t know where I would have been today without you.

Links: 

• Stella Tedx talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWVcyCyRs2Y 
• Stella’s book Cotton Wool Kids: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Cotton-Wool-Kids-Parents-Paranoid/dp/1781173206/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=cotton+wool+kids&qid=1591537596&sr=8-1

Lisa’s patreon about ROGD kids and young adults: https://www.patreon.com/LisaMarchiano