[00:00:02] Speaker A: When you as a person and then you as a family are supported by those circles of people around you, things don't get easy, but they're easier and you have more confidence and you can talk more openly about how you're feeling. I think it would have been far more helpful if we had have found more support, particularly in those close circles, because it did become very lonely and then we were trying to do a very hard thing very much on our own.
[00:00:32] Speaker B: Welcome to the Emerging Minds Podcast.
Hi, I'm Nicole Rollbush and you're listening to an Emerging Minds podcast. We would like to pay respect to the traditional custodians of the land on which this podcast is recorded, the Kaurna people of the Adelaide Plains. We also pay respects to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, their ancestors and elders past, present and emerging from the different first nations across Australia. In today's episode, I'm really pleased to be joined by Ariane. Arianne is an experienced parent with six children between the ages of 8 and 22. When supporting her child through coming out and transitioning, their social and family supports were significantly challenged. Ariane took on an active role in supporting her trans child in her journey and her other children in theirs as the whole family experienced a transition. She is passionate about supporting her children's mental health and has often found that mental health professionals have been her strongest allies in the process.
Gender diverse young people are at very high risk for negative mental health outcomes, self harming and suicidal ideation.
These issues are not experienced in greater numbers for children and young people because they are gender diverse, but are because of the way they might be responded to and supported by those around them. We know that having a supportive network can significantly reduce these risks. Ariane shares her family's experience today in the hope that it will spark some ideas for practitioners about the ways they can play a role in being a part of that supportive network to support the mental health and wellbeing of gender diverse children while also acknowledging that each family's experience will be different. Well, welcome Ariane, thank you so much for joining us today.
I wanted to start by asking you to tell us a little bit about your family's experience.
[00:02:32] Speaker A: Well, we are a big family. I have six children and I gave birth to five boys and then had a little girl at the end. But when my daughter was about 11 years old, she came to us and told us that she was a girl trapped in a boy's body and that kind of began a really big journey for us. One I had been on my own For a little while. My husband and I come from a very religious background, and we had been a really big part of a church for a long time. And when my daughter was about two and we were starting to have the conversations that you do with young kids about body autonomy and people not touching you in private spaces and starting to identify what those areas are, I would notice whenever I would talk at the time had three boys, they would bath together, that the boys would say, they're a boy. They have a body part that makes them a boy. But my third child down would always say she was a girl. And as religious parents, we really felt it was our job to discourage that kind of thinking. And so we would always say, no, you're a boy. You were born a boy, but you can be any kind of boy you want. Little understanding that we were going to create a lot of internal conflict for this child. So when she eventually came to us when she was 11 and said that she was really a girl trapped in a boy's body, a lot of pennies started to drop. A lot of things started to make sense about why she behaved the way she did and also about why she was so incredibly frustrated and sad.
And for us, the next sort of five, six years was a very challenging time of questioning our beliefs and coming to the place where we could love, accept, and support our child in the journey. She needed to find her own mental health.
[00:04:21] Speaker B: Yeah, and you mentioned before about your daughter being 11 years old. And I was just thinking about what younger preteen children might be up against when they're sort of exploring their gender.
[00:04:34] Speaker A: I think the. Probably the biggest thing is the fact that the world we live in is so binary around gender. You know, people teach that there are boys and girls. You know, when they go to kindy, they're lining up boys and girls. They've got boys and girls toilets. And so people assume what gender you are. And then kids come into the world that is becoming increasingly gendered, and there's very little space to not be either or. And I think that children don't have the language necessarily to understand why they don't feel like they fit in. They just know that they don't. And when they're young, it doesn't matter, because at kindy kids, boys and girls can play with dolls. But as the older they get, the more gendered the world becomes. And I think that's because as a community, we are pretty binary in our thinking of gender. And I think that's why we see so many young kids who are Gender diverse, you know, up until the age of 12, feeling anxious, feeling depressed, feeling low self worth because they just know there's something wrong.
[00:05:41] Speaker B: And I wanted to ask you a bit about the things that you noticed about your daughter's wellbeing. So you've spoken a little bit about what kids that age might be up against in general, but what were some of the things that sort of came out for your daughter's wellbeing at that time?
[00:05:55] Speaker A: I think we started to notice things going downhill quickly. Lots of like she would bundle her clothes up and instead of just easily throwing them in the laundry basket, she would hide them all over the place. She would come home from school having wet her pants because she wouldn't go into the toilet, she did not want to go into the boys toilet or she'd come home in tears because she didn't want to play with the boys but the girls didn't want her anyway. You know, as they get that little bit older and playgroups sort of divide into gender. You know around I think it was around grade 2, 3 all of a sudden it wasn't okay for her to hang out with the girls. She didn't want to be with a boy. So she was incredibly lonely. And kids started noticing that she always wanted to be a female character, that she always wanted to wear like dress ups or something that made her look like she had long hair and they started teasing her for it. So the bullying increased dramatically and the kids were pretty cruel. I think it's interesting to me that it was a schoolmate who recognized first that something was going on in terms of her gender and said, oh, you just want to be a girl, you should just kill yourself. It was just such a nasty thing to say to put those two things together. For a 10 or 11 year old it was awful. But her mental health was deteriorating very quickly and when she was upset about any mistake she had made or not being able to do something like an really difficult maths homework or something, her self talk was all about I'm a horrible person, I'm so stupid, I'm just a stupid boy, I wish I could die. And that kind of red flag about her thinking about not being here and knowing that she had had a classmate threaten that I was looking at a very, very depressed child.
And when she had told us that didn't go away overnight. It was a long process. It really has been about a six year battle to help her through that. And when she transitioned, our whole family transitioned. It wasn't just her. Like everybody around her had to change as well. And it was a difficult time. I think people have a very romanticized or fantasized idea of what it's like to have a trans kid. And it's actually just. It's about helping your child make peace with themselves like any other kid. You know, a kid who's struggling to make sense of themselves in the world and who needs help to do that.
[00:08:24] Speaker B: And so what was important to you as a parent to sort of be doing to support your daughter during that time?
[00:08:32] Speaker A: The most important one was that I just needed to believe her. She deserved to be believed. And I think not questioning, I don't mean not asking questions of her, but trusting that what she was telling me was the truth. Listening to what she was telling me, paying attention to what she was telling me, being curious about why she felt that way, and then getting help. I think that the best thing that we did was find a team of people, you know, psychologist, our gp, people who could help us to help her through the process of working out what was going on inside of her. And it took a while. It took a while to find out what was going to work for her. But, yeah, I think as a parent, listening, supporting, believing and having her back, letting her know she wasn't in it alone, that we were there, that we were listening to her and that we would help her. I think that was the thing that saved her in the end, knowing that she. She could talk about it. And it was tough. Statistically, we know that about 50% of all trans young people attempt suicide when they have a supportive family. That statistic is rapidly decreased, even to lower than kids in the average population. So just knowing they have a supportive family around them is a big, big help. It was also about transitioning all the kids, helping all of the other kids to understand what was going on and getting them to a place where they were confident and happy and comfortable. So we had this fantastic supportive environment for her at home. I think that gave her a safe place to. So she'd be at school. It was hard, it was rough. She was being bullied. But she could always come home to a safe place. She could always come home and put on what made her comfortable. And then we worked through that until the point where we were ready for her to socially transition and grow from there.
[00:10:29] Speaker B: Yeah, we've spoken about that support network before and also those external influences over a child and those concentric circles around the child. Can you speak a little bit more about environmental factors and sort of how they impacted your daughter and your Family as a whole as well.
[00:10:48] Speaker A: Yeah, the child is always the most important. So they're sort of the center of the circle. And then you've got that their biological family or the family that they live with as that next circle. Then, you know, extended family, then school community or church community. And those circles sort of go out obviously, at the beginning. It's a very vulnerable position to be in. You know, your child is expressing something that's very personal to them, and they feel very vulnerable, and you as a family feel very vulnerable. So there was a long time we kept that information just to ourselves so that we could work through it and so that we could feel strong and confident and know that she was able to handle other people's responses because people have opinions and they have ideas. And so the first circle we sort of moved into was to begin to tell family. And it didn't go well. You know, there were. There were some really supportive family members. I'm very, very grateful for them. But there were people who disagreed with our decision to support our child. And the problem with that is it adds pressure to an already pressured situation.
So then you've got this going on and you're trying to support your child's mental health and their physical health. And now you've got family conflict that you have to navigate. And the sad thing about it is the child can so easily feel it's their fault, they take it on board. So it just adds an ugly layer of pressure.
One of the things my daughter, when I was telling her what the questions were that we were going to talk about today, one of the things she said is, you know, it's so hard to constantly have to prove yourself to everybody body. Now, nobody has ever asked me to prove that I'm a female. Nobody has ever asked me if I know what I'm doing when I choose the earrings that I put on or the way I wear my hair. And yet at every point of her life, people have expected her to prove that she's a girl. On the other hand, we had some amazing experiences where we went, like, to our school community.
And I'd go and have meetings with teachers and they. They or and the principal and they couldn't do enough to support her, couldn't do enough to help her. And the, you know, to contrast those two things, when you as a person and then you as a family are supported by those circles of people around you, things don't get easy, but they're easier and you have more confidence and you can talk more openly about how you're feeling. But, yeah, I think it would have been far more helpful if we had have found more support, particularly in those close circles, because it did become very lonely. And then we were trying to do a very hard thing very much on our own, which was hard. And the losses, the losses just kept stacking up.
When I look at the bigger scale of it, though, and I go, lost friends, lost relationships with family, lost support, lost lost social outlets.
That's a lot. But I look on the other side and I see my child who is thriving, who is an incredible human being. It was all worth it, like, all of it. I would do it all over again because she's amazing and I can't ever remember what she was like before because now she's always just who she is.
[00:14:19] Speaker B: And you mentioned before about your whole family going through a transition over the years. Can you speak a bit more about that and what that meant for you?
[00:14:29] Speaker A: Yeah. So there were a lot of people that all needed to be brought in on the journey. The younger kids, interestingly, kind of had already always seen her as a sister, even though she hadn't transitioned, even though we still use male pronouns at home, they sensed that she was a girl, so it was very easy for them. It was just about remembering her name. With the older kids, we needed to support them, to understand what it meant because it was a fairly new concept for them. So it was just a lot about education, conversations and then preparing them to talk to their friends. So if they wanted to have a friend over, obviously we needed to have a conversation because something in the family had changed. Suddenly their younger sibling was wearing dresses. So we needed to prepare them to be able to answer questions. We had to prepare them to be able to handle the criticisms of other people. Because, you know, 14 is still quite young to have your friend's dad or mum have something to say about one of your siblings. And we were very lucky to come across a family therapist in that time who was interviewing us for some of their own research they're doing on trans young people. And we had a session with each of the kids, which was really very powerful for helping them to understand what was going on in our family. Helping them to understand what, why we weren't at church anymore or why these longtime family friends were not inviting us to birthdays anymore and things like that. So everybody has to process that change. Everybody is transitioning. And it took some people a little bit more time, but they are her fiercest allies and her closest friends. And my oldest son in particular was absolutely beautiful. That when she started wearing clothes that she considered to be more appropriate to the way she wanted to express herself, went out and got the same outfit and they went out together so that she didn't feel embarrassed to be wearing things. She thought people might look at her because there was this big brother standing next to her in the same outfit. So it was a really precious thing to see your children standing up for each other and loving each other. But, yeah, we had to all get there. Supporting them also through their questions, allowing them space to process their own feelings. And sometimes we didn't get it right. I mean, I think there were times when this was so, you know, our child transitioning was so much the focus of what we were trying to get through that some things got missed, some things the older kids were struggling with got missed. And so I don't want to pretend like it was all, you know, roses and amazing. There were things that got missed along the way. I feel very sad about that. But I think on the whole, having a family where everybody's accepted as they are has covered a lot of those mistakes and apologies are amazing. So we've certainly learned as a family and grown as a family and been on the journey together, you know, making sure that nobody gets left behind.
[00:17:39] Speaker B: And I wanted to jump now to asking you a bit about support services and some of the challenges that families can face when trying to find gender affirming support services. Is that something that, that you sort of faced when you were looking for support?
[00:17:56] Speaker A: Yeah, I think the first barrier is in knowing even what's available. You know, a lot of people don't even know, like, where do you even start? What can I even do? Especially when we're talking about children, you know, kids before puberty, where do you even start? You know, And I think for me it's, thank God for Google, because I just researched as much as I could read as much as I could, found out about the gender clinic, found out about lists of psychologists that are affirming and experienced in handling gender diversity. And then the first barrier was visiting the GP to get a referral to those services. And I must say that that is a difficult thing. I hear time and time again in our peer support networks, people take their child to a GP who doesn't take it seriously and who is not prepared to refer them anywhere because they think, well, they're just kids. Just give them time to grow up. It's a phase, you know, all the things that we hear time and again, and that's really difficult because a parent then has to find another GP to try and give them that referral and another gp. It's exhausting. And again, this child is having to prove time and time again that they have this different perception of themselves. And when we're talking about little kids, all you're looking at getting is psychological support so the child can talk about that. Find out what is going to be enough for you. You know, would you like to wear your hair differently? Would you like to wear different clothes? How does that make you feel? You know, it's, it's really non invasive support. It's, it's just talking and understanding what's going on for a child. But already they're having to prove that they deserve that at step one, then if you're lucky enough to get a great gp. And our GP was amazing. She listened to me. I think she respects me as a mum as well. She knows that I only want to do what's good for my kids. So I had to find all the information I wanted and take it to her and say, please, could I have referrals to these services? But then the waiting lists are very, very long. Gender based services are underfunded. So you know, you're having to access a service that's in high demand and the wait lists are very long. Even to get into psychologists, the wait lists are long, which is time when nothing is happening to help your child. During that time, the parents are carrying the bulk of the weight, trying to cope with kids who may be distressed or kids who are in a hurry to change and they want to be able to wear the clothes that they want or the uniform to school, they want to join the boys soccer team or whatever it is, they're in a hurry and the parents are constantly having to juggle that with no support. So it is a really big problem to not have enough services out there. There is a long history of evidence based, peer reviewed studies that affirming a child's gender is life saving health care. And like I said, when you're talking prepubescent children, you're really talking about support, like talk therapy and support therapy. There's no medical intervention with really young kids. It's only when they hit puberty that those things begin to come into play. But not being able to access those services in a timely fashion lead to massively increased stress. Certainly in our family, that's when things got really critical. She had been bad when she came out, but things got very, very bad when she was waiting to get in for the services. Because you just don't Know how long you're waiting. You're just waiting and waiting.
[00:21:31] Speaker B: And when you did get into the services and you were getting support, what was something that the practitioners you worked with did or said that really made a difference to you and your child?
[00:21:43] Speaker A: I think the first one was just believing us, listening, like really listening and believing us. And then like the most powerful things were the simplest things. They just straightaway used her correct name, straightaway used her correct pronouns that just affirmed that she was valid and that they heard and that they understood those things. They might seem so small, but they. They give you a sense of safet and security, that you're being respected, that your child is being respected. So I think they're so simple things. And then supporting us, you know, asking, how is she? How are things going? You know, I pop into my GP for something else. How is she? How's she doing at school? Just remembering that we're people, you know, and they're people and connecting again just as human beings to provide support for each other when life is hard. It's not. They're not difficult things to do, to just remember someone's name. I love that. The gender service. I never got a piece of mail that had the wrong name on it. Even if somebody had taken some white out, whited out her old name. So before it was legally changed, we still had to use the other name for Medicare and things like that. But they would white it out and put her correct name in there. That just speaks volumes about how valid and safe you are. I think that's powerful. Simple, but powerful.
They gave us lots of practical tools, I'd say so. For example, our therapist, when we first started testing the boundaries of what would make our daughter comfortable, they would write letters for school to explain why this little boy suddenly had his ears pierced and would prepare us with potential responses that we could say if people questioned that would write letters to the school talking about why certain contexts might make our child anxious. For example, Water safety Week. That our child would do better if they could use a private change room because obviously they wouldn't be welcome in the girls change room at that point. They couldn't go in the boys change room either. So please allow this child to use a private cubicle to get changed. Such a small thing. But having a letter from a practitioner that says this is a valid thing goes a long way to making sure that it happens.
They did things like give us mood trackers so that we could get her to fill in every day how she felt so that we could keep Track of when her mood was getting worse or when she was struggling. Some practical tools that they had to help us be better parents. And they told us what to do if things started to escalate. So I would say educating us and giving us the tools we need to do the on the ground work, because they can only be with her for an hour a week, but we can be there for all the other hours. So that was really simple, practical things. And when she was struggling at school, a letter to request a lightning of her load for a short period of time. So they were such simple, practical things that they could do to try and I guess, back you up as a parent. So when you feel that practitioners are on your side and they're there to help you and they'll do whatever they can to support you, it lightens that load a little bit. You don't feel quite so alone.
[00:25:08] Speaker B: Yeah. And for practitioners who are listening to this episode and want to be able to better support children, young people and their families when they come in, and they might be exploring gender, what advice would you give to them?
[00:25:23] Speaker A: Be empathetic. You know, listen, listen and try to understand, be curious about what this family is going through. You know, remember that there is a child and then there is the family around the child. And it's meant to be a partnership. You know, I think parents are raising children and practitioners can help. And parents have got that. You know, parents are with their kids not 24, seven, once they're at school, but they're with them the most. And if you can help the parents, you can also help the child. So I think it's this idea of it takes a village to raise a child. For us, I think when our daughter came out, we lost our village, you know, all of our friends, the majority of our family suddenly had. It was awkward. They were still there, they were still loving, but it was really awkward. Suddenly we were having to do all of this on our own. And it was just the fact that practitioners recognized that, you know, they asked how everybody was, they cared about the rest of the family just enough to ask. Simple things like that, I think, go a long, long way.
[00:26:30] Speaker B: And you mentioned before that your daughter's thriving and it's been a journey. But how's she doing now?
[00:26:38] Speaker A: Yes, she's doing so well. She's really come into herself. She's confident as who she is, incredibly resilient. It's horrible that it's taken such hard times for her to learn that resilience, but it has paid off. And she's Doing really well. A couple years ago, she won the Australian Olympics Committee Changemakers Forum award for helping write a program at school on the difference between bullying and banter to address some of the transphobic comments she'd received, as well as a lot of the misogynistic stuff that was going on in her class. You know, the way boys were talking about girls, the way people were treating the Muslim students. She said, it's not acceptable for anybody to be treated like that. And then help the teachers write this program and they recognize that. I think it's, it just shows what a beautiful soul she has, how empathetic she is to go, I'm not just out to stop the bullying against me, we should just stop bullying altogether. So, yeah, I think it's amazing. She's got a lovely group of friends, she's confident in her, her own skin. It's a beautiful thing to see. It's really. I often think, you know, I remember sitting on my back porch when she first came out and I'd ask the older kids to watch the younger kids. I could go cry outside for 15 minutes, you know, into a tea towel, just going, how am I going to keep my kid alive, my marriage together, my children together, how is this ever going to be okay? And just, I just cry and I didn't have kind of any hope to hold onto. I didn't know any other trans people, I didn't know any other trans kids. I didn't know if she was going to be okay or not, you know, And I think back now and I go, she is now the picture of hope that I needed back then. If I could have seen her today, I would have known it would be worth it. You know, it would be hard, but it would have been worth it. And she is, she is for me, that picture of hope to be so vibrant and funny and smart and beautiful and all those things and a kind human being. Yeah, she's just amazing. And I like, I can't even really, I can't speak about how grateful I am that we've had her as a daughter and how much she's changed us for the better. It's really, it's a gift. She is a gift.
[00:28:54] Speaker B: Wonderful.
[00:28:55] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:28:56] Speaker B: And so we're coming to the end of our time together, but was there anything else that you wanted to share today?
[00:29:04] Speaker A: I guess I would have to say just that gender affirming care is life saving care in all its forms. You know, not just medical gender affirming care, you know, affirming someone using the right pronouns. Affirming someone using the right name, allowing people to dress the way they want, that's all life saving. It seems so simple, but it's life saving. And I guess for practitioners just to say that they are uniquely situated to be able to support young people, they have skills and tools that the average parent on the street doesn't have, and to not be overwhelmed by the new. You know, it might be your first time dealing with a trans young person, but you already have so many skills and every family you come across will benefit from your support. Even if that's just a kind word, even if that's just a referral letter. All of the little bits together can add up to a lot. So don't be intimidated to think it's a scary new thing. It is for everybody. But we've all got some tools, we've all got something to bring. And I think together we can make a difference for young people and see this become a conversation we don't need to have anymore because it's okay for people to be who they are.
[00:30:27] Speaker B: That's a lovely message to finish on. I thank you so much, Ariane, for joining us. It's been a real pleasure to chat to you.
[00:30:34] Speaker A: Thank you for having me.
[00:30:37] Speaker B: Visit our
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[00:30:42] Speaker A: Of resources to assist your practice. Brought to you by the National Workforce.
[00:30:46] Speaker B: Centre for Child Mental Health, led by Emerging Minds. The Centre is funded by the Australian Government Department of Health and Aged Care.
[00:30:53] Speaker A: Under the National Support for Child and Youth Mental Health Program.
