Responsibility

What does it say about you if your son or daughter identifies as transgender? Sit with that a moment. Maybe even write a sentence or two down somewhere to capture how that question makes you feel. What comes up for you? 

How does it make you feel to discover another parent whose child has desisted? Especially if that parent went to great lengths to facilitate the shift? Does it make you feel like a failure? Does it make you feel a little desperate to create the same result for your child? 

I get at this in an older article from 2022: How will you know? That many moms are measuring how they’re doing based on their child’s attachment to a trans identity. These moms are highly attuned to any sign of desistance, feeling hopeful when daughter has a day where she dresses more feminine or if she doesn’t snarl at being misgendered. “Does this mean she’s letting it go?!” Only to feel devastated two days later when the girl’s breasts are obviously bound. One step forward, two steps back…to/from the goal, right? 

If we’re on this roller coaster, our vigilance is crucial. The conscious effort to monitor our thoughts and speech and how whatever we do impacts their behavior is all-consuming and exhausting. But we mustn’t relax until the job is done, until we’re certain our child is “out of the woods”. 

Have you ever tried to imagine what it’s like to be in your daughter’s (or son’s) mind? Working so hard to stay in character and to attend to how others respond to them. Do you think about the high they feel when someone falls for their charade or at least pretends to, and then the devastation when that next clueless someone misgenders them–or it’s done intentionally just to aggravate. 

If only we could help them see how doomed they are to misery if their emotional state depends on how others are responding to them. If we could just get them to understand that as long as their wellbeing relies on how well they’re passing on any given day, they’re on a roller coaster that someone else is driving. The conscious effort that goes into the performance. It must be so exhausting. 

You see where I’m going here, yes? The parallel experience moms are having with their trans-identified kid? What are they learning from us through our vigilance? Oh, I know you don’t say anything out loud about what you’re doing.  But let me assure you, if you’re here reading this article, odds are you’re one of those moms who’s highly attuned–which means your child is also likely highly attuned to you. It may not be obvious in their behavior, but I’ll bet if you focus on this aspect of your relationship, you’ll start to see what I mean–how our kids mirror us; and if we’re not conscious of this, how we mirror them. 

So along with what gets modeled through this vigilance, there are a couple other outcomes that you may not have considered. What else are they learning when Mom is hyper vigilant? It communicates that you care, right? Certainly. I think it also communicates that you may think their identity is your responsibility. 

Is it? This may be another question to sit with for a few minutes. I suspect this one might create some defensiveness. Just notice what comes up for you here.  

I know that your goal is to protect them from harm at the hands of the medical industry, and to ensure they don’t endanger themselves by entering men’s spaces, etc. And I’m not saying that you shouldn’t share with your child your fears around these and other areas of safety. In fact, I think it’s very important that you make your concerns known in a way that your child can hear and process. I also think there’s a way to do this that doesn’t shift responsibility for the quality of their experience from them to you. 

Believe me, I know this is tricky stuff, because for so much of their life up to now our children’s experience is our responsibility. I know for myself, I also thought my young children’s happiness was my responsibility, and I likely didn’t support my kids to experience difficult or uncomfortable feelings in a healthy way. This may be a post for another day, but something to keep in mind as we move through what I’m trying to communicate here. 

I think we also live in a time and place where this notion is embedded in the culture: how our children are doing is, indeed, all on us. And there’s no room for messiness or detours on the path to “success” lest you be judged a bad parent. What I want to do here is invite you to let this (self) judgment go and provide the rationale for how doing so helps your kids.

Firstly, don’t we want them to take responsibility for their own experience? I know first hand that this is an incredibly scary thing to do—that most people resist. If we’re able to blame someone else when Life feels icky, it lets us off the hook and we don’t have to change what we’re doing. Unfortunately, it also turns us into perpetual victims. Life is happening to us and we’re, well, we’re on that roller coaster with no power over where it takes us. 

I’m wondering if you’ve experienced your child blaming you for their feelings, especially if you weighed in on something that didn’t go their way? If so, how was that for you? Did it land? Or another way to ask that, did it work? Did you find yourself feeling anxious and compelled to justify something to her? If so, she accomplished her unconscious goal of shifting responsibility away from herself and onto you. 

When do you let that go? Your sense of responsibility for how life is going for your kid. What if the only way to get them to take charge of their own experience is for you to stop thinking that’s your job? It might be helpful to ask yourself how to model taking charge of your experience. Kinda back to where we started and your relationship to vigilance around monitoring your child’s experience and making that about you. 

Now, am I saying that you stop caring or offering support? No. I’m just saying that how you go about it matters. I’m not going to get into the how here; this article is meant to help you understand why it might make sense to think about this and maybe assess where you’re taking too much responsibility.

Okay, so first reason to let go of responsibility for your adolescent’s or young adult’s experience is so they can take that on. Can you see how this is important for them to be able to launch into the world? If you’re holding that responsibility, they cannot individuate. You’re not letting them. Plus you now fill a very important role for them: the scapegoat. 

Photo by Strvnge Films on Unsplash

Also, by judging and taking responsibility for your children’s experience, you communicate to them that they’re not capable of taking charge of themselves. Does this make sense? If your focus is on their experience rather than your own, and you’re busy directing them all the time, they don’t develop confidence in their own decision-making capacity.

If your role in the dynamic is as the advice-giver, can you see how now, it really is all on you and they’re justified in blaming you for how things are going? Maybe you’re okay with that. It certainly keeps them tied to you, not only as someone to shift responsibility for their experience to, but because they have few skills to navigate the world. And why would they bother? They’ve got you instead.

Oh, I have to diverge here a minute. This is making me think of my husband’s dependency on GPS. He didn’t used to need it. Yet, now that he’s had that to tell him where to go for years now, he seems to have lost his capacity to navigate and know where he is in the world. I gently tease him about this, but it’s hard to not see how all our technology meant to make life easier has actually robbed us of our knowledge, skills, and capacity to direct our own lives. 

Are you your child’s GPS? Who or what is yours? There’s a whole ‘nother topic in here methinks, about just where your consciousness is going. What are you feeding with your attention? I’ll save that one for another day and another post. 

I imagine this might have been an uncomfortable read for many. Please be gentle with yourself. This is painful and difficult stuff amplified by cultural forces that are super scary. Mostly what I’m pointing out here is basic healthy relationship dynamics, but I know how hard it can be to see it through the fearful lens that the trans identity creates. I know, because I went through it too. I learned all this the hard way, like most of us do–through direct experience. Learning is often painful, and it can be really difficult to witness our children in pain. It’s very normal for parents to want to alleviate our children’s pain by taking it on ourselves.

And I also want to clarify what letting go doesn’t mean. It doesn’t mean you abandon your child to their own devices—especially if they’re still under 18—or that you cut them off if they’re an adult. This is more of an energetic thing, but minding how you interact with your kiddo and having a few go-to phrases can do wonders for helping you get there. I assure you, there is a way to do this that both communicates to your child you’re there for them, and that you don’t assume responsibility for how they’re doing. (Oh, and bonus points if you also convey that they’re not responsible for how you’re doing.)

Sometimes I think I need to remind everyone that my daughter is now 19, and so I’m not still in the role of ensuring she completes childhood in as healthy a way possible. For most of childhood, it is important that our kids trust us as experts on how to do Life; they need confidence in our capacity to make the best possible decisions for the family unit and its individual members.

Yet, I can’t help but wonder how it might have impacted both my daughter’s experience and mine, and hell, my whole family for that matter, if I’d figured this out sooner and discovered the positive benefits of changing how I relate to her experience. Honestly, even now, I’m far from perfect at it. I still catch myself taking responsibility for how others are feeling; letting go is a practice. Maybe the hardest practice there is. 

And maybe this doesn’t resonate at all for you. Maybe you believe it’s your job to rescue your child, to be the hero in their journey. I might ask you how that’s going for you though? Do they see you as the hero–or the villain? Alas, maybe one day they’ll recognize what you did for them. I’ve certainly heard stories where this happened and Mom comes out as the hero. Who knows? Maybe that will eventually be your story too. 

If, however, this is resonating, and you’re wondering what it actually looks like in practice, I’d invite you to visit my work with me page. You may find that tackling your individuation work transforms your entire Life, freeing you to discover your own authentic meaning and purpose—beyond that of your role as Mom. And that by doing this, you also free your child to take responsibility for discovering these things for her (or his) self.

Photo by Daniel Hering on Unsplash

I want to be clear that this is not the same thing as giving up on our kids. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. As I said in Eudamonia, it’s about figuring out how to relate to them as “whole, healthy human(s) with the capacity to develop resilience and create a life well-lived” for themselves.

And this brings us full circle, back to the parallel experience. What do you want to model for them to mirror, and to aspire to?