Parent and Teacher Guideline for
Gender Dysphoric Youth
Growing Up Again – Parenting Ourselves,
Parenting our Children- Ages and Stages
Listen to Section
Getting more specific about the developmental stages is important because parents who have not had their developmental needs met will need to revisit those needs and nurture themselves in order to help their children grow emotionally. Feelings that overwhelm an individual indicate a need to grow in some area. In the book Growing Up Again – Parenting Ourselves, Parenting Our Children, the developmental stages are provided with affirmations that meet our human needs. These are developmentally appropriate affirmations for growth. There are cues that indicate when a development milestone is not met and affirmations to help that development along, and these are provided with activities for re-parenting in the following tables.
Table 5. Growing up Again – Parenting ourselves, Parenting our Children – Stages 1-7
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Here is a quote from a 19-year-old girl exemplifying how to support a teenager:
“I needed a voice in my head when I was standing toe to toe with a panting ninth-grade boy who was telling me he loved me, telling me I wanted to ‘do it’ and moving right ahead. I wanted to have a reason to say no and feel that I hadn’t signed some social death warrant by refusing to have sex.”
Often, girls have been given the message by the media, their peers, and teachers that adolescents should not be cautioned against having sex, but rather, after being educated on pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, the best thing to do is to embrace sexual relations, and the decision was hers to make. Girls need guidance and support to grow, and activities such as sports can be a protective factor during puberty. Single sex sports can be a deterrent from distracting boy/girl teasing at that time as well.
Here are some examples of different parenting styles for a girl who is experiencing the onset of puberty:
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Abuse: Teases about acne, budding breasts, or voice change. Touches a child in a sexual manner.
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Conditional Care: Says, “I see you’re starting to mature. I hate to see you grow up.”
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Assertive Care: In a loving voice, the caregiver says, “I notice your body is changing. You are entering adolescence and becoming more grown up. That’s a wonderful, important change. I love who you are.” The caregiver continues to touch the child in a nurturing, non-sexual way acceptable to the child.
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Supportive Care: Says I’d like to celebrate this important milestone. How would you like to celebrate, or do you want to leave it to me?”
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Overindulgence: Says, “I see you're starting to mature. I’m glad! Now you can have boy-girl parties. Let’s plan one for this Friday.”
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Neglect: Doesn’t notice or withholds touch. (Some parents confuse nurturing touch and affectionate touch with sex and stop touching their teenage children of the opposite sex. During puberty, however, most kids feel insecure and need the reassurance of continued, safe, parental touch.)
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Here are some possible natural consequences for early sexual intercourse that are helpful to explain to girls:
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She might have regrets about being used
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She might get a sexually transmitted disease and could die of AIDS
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Sex too early can be preoccupying and leave little energy for personal growth. Relationship skills can be subsumed by sexual excitement.
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Easy sex and immature adolescent game-playing may infringe on a girl’s search for identity.
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She may become busy taking care of the sexual needs of others; she may forget what her needs are, what her gifts are, and what goals she has for herself.
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Pregnancy
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When normal adolescent behaviours are postponed, later, she may want to recapture those lost teenage experiences, interfering with adult tasks.
The above sentiments were largely taken from the book Growing Up Again and the final stage of human development. The table below was also from Growing Up Again, written by Jean Illsley Clark and Connie Dawson.[75]
Table 5. Growing up Again – Parenting ourselves, Parenting our Children – Stages 1-7 (continued)
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Here are some of the ways that you can explore the “Knowing what I know” part of stage 1 (Being):
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A couple times each week, he chose 3-4 activities that support "being."
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Give yourself affirmations for that stage and arrange for people to take care of you and to give affirmations in the way you want them
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Visualize yourself as a wonderful infant, exercise when you feel like it, and take naps or rest when tired
Sometimes, we can use our intelligence and ingenuity to create these experiences for ourselves in our daily living. Sometimes, we need the help of a book, like Breaking Free, Self-Reparenting for a New Life. Sometimes, we need the help of a respectful, caring support group. Sometimes, we need the help of a therapist and a therapy group. We can also benefit from finding new parent figures to mentor and nurture us.
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Anytime we change what we believe or how we behave, we must keep several things in mind. First, people around us may not be enthusiastic about our changes. They may be more comfortable with us the way we are now. They may try hard to get us not to change or to thwart our efforts to change.
Nonetheless, adults need loving help to deal with their old defenses. Rest assured that as you make necessary changes, when you realize you have said or done something you regret, you can apologize and do it again in a healthier way.
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Muriel James has suggested that we need many good fathers and many good mothers, many smart people to think with, and many people to play with, and they don't all have to be the same people.
We may choose a "new parent" therapist, as described in Jonathan and Laurie Weiss's book Recovery from Codependency: It is Never Too Late to Have a Happy Childhood, or we may contract with other people to play limited new parent roles with us. We may need loving help to deal with our old defenses.
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Growing Up Again by Revising Specific Episodes:
The other type of activity that supports growing up again is to identify specific events in adult life, do them over again, let go of old negative feelings and decisions, and keep the new, positive, good ones.
One way to grow up again is to identify episodes from adult life and revisit and redo them, making new decisions and adopting new attitudes.
When you participate in an adult growing up again experience, it is important to let the new feelings and lessons in and to make new and healthy decisions about yourself and your life. Often, reliving an episode in adult life is healing and satisfying. Other times, it seems to be not enough. That often means we need to go to an earlier developmental stage to do some additional healing there. Choose activities to help recycle that theme at each developmental stage.
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Adults need what children need:
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Recognition - The hunger to be acknowledged - Look at me!
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Stimulation - The hunger for the contact that is vital to life - Let’s do something!
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Certainty - The hunger for physical, social, and psychological systems that keep us safe and make life predictable. Who’s in charge here?
Ways of Parenting:
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Nurturing: This message is gentle, supportive, and caring. It invites a person to get his or her needs met, offers help, gives permission to succeed, and affirms.
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Marshmallow (ineffectual): This message sounds supportive, but it invites dependence, suggests a person will fail, and discounts capabilities.
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Structuring and Protecting: This message sets limits, protects, asserts, demands, and advocates ethics and traditions. It tells ways to succeed and affirm.
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Criticizing: This message ridicules, tears down, tells ways to fail, and negates.[76]
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Growing up again and again means getting what we missed earlier, so we don’t have to go on without what we need now. Growing up again is a process, not a one-time accomplishment. All these parenting styles have different effects and make up the Parent ego-states. Nurturing Parent ego-states set rules that keep the self safe. Parents who fail to set rules are telling their children that they don’t care; a marshmallow parent discounts the child’s ability and gives the child permission to be helpless. At the same time, it lets the parent look good or play the martyr. Rigidity, supposedly for the sake of the child’s welfare, springs from fear. It consists of old rules, written in concrete sometime in the past and usually for someone else. These rules often ignore developmental needs.
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A study on the authoritarian, authoritative, permissive, and uninvolved styles of parenting showed that, over a range of racial, socio-cultural, economic, and sex differences, authoritative parents generally had positive influences for predicting well-adjusted children. Authoritative parents also provide high monitoring and expect their children to follow rules, resulting in adolescents who engage in more socially responsible behaviour. When parents are abusive, a child’s well-being declines, and when parents spend time with their children, help with homework, talk about problems, encourage, and show affection, children do well.[77] The healthy inner child relationship formulates an adult-child relationship. How we talk to ourselves is as important as how we talk to our children. Maintaining a healthy self-view is key to parenting.