Safeguarding Trans-identified Children and Adolescents – Our New Guide
Download Guide Most young people who adopt transgender identities are now doing so in adolescence. For some, this may turn out to be a normal experimentation or ‘trying on’ of…
A Guide to Mental Health Issues in Girls and Young Women on the Autism Spectrum
This book addresses the specific mental health needs of girls and young women with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Looking at the ways autism presents differently in girls than in boys,…
Gender Dysphoria: A Therapeutic Model for Working with Children, Adolescents and Young Adults
In recent years, there has been an explosion in the number of children and young people who diagnose themselves as gender dysphoric, or trans. In the UK, and worldwide, there…
Mistakes Were Made But Not By Me
Why is it so hard to say 'I made a mistake' and really believe it? When we make mistakes, cling to outdated attitudes, or mistreat other people, we must calm…
Overvalued ideas and a deeply held belief about identity
Sometimes we can see our children's immersion in this new identity as a sort of delusion: the unshakeable belief in something that is untrue. Previously intellectual young people, often with…
A New Way to Be Mad
This article from The Atlantic discusses the phenomenon of apotemnophilia: the attraction to the idea of being an amputee. Some sufferers will even go so far as to seek out…
Change for the Better
'This is a guide for real people living and struggling in real life, ordinary circumstances… it is full of humane, creative compassion for those who would like to change' -…
A Harvard Psychiatrist explains our Social Justice Warriors
In this article, Abigail Shrier interviews Harvard Psychiatrist Harold Bursztajn, about Generation Z (those born after 1995) and how living their lives online encourages a dichotomous view of the world…
Irreversible Damage
Until just a few years ago, gender dysphoria—severe discomfort in one’s biological sex—was vanishingly rare. It was typically found in less than .01 percent of the population, emerged in early…
Gender: A Wider Lens Episode 16 – Gender Dysphoria – What It’s Like For Parents
Although we have posted a link to Sasha Ayad and Stella O'Malley's fantastic podcast series before, we thought this episode deserved a special mention of its own. This episode highlights…
The Times Investigation: Raising Concerns About GIDS
The Concerns On 8th April 2020, The Times ran a series of articles about worries over the treatment of children at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust Gender Identity Development…
Strange Contagion
Picking up where The Tipping Point leaves off, respected journalist Lee Daniel Kravetz's Strange Contagion is a provocative look at both the science and lived experience of social contagion. In…
School Refusal: What to do when your child is reluctant to go to school
Many of our parents have reported that their trans-identified child has experienced a period of time when they were out of full-time education, whether for a few weeks or several…
Talking Therapy: Is No Therapy Better Than Bad Therapy?
Access to a therapist is often the first thing that parents consider when their child tells them about their trans identity. Maybe your child already has already been seeing a…
Articles: Therapist Lisa Marchiano
The parents I speak with overwhelmingly love their children. They are interested in supporting their children in growing to adulthood with healthy bodies. They want to support their child’s emerging…
Video: Sasha Ayad
Sasha Ayad is a therapist who works with children and young people who struggle with issues around their gender identity and gender dysphoria. She co-hosts the podcast Gender: A Wider…
Podcast: Gender – A Wider Lens
Psychotherapists Stella O'Malley and Sasha Ayad take a look at gender from a psychological perspective in their podcast Gender: A Wider Lens. Is gender identity a facilitation of development and…
Documentary: Trans Kids – It’s Time to Talk.
This documentary from psychotherapist Stella O'Malley considers the huge rise in numbers of young people embarking on gender transition, through the prism of the gender identity issues that she experienced…
BBC Panorama – Trans Kids:Why Medicine Matters
Doctors are divided about the best way to help young people - so what is the evidence? Dr Faye Kirkland investigates how much we understand about the care being offered…
Parenting a Teen Who Has Intense Emotions
From Amazon: The teen years can be daunting for any parent. But if you are the parent of a teen who lashes out or engages in troubling behaviour, you may…
Untangled: Guiding Teenage Girls Through the Seven Transitions into Adulthood
We expect an enormous amount from our teenage girls in a world where they are bombarded with messages about how they should look, behave, succeed. Yet we also speak as…
The Importance of an Unhappy Adolescence
It's miserable to be unhappy in your teenage years - but it is also profoundly important. It's hard to imagine adulthood going well if there haven't been quite a few…