5 Parenting Protectors That Can Appear When Your Child Questions Their Gender         

When our child is experiencing confusion or distress about their gender, our parenting parts can become intensely activated. Your child may want to make a firm decision in one direction because our brains naturally seek certainty and predictability. If your child is neurodivergent, they may find uncertainty especially difficult to tolerate because it places such a high demand on their nervous system. So, while your child’s protective system will be trying to navigate the confusion inside them, they are also in the context of a culture and the family environment which inevitably has its own supports and challenges.  For example, many parents experience a culture that is both more accepting of gender diversity than in previous generations and, at the same time, one that can encourage people to adopt labels or move towards certainty before they feel ready.

This article explores the parents’ protective system and how it may influence the parent-child relationship.

Protection:  

When we have a child a whole host of protective parts of us come online.  For example, you may recognise the anxious one who constantly scans for danger, or the planner who is always looking ahead, hoping—or fearing—that things will stay as they are, and many others.

 These protectors have one job and one job only: to protect your child.  Sometimes they can get polarized with other protectors who are trying to protect you: for example the ones that needs you to get a good night’s sleep, or rest, or attend to your partner, or career.  When our child is questioning their gender, a particular team of protectors can quickly swing into action trying, with the best of intentions, to help and mitigate harm for you and your child.  They can often be fueled by beliefs about what you learnt about your gender growing up in the culture we have, and can certainly carry energy about whether your child is wanting to transition away from your shared gender or into your shared gender.

Before we explore some common parenting protectors, it can be helpful to pause and notice what your own system brings to this conversation.

Questions for reflection:

1. What messages did I receive about my own gender while growing up?
2. If my child’s birth sex is different from mine, what messages did I receive about people of their sex or gender?
3. What feelings arise in me when I imagine my child moving towards or away from my own gender identity?
4. What are each of my protectors most afraid would happen if my child continued on this path?

As you read about the protectors below, notice whether any of them feel familiar. There are no right or wrong answers. Every protector is trying to care for something important.

Internal Family Systems (IFS) proposes that we all have Parts and we all have Self. Parts are natural inner personalities that develop to help us navigate life. Self is our calm, compassionate, courageous and curious core. Self has only one agenda, and that is connection. Our Parts, however, often have very strong opinions—including about gender.  When our Parts become polarised around our child’s experience, connection can easily be lost. When those Parts feel heard and begin to trust Self to lead, connection can return.

The following names are not official IFS terminology. They are descriptive names I often use to help parents recognise the protective roles that can become activated when a child is questioning their gender:

Five Common Protectors: These are common protectors that you may be hearing from in your system, but this list is not exhaustive!  Try journalling the voices and impulses you are noticing. None of these protectors are “bad” either. Every one of them is trying, in its own way, to protect something precious. The difficulty comes when they take over the relationship with our child.

Persuader;  This protector tries to convince your child that they are already beautiful, whole, loved and enough just as they are. It may speak about their body, their birth sex, faith, or family values. Although its intention is loving, its strong need to persuade can leave your child feeling unheard. 

How to speak for this part:  “I am noticing right now a part that wants to persuade you that you are just perfect as you are and this piece of me feels so much sadness that you don’t feel that”

Safety Officer;  This part might be focused on protecting your child from irreversible physical changes.  It looks at the future and is full of warnings and even grief about the changes that are being sought.

How to speak for this part: “I am noticing a part of me right now that just wants to protect you, it believes that permanent changes at the moment might be such a cause of regret”

Prosecutor; This part builds a case for the birth gender of your child and has many logical arguments why it is a mistake to switch genders.  It might point to cultural arguments, social media and even partners as being the ones that should be blamed and prosecuted for the child’s gender journey.  The prosecutor can be aggressive and combative.

How to speak for this part: “I am noticing a part of me wants to blame myself/social media/partner/friendships/life events”. (This one is often best shared with a trusted friend or therapist as our children are not well equipped to handle the prosecutor part.)

Planner; This part plans for the worst and is focused on time lines. It may draw on ideas about adolescent brain development, believing that waiting before making irreversible decisions offers greater safety.

This part might come across as logical and caring but with a strong agenda to “wait” before taking irreversible action.

How to speak for this part: “I am noticing a part of me that holds information about brain development and wants to slow down the process until you are older, but I am also aware you are holding urgent parts that are wanting action right now”

Project manager:  This part can sometimes work alongside the Planner and may even try to “help” the child with their goals by taking over the project management side of things: appointments, drugs and surgery. This part is so frightened of losing the relationship with the child that it has decided it must support the journey. This part can be strongly polarized with other parts in the parent’s system as they navigate the strong feelings at play.

How to speak for this part: “I’m noticing a part of me that is desperate not to lose you. It believes that supporting every step of this journey is the only way to keep our relationship safe.”

As you finish reading these descriptions, take a moment to notice which of these protectors showed up most strongly for you. What is that part trying to protect? What might happen if it trusted Self to lead just a little more?

If we are trying to connect to our child from our protective system that will trigger their protectors and pretty quickly it will be a fight.  Our child may be very nervous and disinterested about having a conversation with us because they have met our protectors and know them very well already.  The first step is to notice and befriend our own protectors—perhaps through journalling, therapy or conversations with a trusted friend. As those protectors begin to soften, we become more able to have a Self-led conversation with our child.   This may require you to be upfront about the harm that has already happened, and repairing the rift that your well-meaning protectors will have caused. 

Here are some things to consider when making a repair:

1. Validate, Validate, Validate:  “I know we have tried to talk about this and it hasn’t gone well, so you not wanting to talk to me now makes just so much sense”
2. Repair: “I want to apologise to you, it must have felt awful that our conversations went so badly wrong, and when you needed me to be calm and compassionate parts of me jumped in to argue and attack.”
3. Invitation: “I would really like to try again and if you sense even the faintest sniff that these parts are jumping up, please let me know.  I want you to know that I am working on myself so that I can be better at hearing you, but if these parts jump in again, we may need to pause so I can help these parts of me relax”

Our children are excellent “parts detectors”. They quickly sense when one of our protectors is trying to win an argument or push an agenda. The work is for us to notice when our own Parts step in, take responsibility for them, and return to Self.

Supporting a child who is questioning their gender can be emotionally demanding. You do not have to navigate it alone. Working with an IFS-informed therapist can help you care for your own protective system so that you are better able to stay connected, compassionate and curious with your child, whatever unfolds.

  Reach out today: info@carolynbaynes.co.uk