My 15-year-old daughter thinks she's a boy

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I am in complete shock right now. Long story short, I was doing some work in my daughter’s room and found that she’s been keeping a journal. Maybe I shouldn’t have looked at it, but I did. I knew she had struggled with same-sex attraction in middle school and tried to be a loving parent while faithfully expressing Church teaching. Now in her journal she is writing about how she thinks she’s a boy. I have NO idea what to do. We have tried to be loving and patient, but I don’t know where to begin helping her without pushing her away. She will probably be mortified just by the fact that I looked at her journal. I haven’t even talked to my wife about this yet. Can anyone suggest anything?
 
Cimachol said:
She will probably be mortified just by the fact that I looked at her journal.
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Which, I hope you realize, you should not have done. And if you tell her you did, you’re going to lose any trust she had in you.

Teenagers often question their sexuality. If you hadn’t snooped in her journal, would you have had any indication of this? If not, the best thing to do is probably to wait and see; it could well just be a passing phase, and not something to ruin your relationship with her over.
 
May I ask how old she is?

As Angel says, you should not have read her journal, and it may just be a phase, or something she’s heard. Perhaps she’s still questioning her sexuality and trying to work out how it all fits in her head, and with Catholic teaching (for example, if she thinks being attracted to girls is disordered, she may feel that she is actually a boy because boys being attracted to girls is not disordered. Just hypothesizing).

Now you know what she is thinking, you have time to absorb it. If she comes to talk to you about it, listen to her. Ask her why she feels that way. Don’t judge her. And don’t read her journal again. But you can tell her now that she can talk to you about anything and she doesn’t have to worry you will stop loving her.
 
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Do not fear. Love her, do not abandon her. I have seen many priests openly accept all people. She is young give her time. God loves her.
 
Why even adhere to labels. Gender is a social construct(it is not biological, if she thinks otherwise tell her to join the football team and she if she thinks she is a ‘boy’), so a real rebel does not do what society says in any way, cisgender, transgender, fluid gender…none of the above is a real individual who does not care what others thinks and simply understands themselves. This is a fad thing where people do this when they are confused teenagers.

You have to go way past societies nonsense to show how ridiculous it is.
 
Cimachol said:
I knew she had struggled with same-sex attraction in middle school
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In our culture today we sexualize everything. Girls can have deep admiration and strong affection for other girls or women, we no longer consider that as a normal thing, it is sexualized.

I and my dearest friends can sit and hold hands, we can hug each other, we can give each other a chaste kiss! We have a very close relationship and it is simply friendship. Modeling friendship to our kids is important.
 
I would do nothing beyond praying for her. Looking in her journal may close her off to trusting you. Just be alert to whether she wants to talk.
My daughter said she was a boy at about 19. She thought that because she likes to wear jeans, she enjoys the company of boys more than girls, she’s not “girly,” and she enjoys sports like volleyball and climbing trees.
I explained that those were all things girls can enjoy, and that the notion that it makes her a boy is absurd. Since then she has dropped the idea.
There is too much emphasis on sexuality, as you know. Hopefully she will have friends who are focused on healthy activities rather than exploring odd notions of gender.
It also might be helpful to send her to a youth retreat to draw her closer to Christ.
 
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Agree with what others have said: Do nothing at this point other than pray for your daughter. She’s only 15. This could be a phase. Seriously. A few years back, young women being bi-sexual was all the rage, now it appears being transgender is (just my opinion anyway). Fifteen is a very vulnerable age and she’s still trying to figure it all out. Just love her.
 
Do everything in your power to forget what you read. She didn’t say she had actually done, or plans to do, about this. You probably glimpsed into a part of her fantasy world, which, for teenagers, is quite fertile.
If you weren’t wondering about how your daughter was viewing her sexuality before you read this journal,
you most likely, have nothing to worry about. And, definitely, on this information alone, don’t bring anyone else into the situation.
 
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Viki63,

Thank you for sharing that. It is comforting to know that even at 19, she was not beyond the reach of reason. I have given some thought to the fact that society’s stereotypes and objectification of men and women may be part of the problem – contrast St. Joan of Arc and St. Therese of Lisieux, and the umbrella of what it means to be a woman is a lot broader than many people realize.
 
She may be right (in which case you can do nothing to change her and to try to is the road to nowhere), or it may be a phase. 62% are hard wired this way. Either way she is your child.

The more she is able to learn it is good to be whatever it is the less compulsion she will feel to seek a sex change. Your acceptance of her possibly true condition will be key in this area I suggest.

Some people are born atypical re lots of different things - one’s sexual identity is no different.

I suggest she does not think she is a “boy”. She means she instinctively thinks like a boy and like’s the things and the roles that boy’s typically do. No different from homosexual attraction (some are clearly born/wired that way). The issue is a mismatch between sexual morphology and brain wiring. Sometimes biological males have female brains. Sometimes biological females have male brains. We must love our children whatever their disfigurements or wounds.

The condition is called “gender dysphoria”

Gender dysphoria - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
 
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Another post offered you an explanation of females with “male” brains and vice versa. This is completely inaccurate with no science to back it up. Do your research and don’t fall for junk science. Females have female brains, period. It is based on their DNA. Give your daughter some time to grow out of this delusion as most people do. Don’t feel guilty about reading her diary either. Obviously there was something bothering you about her behavior and you needed to investigate for her own good. That is your call as her parent. Keep an eye on her progress and get a good Catholic therapist that you trust in order to help you talk to your daughter with love, care and concern. Perhaps as her dad you need to let her know that you think of her as a lovely young woman. Encourage her and applaud her style of femininity. We are all unique souls and all looking for love. Parental love from a girl’s dad is powerful and necessary and important.
 
Tatum said:
She may be right
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I am not quite sure what you mean by this. Personally I cannot accept a view that contradicts what I know from Church teaching about God’s plan for men and women. I intend to be a loving parent, but that love cannot include pretending my daughter is male.

That said, I have been considering whether part of the problem is an overly narrow understanding of what it means to be male or female. Yes, there are tendencies regarding how men think and how women think, but there is nothing disordered or less feminine about a woman who tends to approach matters more the way a male would, nor less masculine about a man whose approach may be more typical of how women tend to think.

What I am hoping to figure out is how to minister to my daughter as her father in a way that is faithful to God’s plan for creation. It was God who created her, who made her female, and who entrusted her to me. Turning my back on God’s design or on Church teaching is not an option for me.
 
I think you are right. Do you take her out for coffee or a meal occasionally, just to give her some one on one time with dad, for conversation and bonding? I think that’s important. Not to discuss anything heavy, just to be available and to show her that you value her as a person and a young woman.
The hours I spent hanging out with my dad were priceless; he worked at home (an artist) and could talk as he worked.
 
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If you take this approach, you may have to come to terms down the line of losing your daughter. These are choices you must make, and must ask yourself, what God would rather see? Someone turn their back on their own flesh? Or love and accept them for who they are?
 
teddy1 said:
These are choices you must make, and must ask yourself, what God would rather see? Someone turn their back on their own flesh? Or love and accept them for who they are?
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I don’t believe that not pretending to believe something that I know isn’t true would be “turning my back” on my daughter. I accept my daughter for who she is, but part of who she is is a young woman.
 
I can’t believe this thread has gone on for as long as it has! The OP invaded his daughter’s privacy…he hadn’t thought his daughter was too ‘boyish’. If he had suspicions, that could be understood…but most likely, the daughter was just fantasizing, or even fictionalizing…many writers got their start by privately ‘thinking out loud’ and teenagers do often have a time when they examine their sexuality. She’s not going to hell for this…she wrote down a thought in a journal that no one else was supposed to see. I know you all mean well, but get over it!
 
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