Specialist Gender Support & Resources for Parents
Are you concerned about your child’s gender identity?
Having a child with diversity in gender identity and expression can be one of the most challenging situations a parent could ever face. Living in our society, it is an extraordinarily difficult task to know how to best support your child if they are expressing persistent cross-gender behaviour and/or presentation.
Questions you may have as a parent:
I don’t want to hurt my child but how do I manage this?
Where can I get support?
Dr Riley provides counselling for parents raising gender variant children and their families.
For children approaching puberty or beyond Dr Riley provides counselling focusing on helping the child to explore their gender identity with the aim of establishing a stable and congruent sense of self.
There are a number of websites and resources specifically for parents with gender variant children.
I can highly recommend this online resource: Families in Transition
And, also the following books:
This is a handbook – small and to the point
This one is based on research & the only book I
know of that is specifically for families
- Information: Hunter region
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Maple Leaf House has also opened in Newcastle. Maple Leaf House is a specialist, multidisciplinary services for trans and gender diverse children and young people aged ≤ 24 years.The service provides: GPs, psychiatry, psychology and endocrinology
Maple Leaf House reception (02) 4016 4980 - The Gender Centre runs monthly support groups for parents of gender variant children.
- The Gender Centre also runs Transtopia a monthly support group for trans teens.
- Every year twenty10 runs a camp for LGBTI young people 13-17 called 'Camp Out'
- Books:
- 'What Would Love Do?' by an Australian parent, Lyndsay Brown
- 'f2m: the boy within' Australian book for teens written by Hazel Edwards and Ryan Kennedy.
- 'Mum, I need to be a girl' by Just Evelyn can be freely downloaded.
- 'Rethinking Normal: A Memoir in transition', a wonderful book by a young trans adult, Katie Rain Hill.
- 'The Gender Creative Child' by Diane Ehrensaft
- 'Helping Your Transgender Teen: A Guide for Parents' by Irwin Kreiger
- 'Trans: Exploring Gender Identity and Gender Dysphoria' edited by Dr Az Hakeem
- 'Genderqueer and Non-binary Genders' edited by Christina Richards, Walter Pierre Bouman and Meg-John Barker
- Challenging Genders: Non-Binary Experiences of Those Assigned Female at Birth by Michael Brown & Daywalker Burill
- The organisation Gender Spectrum arranges family conferences in the US specifically devoted to gender variant children and their parents.
- Story from a parent “Why Don't You Tell Them I'm a Boy? Raising a Gender-Nonconforming Child" by Florence Dillon.