Maia, thank you. Thank you for writing and sharing and encouraging parents; thank you for researching and thinking and pivoting and doing the incredibly important and difficult work of growing up. You are such an inspiration to me, and I hope I can love my son more competently as a result of your sharing. Mazel tov.
"I spent yesterday celebrating my 26th birthday and contemplating my own mortality… as one does around my age."
I find this quote from the very beginning of your essay amusing. Assuming you make it through another 26 years, you'll be 52 years old. I'm *46* and I would be indubitably lucky to make it to twice that age (92). LOL It took me until I was about 40 to start thinking of my own mortality. But I've come to the conclusion that "Memento Mori" is a good piece of advice for adults of any age.
Another brilliant essay, Maia. The average book on parenting can never delve into this issue & how to respond to it with such clarity, honesty and insight. Every essay is loaded with so many revelations. Thank you once again.
Thank you again for sharing your story with such honesty and depth.
I'd like to ask you, if possible, to elaborate on two aspects that seem fundamental to those of us trying to better understand these situations:
What exactly led you to identify as trans at age 12?
Beyond cultural influences, could you explain the root of that suffering or discomfort, which at the time you could only translate as "being born in the wrong body" and identifying as trans?
And on the other hand, what would you understand today to be an appropriate response from parents or therapists when a child or adolescent expresses their identity as trans? What kinds of questions, attitudes, or messages could make a difference?
Thank you for your work and your willingness to talk about this from such a humane and thoughtful place. My respect.
Hi Eduardo. All of the questions you ask are things I’ve touched upon throughout my body of work. If I thought I could answer them in a single comment, I wouldn’t have a Substack. Feel free to check out my autism in girls series as a start.
Do you think that if you had been raised in a culture that treated you age-appropriately, you might have had a more gracious and less entitled response to your parents' attempts to communicate with you about where your inner obsessions were taking you? I mean they were being very respectful of the false idea that you were acting as a rational person making rational choices. They gave you countering narratives and information about downsides. That's the sort of information that a matured person, who is weighing information rationally, benefits from learning.
Your parents assumed you were both rational and mature, and also that you would be able to process factual, relevant information about the serious choices you were attracted to--regardless of its shocking nature, because after all, rational people don't expect gory procedures to become sanitized just because that's more pleasant.
It seems to me--I'm having to read between the lines--that you are saying you were none of these things, and it's their fault for not recognizing that and doing... something different.
Do you think that the feeling of "not being understood" is a feeling that can actually be filled up from the outside, without a change on the inside? I have my doubts, but if you do think so, then I wonder: how much "understanding" would it take, for them to get you to put down the binders? What would it look like? Is it possible for parents to give that limitless understanding, while also not affirming or encouraging more drastic steps? I am not sure it is but I could be wrong and I wonder what you envision. How difficult or unlikely is it for your parents to get it exactly right?
I am wondering if there is some desire there for the limitless cuddling love of the parent for the tiny child, at a time in childhood development when that's not possible any more. The body changes; there is no stopping time. In puberty, the ageless child falls into the stream of time and becomes mortal and heavy. Is that a failure of your parents?
I am wondering if your path would have felt different for you, if the culture didn't tell you and your parents that you are competent to make life-ending decisions before you are an adult. If the culture told you to be grateful to and for your parents (it doesn't seem like they were abusive or ideologically invasive, and I mean grateful for the fact of their being there, a shield between you and your own bad decisions). A more Confucian approach, if you will.
I am wondering if your experience would have been different if you didn't feel entitled to demand perfection from them...
What do you think?
Kids aren't too young or too fragile to hear that sort of message. If anything they are too fragile not to have solid parents who are able to be adults. That being-adult might not involve endless listening sessions. Endless-listening-understanding-accepting-balancing-permissive-protecting as a parent figure's desired behavior might have some similarities in its structure to the desire for daddy-lover-thrilling-soothing-chasing-catching-end-all-be-all that can be seen in romance novels. What do you think about that?
I think your first sentence about being raised in a different culture gives us a clue about your true motive in writing such a condescending and insulting comment to Maia. It has nothing to do with her writing and everything to do with her being Israeli. Your entire comment history consists of anti-Israel restacks. I’m not even sure this is a real person rather than an Iranian-funded AI bot, which seem to have invaded Substack in large numbers lately.
I don’t know if this one’s a bot or an actual Middle Eastern person who hates Israel. I got sucked into arguing with a bot a couple days ago and it took me a while to figure it out. Since then I’ve noticed more and more. If you look at their profile and comments you can tell what they’ve been prompted to do. Interestingly a lot of them seem to be posting and restacking gender critical content but then pulling stunts like this where they attack someone. Almost as if someone’s goal is to sow dissent within the gender critical community. Hmm…
No, she's wrong. You just aren't recognizing what your parents very likely did for you, and arguing against what may well have helped you--recognize it though you don't. you're presenting an argument that it's the parents who have to climb the hill of their child, rather than that the child has to learn, during adolescence, that they are going to be faced with that man is an island issue--and it's not the parents' fault.
How strange that you think I'm referring to any culture other than the contemporary American culture.
The neoteny of the culture is off the hook. The swing to permissive, abandoning, yet infantalizing parenting and culture at large has left children with no stable ground, expected to be able to make adult decisions while also being allowed to avoid growing up.
Children are chased after emotionally and coddled, and are not expected to acquire humility.
This has nothing to do with her family of origin being specifically this way or that, and everything to do with the entire professional-class culture.
There is another model that's very different from that: the filial devotion and duty of Confucianism.
I'm not recommending that, not really. I'm attached to individualism myself. But it does differ wildly from the American parenting of the late 80s and 90s.
There is a concept called good enough parenting. It struck me, reading that essay, that there is no place in the sentiments and entitlement expressed for any such type of parenting. But that doesn't mean much beyond, kids learn to expect what kids are told to expect.
As for your "bot" insult attempt: be so for real. Or go try to interact some more with a wider variety of people so you can recognize more thsn peurile affirmations. Children who never learn to shed entitlement as they become adults are set up for a life of unnecessary frustration and angst, and difficulty with respectful relationships. The questions I asked are serious questions and I wouldn't have bothered if I didn't see a potential for parents to think they have to be more perfect than perfect can be, to win the heart of a child who is struggling with entitlement as part of their problems.
Whoa, this response seems way overboard. I think this person is making an interesting, if delicate, point. The author asks several times, what do you thinkj? I think you are reading the post in the absolute most negative light possible, and accusing them if being a bot is really demeaning. I appreciated Maia's essay very much, and will send it to a friend who is struggling with her daughters trans identity. but i also appreciated this comment very much. I'm a parent and this type of balancing act of respecting my kids thoughts and desires, and imposing my will on them for their own good. I.e. paternalism. But, that's what it's about. So it's tricky to parse sometimes.
I encourage you to read my essays to understand the bigger picture, as you are making an incredible amount of assumptions that I do not have the time to correct. I’ve on multiple occasions said that no parent is perfect, but certain strategies are more effective than others. Let’s exercise the slightest bit of critical thinking, please
"Let's" not speak condescendingly to our elders. I have been through your age and I recognize the feelings and the missing maturity all too well. Unwelcome observations are not "assumptions" just because you don't feel comforted by them.
A careful writer will distinguish between felt-as-truth, and positionalities being observed and discussed as a contributing factor to the problem. Your narrative comes across as the former.
For all I know, you could be my age. I have no way of knowing you’re an “elder” (as you put it). The nature of your reflections is easily classic gen Z— though I suppose every generation can struggle with injecting their own words into someone else’s writing and treating their own words as if they’re the author’s intent.
Anyways, a careful reader would notice that as I discuss different phases of my life, I word the sentiment slightly differently, to reflect the nature of my understanding at that time. I cannot predict how every reader on planet earth will read my essay. I assume that parents who want to read the essay for its potential insights, will do so in good faith. That’s who I’m writing for— the good faith, intelligent, critical reader who can handle more than one truth at once.
I will mention, as a followon to the concept that your piece must stand alone: one of the beauties of substack is that a writer, no matter their stage of development, can work on their craft with immediate feedback.
This requires humility. Putting work before the public requires it no matter where it's done. Trying to savage someone who responds with a critique you don't like is not how it's done.
1. I have throughout multiple essays expressed gratitude to my parents and 2. Do you think that family dynamics play no role in the behavior of teenagers?
Your comment doesn't even make sense. And it's clear you aren't integrating what I have said.
It very much appears to me that you do not yet stand back and look objectively at yourself. That is not the same thing as thinking a lot about what you want and what you feel is lacking.
I am not going to go read a bunch of your writing to try to get to know you. Your post is what it is. It stands alone. An audience cannot be compelled, not even by writing incompletely and then saying that the rest is somewhere else and has to be dug for.
I am sorry child, you are not bringing the skills. I do understand that there are some stylistic traditions that privilege setting up a puzzle, or using the excuse that a puzzle is what was intended, rather than communicating clearly. If you are intentionally doing that, then you're privileging games over communicating with parents about this issue. If you are not intentionally doing that, then don't use aesthetics as an excuse for writing as though you embody the self-centered immaturity of the childish attitude which, unchecked, can lead a child down the path you've described.
However you are not embodying maturity, and you are still writing self-centeredly, so I cannot take your self-defense seriously.
Writers who demand that their audience engage in puzzles, or "read all their stuff" to understand them, are not treating their audience with respect and are demanding more time than they have the right to demand. But of course, it was the child's demand of all the parent's time--and then infinite quantities more--which I initially questioned.
I have told visual artists this before and it applies to writers as well: if you have to stand in front of your piece, explaining it and correcting people's "wrong" (as you view it) interpretations of what you've made, you aren't done. It isn't done.
Aye, there’s the rub! You’ve got so many thoughts about my writing and communication style and no essays of your own showcasing a form of communication you find to be better.
Maia- I always enjoy your writing and your honesty. It is so interesting how a parent’s fear of harm to their child can be interpreted by the child as rejection. It is a true dilemma for parents on how to parent a child through this distress, because, truthfully, in the beginning a parent is blindsided and the most likely response is disbelief and fear. Meanwhile, the child has been brainwashed to think this is rejection so they distrust us. It took me a long time to learn how to communicate better, but that distrust has already settled in, so any conversation with my daughter is much more challenging and defensive. I know we can work through it, but it is not easy. I appreciate your work on this complicated topic.
I wasn’t brainwashed to think of this as a type of rejection back in 2012. I experienced it as rejection because the things parents do in panic activate a child’s nervous system 😂
Yes, that is true. I suppose today’s kids get the added “rejection” language from outside sources that exacerbate an already challenging situation. There is ann Important difference between the internal vs external factors.
You could walk away from all of this Maya & one day maybe you will. But you’re obviously a feeling person who has been & is still on a journey. Being public with your thoughts is brave & a gamble too. You are helping people & you are probably helping yourself too. I’m happy for the healing you have managed to reach with your parents
Maia, thank you. Thank you for writing and sharing and encouraging parents; thank you for researching and thinking and pivoting and doing the incredibly important and difficult work of growing up. You are such an inspiration to me, and I hope I can love my son more competently as a result of your sharing. Mazel tov.
You have no idea how happy this comment made me
Well said. I am happy you and your parents are finding your way back to each other.
So am I ❤️
Maia, this is an incredibly important piece of writing! Thank you!
Thank you so much ❤️❤️❤️❤️
"I spent yesterday celebrating my 26th birthday and contemplating my own mortality… as one does around my age."
I find this quote from the very beginning of your essay amusing. Assuming you make it through another 26 years, you'll be 52 years old. I'm *46* and I would be indubitably lucky to make it to twice that age (92). LOL It took me until I was about 40 to start thinking of my own mortality. But I've come to the conclusion that "Memento Mori" is a good piece of advice for adults of any age.
To be fair, I’ve lived through middle eastern war so mortality is on the forefront of my mind. I don’t want to live a life I will regret
I said I find it amusing. Not wrong. Not wrong at all. :)
:)
Another brilliant essay, Maia. The average book on parenting can never delve into this issue & how to respond to it with such clarity, honesty and insight. Every essay is loaded with so many revelations. Thank you once again.
Thank you for reading and commenting on my essays!
Dear Maia,
Thank you again for sharing your story with such honesty and depth.
I'd like to ask you, if possible, to elaborate on two aspects that seem fundamental to those of us trying to better understand these situations:
What exactly led you to identify as trans at age 12?
Beyond cultural influences, could you explain the root of that suffering or discomfort, which at the time you could only translate as "being born in the wrong body" and identifying as trans?
And on the other hand, what would you understand today to be an appropriate response from parents or therapists when a child or adolescent expresses their identity as trans? What kinds of questions, attitudes, or messages could make a difference?
Thank you for your work and your willingness to talk about this from such a humane and thoughtful place. My respect.
Hi Eduardo. All of the questions you ask are things I’ve touched upon throughout my body of work. If I thought I could answer them in a single comment, I wouldn’t have a Substack. Feel free to check out my autism in girls series as a start.
Do you think that if you had been raised in a culture that treated you age-appropriately, you might have had a more gracious and less entitled response to your parents' attempts to communicate with you about where your inner obsessions were taking you? I mean they were being very respectful of the false idea that you were acting as a rational person making rational choices. They gave you countering narratives and information about downsides. That's the sort of information that a matured person, who is weighing information rationally, benefits from learning.
Your parents assumed you were both rational and mature, and also that you would be able to process factual, relevant information about the serious choices you were attracted to--regardless of its shocking nature, because after all, rational people don't expect gory procedures to become sanitized just because that's more pleasant.
It seems to me--I'm having to read between the lines--that you are saying you were none of these things, and it's their fault for not recognizing that and doing... something different.
Do you think that the feeling of "not being understood" is a feeling that can actually be filled up from the outside, without a change on the inside? I have my doubts, but if you do think so, then I wonder: how much "understanding" would it take, for them to get you to put down the binders? What would it look like? Is it possible for parents to give that limitless understanding, while also not affirming or encouraging more drastic steps? I am not sure it is but I could be wrong and I wonder what you envision. How difficult or unlikely is it for your parents to get it exactly right?
I am wondering if there is some desire there for the limitless cuddling love of the parent for the tiny child, at a time in childhood development when that's not possible any more. The body changes; there is no stopping time. In puberty, the ageless child falls into the stream of time and becomes mortal and heavy. Is that a failure of your parents?
I am wondering if your path would have felt different for you, if the culture didn't tell you and your parents that you are competent to make life-ending decisions before you are an adult. If the culture told you to be grateful to and for your parents (it doesn't seem like they were abusive or ideologically invasive, and I mean grateful for the fact of their being there, a shield between you and your own bad decisions). A more Confucian approach, if you will.
I am wondering if your experience would have been different if you didn't feel entitled to demand perfection from them...
What do you think?
Kids aren't too young or too fragile to hear that sort of message. If anything they are too fragile not to have solid parents who are able to be adults. That being-adult might not involve endless listening sessions. Endless-listening-understanding-accepting-balancing-permissive-protecting as a parent figure's desired behavior might have some similarities in its structure to the desire for daddy-lover-thrilling-soothing-chasing-catching-end-all-be-all that can be seen in romance novels. What do you think about that?
I think your first sentence about being raised in a different culture gives us a clue about your true motive in writing such a condescending and insulting comment to Maia. It has nothing to do with her writing and everything to do with her being Israeli. Your entire comment history consists of anti-Israel restacks. I’m not even sure this is a real person rather than an Iranian-funded AI bot, which seem to have invaded Substack in large numbers lately.
Ohhhh snap! I think you’re right, Dee.
I don’t know if this one’s a bot or an actual Middle Eastern person who hates Israel. I got sucked into arguing with a bot a couple days ago and it took me a while to figure it out. Since then I’ve noticed more and more. If you look at their profile and comments you can tell what they’ve been prompted to do. Interestingly a lot of them seem to be posting and restacking gender critical content but then pulling stunts like this where they attack someone. Almost as if someone’s goal is to sow dissent within the gender critical community. Hmm…
No, she's wrong. You just aren't recognizing what your parents very likely did for you, and arguing against what may well have helped you--recognize it though you don't. you're presenting an argument that it's the parents who have to climb the hill of their child, rather than that the child has to learn, during adolescence, that they are going to be faced with that man is an island issue--and it's not the parents' fault.
It is the human condition.
How strange that you think I'm referring to any culture other than the contemporary American culture.
The neoteny of the culture is off the hook. The swing to permissive, abandoning, yet infantalizing parenting and culture at large has left children with no stable ground, expected to be able to make adult decisions while also being allowed to avoid growing up.
Children are chased after emotionally and coddled, and are not expected to acquire humility.
This has nothing to do with her family of origin being specifically this way or that, and everything to do with the entire professional-class culture.
There is another model that's very different from that: the filial devotion and duty of Confucianism.
I'm not recommending that, not really. I'm attached to individualism myself. But it does differ wildly from the American parenting of the late 80s and 90s.
There is a concept called good enough parenting. It struck me, reading that essay, that there is no place in the sentiments and entitlement expressed for any such type of parenting. But that doesn't mean much beyond, kids learn to expect what kids are told to expect.
As for your "bot" insult attempt: be so for real. Or go try to interact some more with a wider variety of people so you can recognize more thsn peurile affirmations. Children who never learn to shed entitlement as they become adults are set up for a life of unnecessary frustration and angst, and difficulty with respectful relationships. The questions I asked are serious questions and I wouldn't have bothered if I didn't see a potential for parents to think they have to be more perfect than perfect can be, to win the heart of a child who is struggling with entitlement as part of their problems.
Whoa, this response seems way overboard. I think this person is making an interesting, if delicate, point. The author asks several times, what do you thinkj? I think you are reading the post in the absolute most negative light possible, and accusing them if being a bot is really demeaning. I appreciated Maia's essay very much, and will send it to a friend who is struggling with her daughters trans identity. but i also appreciated this comment very much. I'm a parent and this type of balancing act of respecting my kids thoughts and desires, and imposing my will on them for their own good. I.e. paternalism. But, that's what it's about. So it's tricky to parse sometimes.
I encourage you to read my essays to understand the bigger picture, as you are making an incredible amount of assumptions that I do not have the time to correct. I’ve on multiple occasions said that no parent is perfect, but certain strategies are more effective than others. Let’s exercise the slightest bit of critical thinking, please
"Let's" not speak condescendingly to our elders. I have been through your age and I recognize the feelings and the missing maturity all too well. Unwelcome observations are not "assumptions" just because you don't feel comforted by them.
A careful writer will distinguish between felt-as-truth, and positionalities being observed and discussed as a contributing factor to the problem. Your narrative comes across as the former.
For all I know, you could be my age. I have no way of knowing you’re an “elder” (as you put it). The nature of your reflections is easily classic gen Z— though I suppose every generation can struggle with injecting their own words into someone else’s writing and treating their own words as if they’re the author’s intent.
Anyways, a careful reader would notice that as I discuss different phases of my life, I word the sentiment slightly differently, to reflect the nature of my understanding at that time. I cannot predict how every reader on planet earth will read my essay. I assume that parents who want to read the essay for its potential insights, will do so in good faith. That’s who I’m writing for— the good faith, intelligent, critical reader who can handle more than one truth at once.
I will mention, as a followon to the concept that your piece must stand alone: one of the beauties of substack is that a writer, no matter their stage of development, can work on their craft with immediate feedback.
This requires humility. Putting work before the public requires it no matter where it's done. Trying to savage someone who responds with a critique you don't like is not how it's done.
1. I have throughout multiple essays expressed gratitude to my parents and 2. Do you think that family dynamics play no role in the behavior of teenagers?
Your comment doesn't even make sense. And it's clear you aren't integrating what I have said.
It very much appears to me that you do not yet stand back and look objectively at yourself. That is not the same thing as thinking a lot about what you want and what you feel is lacking.
I am not going to go read a bunch of your writing to try to get to know you. Your post is what it is. It stands alone. An audience cannot be compelled, not even by writing incompletely and then saying that the rest is somewhere else and has to be dug for.
I am sorry child, you are not bringing the skills. I do understand that there are some stylistic traditions that privilege setting up a puzzle, or using the excuse that a puzzle is what was intended, rather than communicating clearly. If you are intentionally doing that, then you're privileging games over communicating with parents about this issue. If you are not intentionally doing that, then don't use aesthetics as an excuse for writing as though you embody the self-centered immaturity of the childish attitude which, unchecked, can lead a child down the path you've described.
However you are not embodying maturity, and you are still writing self-centeredly, so I cannot take your self-defense seriously.
Writers who demand that their audience engage in puzzles, or "read all their stuff" to understand them, are not treating their audience with respect and are demanding more time than they have the right to demand. But of course, it was the child's demand of all the parent's time--and then infinite quantities more--which I initially questioned.
I have told visual artists this before and it applies to writers as well: if you have to stand in front of your piece, explaining it and correcting people's "wrong" (as you view it) interpretations of what you've made, you aren't done. It isn't done.
Aye, there’s the rub! You’ve got so many thoughts about my writing and communication style and no essays of your own showcasing a form of communication you find to be better.
This isn't about me. I had questions for you.
Maia- I always enjoy your writing and your honesty. It is so interesting how a parent’s fear of harm to their child can be interpreted by the child as rejection. It is a true dilemma for parents on how to parent a child through this distress, because, truthfully, in the beginning a parent is blindsided and the most likely response is disbelief and fear. Meanwhile, the child has been brainwashed to think this is rejection so they distrust us. It took me a long time to learn how to communicate better, but that distrust has already settled in, so any conversation with my daughter is much more challenging and defensive. I know we can work through it, but it is not easy. I appreciate your work on this complicated topic.
I wasn’t brainwashed to think of this as a type of rejection back in 2012. I experienced it as rejection because the things parents do in panic activate a child’s nervous system 😂
Yes, that is true. I suppose today’s kids get the added “rejection” language from outside sources that exacerbate an already challenging situation. There is ann Important difference between the internal vs external factors.
Undoubtedly these kids have a far more robust pre-written script to memorize than I did
very true
You could walk away from all of this Maya & one day maybe you will. But you’re obviously a feeling person who has been & is still on a journey. Being public with your thoughts is brave & a gamble too. You are helping people & you are probably helping yourself too. I’m happy for the healing you have managed to reach with your parents