Signs my teen is non-binary
Children who do continue to feel they are a different gender from the one assigned at birth may be non-binary. Sometimes, teenagers who are non-binary want you to use they/them pronouns. Each adolescent and their gender identity develops in different ways. For some, it begins as young as three years old. When your child talks about their gender or being transgender, you may some questions. Family therapy and LGBTQIA+ counseling can help. Some teenagers who are non-binary may feel they do not belong to any gender. Others, may feel they belong to both male and female genders. LGBTQIA+ non-binary counseling in East Lyme, Connecticut at available at Wisdom Within Counseling.
To add, LGBTQIA+ children teenagers who identify as non-binary may ask for a different name too.
Sometimes, adolescents identify as agender, bi-gender, or two spirited. If your teenager feels that their gender is outside of the male and female boxes, they may identify as non-binary. A child who is transgender may begin to talk about not feeling right around two or three years old. To add, your boy may ask to grow their hair long to be more feminine in their gender expression. This may be a sign your son is transgender.
Also, a transgender girl may say, “I am not a boy. Call me Susie.” Even though they have a boy body, a transgender child will talk about being a girl all the time.
More over, most children can easily label what gender identity they feel they are. In a transgender person, their hormones on the inside do not match the outside. On that note, a young toddler can easily talk about being either a boy or a girl. Then, around age four, children feel more clear on if they are transgender or not. Looking for signs around gender exploration and working with a transgender specialist can help you and them gain clarity. Over time, children develop a stronger, more stable sense of their gender identity.
Support your non-binary adolescent in Old Lyme, Connecticut by reading books on gender expression
If you do not have representations of LGBTQIA+, queer or transgender people in your life, read about them together. Often, a child feels like an outcast because they don’t feel normal. Especially, LGBTQIA+, gender questioning, or transgender children feel like outcasts without family support. And, reading books about other children and adolescents can help you more easily talk to them about their expression. Also, by reading about different sexual orientations, your teenager will be more self-aware. Reading about LGBTQIA+ teenagers together will provide a safe place to talk, explore. LGBTQIA+ non-binary counseling is available at Wisdom Within Counseling in East Lyme, Connecticut.
Transgender affirming book recommendations for families and children who are gender questioning or gender transitioning
Julian Is A Mermaid – Child Appropriate
Jacob’s New Dress – Child Appropriate
The Prince and The Dress Maker – Good for Teens and Young Adults
Call Me Max – Child Appropriate
Sparkle Boy – Child Appropriate
The Gender Book – Thegenderbook.com
Introducing Teddy: A gentle story about gender and friendship
The Boy & the Bindi.
Bunnybear.
I am Jazz
Annie’s Plaid Shirt
Red: A Crayon’s Story
When Aidan Became a Big Brother
They, She, He easy as ABC
Felix Yz (Middle school age)
George by Alex Gino.
Gracefully Grayson by Ami Polonsky
The Moon Within by Aida Salazar.
Steven Universe by Rebecca Sugar
Zenobia July by Lisa Bunker
My Princess Boy
I’m A Girl!
One Of A Kind Like Me
The Other Boy by Hennessy
Jack (Not Jackie)
Oftentimes, children and teens are questioning their gender, clothes, hair, dress, and talking about sexual orientation. When they have open communication with parents at home, they are more likely to accept themselves.
How can books help in LGBTQIA+ non-binary counseling?
Also, books can create a sense of positive connection between children and parents. From picture books to novels, discuss the book together to normalize experiences. Goto the Old Lyme library and read books about non-binary, transgender, or non-gender conforming friends.
At Wisdom Within Counseling, our team of creative therapists offer child and adolescent counseling in Old Lyme, Connecticut.
To begin, click the button below for a free phone consult for LGBTQIA+ educated and affirming alternative, creative, holistic child and adolescent counseling in Old Lyme, CT.
Children can also understand gender and sexuality and its okay to talk about it at home.
Maybe, your preschooler comes home and you ask her about the little boy she has been playing with at school. Often times, adults will ask the child if she has a crush on him or if she likes him. That is teaching your child about heterosexuality.
Start being a sex positive family and using correct anatomical parts is part of LGBTQIA+ non-binary counseling.
Ask your child about what their gender means to them and talk about sex in age appropriate ways. Children as young as 5-8 years old may ask about sex. Plus, reading children’s books on sex and where babies come from can help your child understand what their body is doing. Sex positive families help children understand consent and healthy sexual boundaries too.
Openly talk about different expressions of gender as an extension of LGBTQIA+ non-binary counseling.
Watch tv shows with gay people and make positive comments about the LGBTQIA+ community. Get involved in Pride Parades to show affirming support. Talk about your own sexual orientation with your children to show confidence. Without knowing it, too much emphasis on being a male or female causes a child to feel anxious being themselves when they are transgender or gay.
To begin, click the button below for a phone consult for LGBTQIA+ non-binary counseling in East Lyme, Connecticut.
At Wisdom Within Counseling, child and adolescent counseling supports all sexual orientations and non-binary exploration.
How can holistic child and adolescent counseling in Old Lyme, Connecticut support in LGBTQIA+ affirming language at home?
Now, children and adolescents are certainly not sexually active. But, they are learning about sexuality. Therapy can teach your teenager about homosexuality, bisexuality, pansexuality, and even asexuality. Adolescents are so malleable and soak up new information like a sponge. And, they often learn new things about gender and sexuality from peers at school.
So, making your home a LGBTQIA+ safe place is very positive for their development. Going to an LGBTQIA+ affirming therapist can help your child feel safe coming out too.
At Wisdom Within Counseling, we specialize in helping children and teens explore gender and sexuality. If your child is simply questioning their gender, working with an LGBTQIA+, queer, and transgender affirming therapist at Wisdom Within can offer family guidance.
Teach about diversity in our home to help your adolescent feel safe
Sometimes, if you were raised by high religious parents, you may fear your child being gay. Adults may have their own limitations that cause a teenager to feel rejected at home. Often, if your parents didn’t embrace your sexual orientation growing up, you may feel pressure to shut out your child’s gayness or sexual orientation exploration. Parents who are highly religious may need LGBTQIA+ non-binary counseling to learn to love their gay, bisexual, or transgender child.
Wisdom Within Counseling helps parents gain acceptance, and praise your gay, bisexual, or non-binary child.
Nothing you educate your child or teenager on will make your child gay. For instance, teaching your child how babies are made, about the uterus, and birth doesn’t make yoru child want to have a baby. Instead, providing your child age appropriate education helps them feel competent and aware. As well, talking about gay people helps your child be more inclusive and kind to all people. Learn about LGBTQIA+ in family counseling and how to be affirming at home. As well, offering LGBTQIA+ education provides togetherness and connection at home.
Essentially, teenagers and people are born gay, bisexual, or transgender.
Parents can not make their child less gay or less bisexual. No amount of name calling, belittling, or anger makes your child less gay or less transgender. Also, parents who use rejection, threats, conversion camps, or physical violence end up severely damaging their child. These behaviors are abusive and often based in fear and lack of LGBTQIA+ education. Yes, it might feel scary, unexpected, or unknown if your child comes out as gay or transgender. And, the best thing you can do if you feel concerned or afraid is seek LGBTQIA+ parenting therapy at Wisdom Within Counseling. Having your child talk to someone who is not their parent can also help them have a safe place to release big feelings around gender.
As a parent, we can offer positive parent sessions in LGBTQIA+ non-binary counseling.
Plus, positive parenting skills take time to learn and the help of a LGBTQIA+ non-binary counselor and specialist. If you feel confused about your child’s sexual orientation, we can offer you LGBTQIA+ non-binary counseling.
By attending family therapy, you can help your teenager feel more confident in themselves.
And, parenting therapy will also help your LGBTQIA+ or gay teenager feel acceptance at home. When parents have strong religious or political views, a teenager can feel rejection or hurt. Likewise, LGBTQIA+ family therapy can make your bond with your teenager grow stronger. And, if your child comes out as bisexual, gay, or pansexual, they will feel safer living in the home environment with your acceptance.
If you, as a parent, have any limitations to being LGBTQIA+ affirming, the team at Wisdom Within Counseling can help.
Parents may ned their own safe place to talk about worries, concerns, and limiting beliefs. Any limiting beliefs can lead your LGBTQIA+ teenager to dread being around you. You can talk about your own religious upbringing and the pressures you feel, and then talk about accepting your gay or non-binary child. The team of creative therapists at Wisdom Within Counseling bring an LGBTQIA+ non-binary counseling approach.
Wisdom Within Counseling specializes LGBTQIA+ non-binary counseling.
Openly talking about LGBTQIA+ and gender expression subjects with your children will teach them inclusivity.
By creating an LGBQIA+ affirming home, you child knows that you are a safe person to talk to.
LGBTQIA+ non-binary counseling can give your family the language to express themselves. Also, family therapy supports listening to what your teen has to say. Importantly, having the words to talk about these things will not sway them either way. A lot of parents worry that by talking about gayness, they will make their child more gay. To note, not talking about gay or LGBTQIA+ can’t stop your child from being gay. Many children grow up in non-inclusive homes and still become a member of the LGBTQIA+ community. Other children grow up with LGBTQIA+ parents and turn out cisgender and heterosexual. Just being affirming and accepting can be a great gift to your teenager or young adult. At Wisdom Within Counseling, we can support you and your family through LGBTQIA+ non-binary counseling.
Wisdom Within Counseling can help families come closer together over LGBTQIA+ topics.
For help talking to your children about LGBTQIA+, the team at Wisdom Within Counseling in Old Lyme, Connecticut can support within open communication.
When adolescents feel rejection from their family, they self-harm, cut, develop eating disorders, perfectionism, and anger.
If you want to make your home more LGBTQIA+ affirming and transgender affirming, we can help. Our team at Wisdom Within Counseling can recommend books and resources to help your family feel a sense of non-binary and queer togetherness. In sessions, we can support diversity and normalize all genders and sexual orientations.
To begin, click the button below for a free phone consult to learn about how your anxious child or adolescent with poor esteem can feel support holistic child and adolescent counseling in Old Lyme, CT.
So why is this important and how do we apply these practices to children at a young age?
Girls and boys receive different treatment starting from a young age due to social learning. Often, children know a lot more about gender than we realize. Observing everything, children pick up quickly on unspoken gender stereotypes and gender rules. Plus, research shows that young girls are punished at a much higher rate for interrupting than boys. Inadvertently, girls may develop more low self-worth as a result. And, LGBTQIA+ non-binary counseling supports breaking gender stereotypes. Children and teenagers can learn to talk about emotions and feelings in positive ways through counseling. Lastly, children and teenagers need a safe place to talk about anxiety, anger, and jealousy in a safe environment.
LGBTQIA+ non-binary counseling support good grades and self-esteem
Children who are struggling in school may be struggling with gender identity or sexual orientation. Grades may be dropping or your teenager may refuse to attend school. Also, LGBTQIA+ non-binary counseling can help your child or teenager learn depression coping tools. Depression may be more present when a teenager doesn’t feel acceptance at school. Maybe, they are getting bullied by peers for their gender expression or transgender presentation. Furthermore, LGBTQIA+ non-binary counseling in East Lyme, Connecticut supports school motivation.
Healthy emotional expression in LGBTQIA+ non-binary counseling in East Lyme, Connecticut
Family counseling can help your boys and girls cry and talk about their feelings. Boys are often told not to cry or made fun of for crying. Bullying at school and home can cause depression. And, when boys do cry, friends, peers, and parents may even call them, “a baby.” At Wisdom Within Counseling, we teach healthy emotional expression skills. Essentially, emotional expression is not something we learn at school or at home most times. Letting go and self-acceptance are muscles just like working out at the gym. Learning to cope in healthy ways and learning to cry are important coping skills.
So, LGBTQIA+ family therapy can help you embrace crying in your home and see it as a healthy coping tool.
Often, boys are told not to cry. Unfortunately, adult men then need more help expressing feeling. When boys get criticized for being emotional, they grow up into angry, or shut off men. As a result, boys grow into men who do not know how to share feelings or name them. In adulthood, from not being allowed to cry, all a boy knows how to do is be explosive, angry, or show frustration. Wisdom Within Counseling supports emotional expression and development in LGBTQIA+ affirming therapy.
To begin, click the button below for a phone consult for LGBTQIA+ non-binary counseling.
Bottling emotions up leads to maladaptive coping mechanisms such as anxiety, depression, alcohol and drug abuse, as well as a range of other mental health disorders.
As a parent, how can I help my child develop self-confidence and overcome anxiety today?
When it comes to homework or sports, praise effort versus results. Now, praising effort versus results fosters work ethic and a strong sense of self-confidence and self-worth. It might feel like your LGBTQIA+ teenager is refusing to goto school or depressed. However, they may be struggling with anxiety and depression.
Talking about your teen in a positive way can boost their self-esteem. Especially with young girls, compliment qualities other than physical beauty. Often, children and teens feels social pressure to change their body shape or weight to, “fit in.” In LGBTQIA+ non-binary counseling, you can learn to communicate that self-worth comes from more than how they look.
We can help families overcome body shame and build self-acceptance.
If parents criticize their own body shape, weight, or any part of themselves in front of their children, it can create an inner critic in children.
Your children soak up everything they hear. If they hear you criticizing your body shape or weight, your child may think they are ugly and develop an inner critic too. Children with low self-worth show adults through perfectionism, self-criticism, anxiety, fear, depression, and anger. Whether your child is feeling insecure about their body shape, or angry and feeling like an outcast, our team of LGBTQIA+ counselors in East Lyme, CT can help. Family therapy can support positive body image and self-esteem.
At Wisdom Within Counseling, holistic child and adolescent counseling in Old Lyme, CT, children learn to express emotions in healthy ways.
How can holistic child and adolescent counseling in Old Lyme, Connecticut support confidence?
Rates of anxiety, depression, and eating disorders are growing at a much higher rate in teenagers. To add, teenagers feel the need to change themselves to fit in at school. Also, teenagers always crave a sense of belonging.
Partly, increases in anxiety and eating disorders in adolescents are from ever growing beauty standards. At the same time, girls and boys do not receive positive body image messages. Family therapy at Wisdom Within Counseling can help bring a value of acceptance into your home.
As well, criticism from family members who may be fad dieting themselves impacts adolescents too. Eating disorders, anxiety, depression, and fear of not “fitting in,” are very real concerns for youth.
Creative, holistic therapies help LGBTQIA+ and non-binary children and anxious adolescents build a lifelong toolbox of self-love strategies.
At Wisdom Within Counseling in Old Lyme, Connecticut, we offer children and adolescents art therapies, yoga therapies, music therapies, and nature therapies.
Creative therapies help LGBTQIA+ children and teenagers develop a healthy sense of self-worth.
Our team of creative, alternative child and adolescent therapists provide lifelong positive coping tools for self-esteem.
Creative, art, yoga, music, and nature therapies give children and adolescents a toolbox of coping strategies for social emotional learning and self-acceptance.
LGBTQIA+ teenagers need a safe, creative place to express emotions in healthy ways.
Holistic child and adolescent counseling in Old Lyme, CT helps children who don’t have the words. Sometimes, teenagers with selective mutism may also be struggling with gender questioning feelings.
Over time, through play therapy, children can learn to talk about how they feel. As well, play therapy is the language of a child. So, sitting and talking will often not be helpful for an anxious child. Play therapy, art therapy, yoga therapy, and music therapy support confidence and self-esteem.
To begin, click the button below for a free phone consult to learn more about self-esteem tools through holistic child and adolescent counseling in Old Lyme, CT.
LGBTQIA+ non-binary counseling can help your teenager build self-love and acceptance no matter what others or peers say, do, or look like.
There are so many ways to foster independence and confidence in children from a young age. And, if you feel that your child could benefit from LGBTQIA+ affirmative psychotherapy, our team specializes in this area. Wisdom Within Counseling in Old Lyme, Connecticut offers creative child and adolescent therapy focusing on self-worth and confidence.
At Wisdom Within Counseling, we support anxious children and teens in building confidence skills.
Holistic child and adolescent counseling supports self-esteem and mental clarity. Children can know and identify when they feel anxious and build strategies to confidently overcome it. We offer art therapies, yoga therapies, music therapies, and outdoor nature therapies too. Our team of therapists for children and teenagers help youth learn from past bad decisions.
If you need help supporting confidence in your child or teen, our team at Wisdom Within Counseling specializes in child and teen therapy in Old Lyme. From there, your child can grow up into a confidence, free thinking adult with a strong voice.
