When Your Child Is Working Out Who They Are

One Sunday evening, a mother is halfway through loading the dishwasher when her thirteen-year-old comes down for a glass of water. The child stays at the counter for longer than a glass of water takes, and then says something her mother wasn’t ready for. It’s about who the child is, or might be, or has been working out she might be, and the mother realises there and then that she doesn’t have the words she would have liked.

She says something brief and warm and probably awkward, and hugs the child, who goes back upstairs. Then she stands for a long time with the dishwasher door still open, unsure what was being asked of her, what to do tomorrow, who to talk to, or what, if anything, she’s supposed to do next.

Some version of this comes up often in our work with parents. What the child says varies: sometimes it’s about sexuality, sometimes about gender, and sometimes it’s a broader question about identity, about not fitting what the family had assumed. What doesn’t vary is how stirred up the parent feels, and how much turns on what the parent does next.

This chapter leaves the question itself alone and looks at your stance as a parent. The working out is your child’s. Your job is to be the kind of parent she can safely do it around.

What is actually happening

When a child works out who she is, she’s doing the central task of adolescence, which starts earlier and goes on later than is usually assumed. A four-year-old playing with what she likes to be called is doing a version of it. So is the thirteen-year-old who comes down for a glass of water, and so is the seventeen-year-old. In some respects, all of us are doing versions of it across a lifetime.

A parent’s instinct is often to want the question resolved, and that’s understandable. Here, though, it’s almost always the wrong instinct. In childhood and adolescence, identity is a long and often non-linear process, and it doesn’t come with an answer for you to receive. Day to day, your job is to be the calm, reliable adult she can come back to whenever she needs to.

You don’t need to know what to do. Listen, don’t panic, keep loving her, and don’t take the question away from her by pretending you can see it more clearly than she can. If you race to a conclusion, in either direction, you’re telling her, without meaning to, that she has to work this out quickly.

The cultural conversation about these subjects has become unusually loud and polarised, and parents come to that first conversation with more noise in their heads than the situation calls for. Often the first thing to do is turn the volume down.

The volume in your own head

If you’re reading this, you’ll also have been reading the news. The cultural debates about sexuality and, particularly, gender in young people are loud, contested and changing. Reasonable people acting in good faith hold very different views. At the time of writing, clinical services for gender-questioning young people specifically are being actively reorganised in the UK. The Cass Review and the NHS England Gender Service for Children have set out a framework that current NHS practice works within, and the debates about that framework continue in public.

The Parent Book does not try to resolve those debates, and it does not take a position on them. What we can say, as counsellors writing to a parent, is what’s true about the child in front of you. She’s your child, and she’s working something out. You don’t owe the public conversation an answer to the question she has asked. In the short term, the answer is the family around her.

In practice, that means turning down the public conversation in your own head before you respond to your child. Whatever question the internet is having, she’s asking her own, in her family, out of her particular history.

If the noise has become too much to manage, a counsellor of your own is the right place to turn. The BACP and NCPS directories list counsellors who work with parents on family and identity questions. Talking it through with someone whose job is to listen and not to persuade is one of the most useful things you can do in this position.

What helps in the first conversation

Whatever you said first, awkward or not, has already done the most important thing it could do: it acknowledged what she told you without rejecting it. She took a risk by saying anything at all. Your first response doesn’t have to be brilliant; it has to be safe.

Next, don’t interrogate her. Children, and especially adolescents, don’t tell you things in finished sentences. They tell you in pieces, over days and weeks, often somewhere low-key and while their hands are busy. The first thing she says is rarely all of it. If you race to the second and third questions, “how long have you known, are you sure, what about”, you put her in the position of having to explain herself, and a child who has to explain herself often stops talking.

What helps is the approach we call drip, drip in the chapter on the conversations parents avoid. Keep the first response brief and warm: “Thank you for telling me. I love you, and we can talk about this whenever you want.” Then let the conversation rest. The next drip comes days later, in the car or on a walk to the corner shop: “I’ve been thinking about what you told me on Sunday, and I’m still here. Tell me whatever you want me to know.” Then leave a silence, and let her decide how much more to say.

It also helps to go on being her parent in all the other ways she’s used to: the school run, supper, the usual weekend. When a child has said something for the first time and finds that family life goes on as it always has, she learns, without anyone saying so, that what she has told you hasn’t taken over everything. You still love her, the dog still needs walking, and the world hasn’t ended on her account.

What rarely helps is an immediate sit-down family meeting, an announcement to the wider family, or passing it on quickly to friends. By telling you, she hasn’t said you can tell anyone else. Ask her what she wants other people in the family to know, and when: “I’m not going to talk to anyone about what you told me unless you want me to. Tell me when you’re ready.” If you say it early, it’s one of the most valuable things you can give her.

What does not help

These are the sentences that most often end the conversation. They come from parents with the best intentions.

Are you sure. By saying anything at all, she has told you she’s been thinking about this for longer than this conversation. Are you sure asks her, in effect, to prove herself, which is the opposite of what she needs from you at that point.

It’s just a phase. It might be, or it might not. Either way, it isn’t for you to predict, and using it as reassurance teaches her that the alternative would have been unacceptable.

“Have you been on the internet.” You’ll have read about the cultural conversation around social contagion. At home, though, the question sounds to her like an accusation: my parent thinks I’m imitating something. That shuts you out of the conversation.

Don’t tell anyone yet. This can be wise, but she can also hear it as shame. If what you’re really talking about is timing, say this instead: “I want to make sure you decide who knows, and when, and that I follow your lead.”

“I always knew.” She needs the moment to be hers, and this turns it into a confirmation of something you think you already knew privately.

“Whatever you are, I love you.” This is closer, but whatever makes it sound as if she has asked which category she belongs to. “I love you, and I’m here for you whatever you’re working out” is cleaner. The first is conditional in a way you didn’t mean, and the second isn’t.

More than the particular words, what helps is a voice that tells her: I’ve heard you, I’m not panicking, I love you, and we’ll work this out together. That voice comes from having turned down the noise in your own head, and from the long history of trust your family has been building since she was small.

The school, the GP, and the route through professional help

If you’re unsure what to do next, or your child is struggling more than you can manage alone, the established professional routes in the UK are the right ones to take. In our experience, they’re also where you’ll find the most consistent, least politicised and most calmly clinical support.

The school is your first partner. The pastoral lead or form tutor knows her day at school and what’s happening socially around her, and in most UK schools is well placed to support a young person through questions about identity with discretion and care. The Designated Safeguarding Lead is the right adult to bring in if you have any concerns of a safeguarding kind: bullying, online contact that worries you, sustained distress. Raising a concern with the DSL is not handing her over; it is bringing another professional adult into her support.

The GP is the gateway to NHS clinical routes, and CAMHS is the route for any sustained mental-health concern. The GP can also advise on local services and, where specialist NHS routes apply to the child’s question, on the relevant clinical pathway. NHS guidance is updated as things change, and the GP, working within current NHS frameworks, is the right person to advise on what is available now.

For longer-term family support, the Anna Freud Centre’s family-wellbeing resources are calm, clinically authoritative and easy for parents to read, and their work on adolescent development is among the best UK material we know. Family Lives’ confidential helpline, on 0808 800 2222, is the right line if you need to talk something through. NHS Every Mind Matters has general resources on young people’s mental health that cover parents’ wider concerns.

If the family would benefit from family therapy, the BACP and NCPS therapist directories are the place to look. Both bodies hold their members to ethical frameworks that require them to work within their competence and to follow current clinical guidance. The right counsellor works within the established UK ethical frameworks, goes at your child’s pace, and doesn’t take political positions, in either direction, on the contested parts of the field. If you’re unsure, your GP can advise.

At different ages

Working out who she is looks different at four, at nine, at thirteen and at seventeen. The bands below are a rough guide: children develop unevenly, and your child’s question may come up earlier or later than the band suggests.

If your child is between four and seven. Young children explore identity through play. Dressing up, playing roles, trying out names, announcing one day that she’s a dog and the next that she’s a fairy: all of this is a typical part of development at this age. Take her seriously without making a big thing of it: “That sounds fun. Tell me about it.” For children this young, the categories are fluid in ways they won’t be later. Be warm and curious, don’t look surprised, and don’t bring adult anxiety to something that, for her, is simply play. If her expression of identity is sustained and is causing distress at home or at school, the GP is the right person to talk to early on, as the gateway to current NHS advice for a child this young.

If your child is between seven and nine. She’s becoming more aware of social categories. She may ask about families, about same-sex couples she has seen, about what boy and girl mean, or about why she likes or doesn’t like the things her peers do. Give her honest answers that suit her age, and keep them brief and calm: Some families have two mums, some have two dads, some have one parent, and some have a mum and a dad. Then go back to whatever you were doing. Her school will be doing its own version of this in PSHE, so ask the class teacher what has been covered.

If your child is between nine and eleven. Children become more self-conscious in the years before secondary school, and with that come more conscious questions about sexuality and identity. Some children say something to a parent at this age; many don’t. Whether or not she does, what matters is being a household where these conversations are possible. That means mentioning other people’s identities warmly, in passing, and having books on the shelf that include a wide range of families and lives. If she does tell you something, how you handle the first conversation matters more than the exact words: thank her, love her, don’t interrogate her, and follow her pace.

If your child is in early secondary, eleven to thirteen. Identity work within her peer group becomes more intense. Many young people at this age are starting to think more consciously about who they are, including their sexuality and gender. Some say something to a parent, some only to their peers, and some only to themselves. The aim is a home she can come back to without having to put on an act. Walks and bedtime with the light off are where these conversations happen. The school’s form tutor and pastoral lead are the right adults to know; the DSL where any safeguarding dimension is present. The GP is the route for any sustained distress.

If your child is in mid to late secondary, thirteen to sixteen. Working out her identity is now central to her development. Some young people are clear about how they identify, and others are working it out over years; both are within the normal range. She needs you to be there without putting pressure on her: “I love you, and I’m here. Tell me what you want me to know, in your own time.” If there are mental-health difficulties as well, the GP is the gateway to CAMHS, and the school’s pastoral team is the right partner for keeping an eye on her day to day. The DSL where any safeguarding dimension is present.

If your child is sixteen and beyond. Conversations are increasingly adult-to-adult. In many cases she’ll be doing a good deal of this working out away from you. Your job is to be a home she still wants to come back to, on her own terms. If she would benefit from a counsellor of her own, the BACP and NCPS directories are the place to look, and the GP is the person for clinical questions. Kooth, the NHS-commissioned online platform for young people in many areas, is there for a young person who won’t, at sixteen, talk to anyone she has met.

Your own work

You may have grown up in a family that didn’t manage these conversations well. The way these things were talked about at home may have been narrower, harder and more silent than what you now want to offer your own child. Offering something different from what you inherited takes real, unglamorous effort, and sometimes it’s more than a parent can do without help.

Your own counsellor is part of the basic support in all this. Talking it through in confidence with someone whose job is to listen turns down the volume in your own head. Family Lives is the right line if you don’t have a counsellor yet and need to talk.

Then there’s the other parent, if there is one, and the wider family. In many cases, the adults in the household won’t agree on how to respond. Agreeing the family’s stance is a conversation of its own, often a hard one, and your child shouldn’t be there for it. Have it between the adults, in another room with the door closed, ideally with the support of a counsellor or a confidential helpline. What she needs from the family is consistency, and getting there is up to the adults.

The longer arc

A child’s identity is worked out over a long time, not in one Sunday-evening conversation, and the process is often slow, roundabout and surprising. Most young people work it out gradually, in their own time, with the people around them, and reach adulthood with a sense of themselves that is theirs to know. Your job, the whole way through, is to be a home she can still come back to.

You won’t get the first conversation perfect. You’ll manage the version you can, and come back tomorrow with the next sentence. You’ll turn down the public argument in your own head, and talk to your own counsellor, a friend, or your GP if that helps. Over the months and years, you’ll be the parent who kept the door open without standing in the doorway.

The mother at the dishwasher, who said something brief and warm and probably awkward, has already done the most important thing this chapter can ask of her: she didn’t close the door. Whatever comes next will come through it, and your job is to be there when it does. In time, your child will be who she is, and your part is to love her while she works it out.

NOTES

1. Damour, Lisa. The Emotional Lives of Teenagers. Ballantine, 2023. The emotional task of adolescence: feeling everything intensely without dysregulation.
2. Perry, Philippa. The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read (and Your Children Will Be Glad That You Did). Penguin Life, 2019. Perry’s account of the rupture-and-repair cycle and of catching ourselves in our own reactivity.

Where to go further

Lisa Damour, The Emotional Lives of Teenagers: Raising Connected, Capable, and Compassionate Adolescents A calm, evidence-based book on what adolescent emotion is and how a parent can stay useful to a teenager going through it. It’s the right read if you want something carefully clinical that doesn’t take positions on the louder cultural debates.

Philippa Perry, The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read (and Your Children Will Be Glad That You Did) The clearest UK writing we know on what a parent passes on without meaning to. If your child has told you something and you’re still working out your own response, it’s the book that helps you stay the parent.