Juliette van Steensel is a year-old woman who identified as transgender for a brief period in her earlier teenage years. She wrote this piece particularly for parents who may be wondering how to best support and respond to their trans-identifying daughters, based on her positive experiences with her own parents during that time in her life. Juliette is originally from the Netherlands and now lives in the UK, where she is studying for a degree in linguistics. She is available to interact in the comment section of this post, and can also be reached on Twitter jvsteensel. Cases of young teenagers claiming to be transgender out of the blue seem to be on the rise.

The faces of transgender teen America. Katherine, a gentle year old from Brooklyn, is many things: Bangladeshi American, an avid gamer, Muslim, a future programmer. But one thing she is not: human. In the cramped apartment she shares with her parents and siblings, Katherine is a ghost. And when they come, I sleep in a random spot around the house. She escapes reality with the only item she can claim as her own: her computer.

Caroline Miller. The term transgender has been very much in the news over the last several years, but many of us know little about the experience that makes an increasing number of young people say they are the wrong gender, and need to make a change. Young people who are transgender feel powerfully that they wish to be — or are — the other gender. They not only want to dress and act and be accepted as the other gender, but may feel extremely uncomfortable in their bodies, and want to change them, through hormone therapy or surgery, to align with their gender identity. Girls who transition to become males are transgender males.

Adolescence is a time of radical transformation. Teens develop physically, emotionally, intellectually, and socially. They form their own identities, distinct from their parents. They engage in an evolving, instinctive process of trial and error to learn about themselves and find their place in the world.