The Tenpenny Files with Denise Shick

Something is happening to children that goes much deeper than pronouns, bathrooms or what books are sitting in a school library.

We are watching young people become convinced that the source of their discomfort may be their own sex. A girl doesn’t simply hate what happened to her; she may begin to hate being female. A boy who never felt accepted by his father or other boys may begin questioning what being male means for him. Trauma, abuse, rejection, loneliness and family relationships can become tangled up with identity, and Denise Shick says she has seen that pattern repeatedly during more than 22 years of working with families.

That’s where this conversation becomes very different from the one we’re having politically.

Denise tells me about girls who watched their fathers abuse their mothers and began seeing womanhood as something vulnerable and unsafe. She talks about people whose experiences distorted the way they perceived male and female. And she tells the story closest to her own heart: her father.

His childhood included alcoholism in the home, physical and emotional abuse, sexual molestation and a fractured relationship with his own father. Denise calls what happened to him a “perfect storm.” When she was nine, he told her he wanted to become a woman.

Then something happened that every parent needs to hear.

The confusion spread.

By eleven, Denise was asking herself a question she had never needed to ask before: if God had made a mistake and her father was really supposed to be a woman, how could she know she wasn’t supposed to be a boy?

Now put that vulnerability into the world children are growing up in today.

Denise argues that instead of asking what happened to a struggling child, our culture can be remarkably quick to give that child an identity that explains the struggle. Schools, counselors, peers, social media and online communities can reinforce that explanation, while ordinary differences between boys and girls are being interpreted in ways Denise says would have been almost unthinkable when she was growing up.

She makes a point in our conversation that stopped me: she was a tomboy. She climbed trees and played with cars in the sandbox. Nobody suggested that meant she might actually be a boy.

Today, a child can encounter an entirely different interpretation.

And that raises the question at the heart of my conversation with Denise Shick:

What if we’re looking at the identity and completely missing what happened to the child?

Her new book, Grace and Truth: Navigating Faith-Based LGBT Conversations with Youth, gives Christian parents, grandparents, teachers and youth leaders something they desperately need: a way to begin conversations with teenagers before somebody else defines the meaning of what they’re feeling.

But the interview goes into territory the handbook alone cannot.

Denise talks about the patterns she has encountered behind gender confusion, what her father’s story taught her about the damage that can travel through a family, detransitioners she has worked with, pornography and the developing mind, the role of fathers and mothers, and why she believes parents need to stop obsessing over saying exactly the right thing and start paying much closer attention to what is happening in their child’s life.

Because your teenager may tell you, “I think I’m transgender.”

Denise Shick wants parents to ask a question that comes before that statement:

What happened before my child began believing this?

Meet our Guest

Denise Shick has spent more than 22 years working with families navigating gender and sexuality conflicts, but her understanding of this subject began long before she entered ministry.

She was nine years old when her father told her he wanted to become a woman. By eleven, his struggle had begun affecting the way Denise thought about herself. Years later, her father left the family to pursue a female identity. Denise would eventually begin looking much more deeply at the trauma and family history that preceded his decision and at the consequences his identity struggle had for the people who loved him.

Today, Denise is director of Help 4 Families and Living Stones Ministries, nonprofit organizations supporting families with self-identified LGBTQ loved ones. Her work has brought her into contact with parents, children, adults, detransitioners and people who have left gay or transgender identities, giving her a perspective shaped by thousands of deeply personal conversations rather than political talking points.

She has written resources for children, teenagers and adults, including My Daddy’s Secret, Transgender Confusion: A Biblical Q&A for Families, Moving Forward in Hope, and now Grace and Truth: Navigating Faith-Based LGBT Conversations with Youth.

Her newest book fills a gap Denise kept hearing about from Christian families and schools: What do we actually say to teenagers?

Website

http://help4families.org

Book: https://amzn.to/459c4Gi