Use your problem-solving skills

(I owe a huge debt to Page at the Common Goodness Project for almost all of the material below.)

There are things that we adults need to think about in our desire to support queer and trans young people. Some of the questions below don't have easy answers. Others will have clear answers that will depend on your community context. All of them are important for us to consider.

Young people, as a whole, do not have power over their own lives. They generally don't choose where to live, which school to go to, whether and where to attend religious services, what they eat for meals, and a host of other decisions that adults make for them, usually with zero consultation. This is especially true for our tweens.

By comparison, every adult has power, albeit to varying degrees. Are we ready to use it?

Grown-ups, as well as the systems we build and perpetuate, have work to do to support our young people and make the world a better place for them.

Part of our role for queer and trans tweens and teens may involve teaching and guiding. There are several important components to this aspect of our support.

As mentioned above, queer and trans tweens and teens lack power -- or, at least, lack it in any meaningful sense. But no one is only a victim, no matter how young.

So how do we present agency to our tweens and teens in a way that makes it understandable and relevant? By focusing so much on the discrimination, marginalization, and violence facing LGBTQA+/SGL individuals, do we do a disservice to our young people? How can we balance having important, tough conversations about the world as it currently is with also talking about young people's ability to shape their own lives?

And how do we include in these discussions the LGBTQA+/SGL adults who have done exactly that?

Related to the point above, no one (and i use that phrase loosely) wants to come to a meeting where they'll walk out every time feeling the heavy weight of the current political moment in the US.

What if we also had meetings where we did things that are just fun and/or educational? What about activities that either don't include discrimination at all or that include it as just one component? I'm thinking about things like...

• Watching fun LGBTQA+/SGL movies, streaming content, or TED Talks
• Having dance parties to music by LGBTQA+/SGL artists
• Chugging soda and pizza over LGBTQA+/SGL comedy routines
• Learning about LGBTQA+/SGL history
• Chalking sidewalks with queer- and trans-positive messages
• Listening to LGBTQA+/SGL podcasts
• Talking about middle grades or young adult books with queer and trans main characters that folx would have read in advance
• Hearing from local LGBTQA+/SGL community members of all ages and life experiences
• Acknowledging  queer and trans awareness days/weeks/months
• Going to see LGBTQA+/SGL theater...

There are so many possibilities out there. You can get more ideas from R2T2's youth resources list, as well as the list of potential activities for mentors and mentees.

Many queer and trans young people have never heard their identity described as a powerful positive. Not just neutral. But good. No, great. No, amazing.

How can we help them see that queerness and transness are gifts? Some of them already know this, of course. But for those who don't, how do we counteract the innumerable external messages they get that who they are is terrible, immoral, or any number of other negative adjectives?

Looking at queer and trans youth resilience starts to reveal strong queer and trans cultures. This approach isn't focused on risk factors or liabilities. Nor does it only talk about oppression and marginalization. Like what's above, this tack isn't neutral; it's intentionally and openly affirming and joyous.

It's so important that we help queer and trans young people recognize this culture and to see the long line of resilient warriors and heroes in whose footsteps they follow.

Relatedly, how do we help our tweens and teens see and promote their own resilient behaviors and attitudes?

(For an additional discussion of resilience, see the third section on this R2T2 page.)

How can we help these young people find sources of inspiration -- people alive today and/or those from history? This may include artists, writers, scientists, politicians, actors, athletes, and any other manner of LGBTQA+/SGL people. How can they find strength from learning about people who've overcome similar or different challenges?

And then how can we have our tweens and teens share with each other the inspiration they've discovered?

Finding such heroes can bolster resilience.

How can we help queer and trans young people see, when facing a challenge, that they've already had experiences that could help them with this new one? What changes with our perspective if we shift the question from "What's wrong with you?" to "What happened to you?" And how do we show our young people that, if they want additional ideas or inspiration, queer and trans communities have a long history of developing community-level responses to trauma?

At the same time, in no way do we want to place the burden on youth to singlehandedly make the world a better place or to encourage toxic positivity. If our queer and trans tweens and teens are in pain, that shows adults haven't done our work to protect them. It's our responsibility to do so.

When in doubt, choose empathy and compassion.

Another component of our work is creating space for them to grow and thrive.

What do we need to do to make spaces genuinely inclusive and safe? How can we use healing-centered engagement with our youth? This approach is one that goes further than trauma-informed care, which risks putting people into the role of victim.

Do they have peers they feel safe being vulnerable with? Do they have a trusted adult (or, even better, more than one) whom they can confide in? If not, how do we facilitate them finding those relationships?

A note that we need to be especially careful regarding relationships with adults. Some queer and trans young people, in their need for adult affirmation and support, are vulnerable to adults who would prey upon them. What does it look like to take this factor into account?

Do the tweens and teens you're supporting belong to a group with common goals and activities? It doesn't have to be a queer- or trans-specific group. Spaces like the arts and theater are often very queer- and/or trans-friendly. Ditto progressive political or advocacy groups. What other spaces fill a similar role in our local communities?

For those young people who want to be advocates, how can we foster that idealism and sense of justice while still keeping them safe, especially in a political climate where so many adults with power seek to harm TGNC young people? Is it ethical to put tweens and teens (but especially tweens) out front where they may be attacked, berated, doxxed, or otherwise targeted? How do we balance wanting to support their work against discrimination and oppression with shielding them from those forces that are ready to quash their passion -- and, indeed, their very selves?

For those of us who run groups for queer and trans young people, is the space controlled or planned purely by adults? If so, how can you get young people involved in this aspect of your work? Remember the truism that "nothing about us without us is for us" (PDF).

Have you surveyed your young people on what they'd like to do? Do you ask them after activities what they enjoyed and what they would have done differently? Do you have a core group of teen or younger adult attendees who could help plan meetings and activities as a youth leadership team?

As closing thoughts, here are some other questions for us adults to ponder: 

• What do we want to promote among young people, not just what do we want to prevent?
• How can we shift power to our youth? 
• What does it look like to check in with them to see how we're doing? Are we open to taking their feedback seriously so we can do better?
• How does framing our work with them in these ways change what we do or don't do? 
• And to hearken back to R2T2's mission statement, how can we reflect rainbow tweens and teens by affirming their identities and amplifying their light into the world?