A public message for parents on the fence

Hello, Stranger!

New here? Not quite sure about the program?

This lesson gives you a sense of how the course is formatted and explains why my clients find being proactive with learning these tools is a worthwhile investment.

Summary of Key Points

• Families with the most successful outcomes were proactive, committed, and willing to learn new communication strategies and adjust their own behaviors
• Many families contact the consultant too late, often facing imminent deadlines (age of majority, college departure, medical appointments) that limit leverage
• Last-minute scrambles reduce effectiveness because meaningful behavioral change requires time and practice to develop new habits
• Normal parenting strategies often don't work once a child has become involved in gender identity ideology; parents must learn a new framework
• Patterns of relating take time to change, and the consultant cannot provide effective guidance without deep understanding of the family dynamics
• ROGD Repair course was created to make expert guidance more accessible and affordable than one-on-one consulting while encouraging proactive engagement
• The course is rooted in psychology and incorporates communication tools from high-stakes negotiations, persuasion, and therapy
• The program is designed by a mental health professional with 11 years of experience, a master's degree in counseling psychology, and thousands of hours working with gender-confused individuals
• ROGD Repair is based on the "Trifecta Model" of social contagion: gender ideology combined with social justice beliefs and Cluster B personality traits
• The program is specifically designed for parents with limited leverage, including those with adult children over 18
• The course is organized pragmatically to cultivate optimism and contain overwhelm rather than adding more scattered research and information
• Additional information beyond foundational knowledge often increases despair without helping parents influence their children
• Taking the course before or alongside one-on-one consulting makes the consulting process more efficient and effective
• New communication strategies feel awkward initially but become natural and authentic with practice and repetition

Plus: ROGD Repair now comes with unlimited access to RepairBot

—a new feature since I first recorded this video!

Student Reviews

The ROGD Repair Course + Community have been immeasurably helpful for my husband and I! We actually look forward to listening and reflecting on the materials. Stephanie’s wisdom and experience has been priceless in keeping us sane as we live each day processing this situation. We are so glad we found her soon after our son’s coming out to us. I am confident that this course has kept us from saying and doing things we would have regretted.

Christy C., Santa Cruz, CA

This course is brimming with eye-opening information from a perspective that is just not being covered elsewhere. It is richly insightful and practical at the same time and is an incredibly valuable resource for learning how to strengthen your relationship with your child and approach the subject of gender in a way that has the best chance of getting through to them.

If we had had this information 5 years ago I believe we may have been able to not only prevent our son going deeper into the ideology and getting on hormones but even more fundamentally, help him out of the unhealthy psychological patterns that got us into this in the first place. Only a month into learning these concepts, they have already helped us to have conversations we should have had long ago.

Courtney S. Boston, MA

I wish this course had been available three years ago when our family first encountered the sudden announcement of an ROGD son. My initial reaction was to read many many books, listen to podcasts, and watch detransitioner videos, however, these resources don’t provide the important underlying psychological concepts of what is driving the behaviour and thinking of many of these kids. In my desperation, I made several of the mistakes that Stephanie wisely advises against, simply because there were so few resources available to understand the psychological complexities our son was experiencing (and continues to experience) and how best to approach the difficult situations we encountered as parents.

This course is an invaluable resource for any parent struggling to navigate the complex and often overwhelming landscape of gender ideology. Many of us never anticipated facing this challenge, and it was the last thing we were prepared for. Given the current state of ideological influence in our medical, educational, and political institutions, I would strongly recommend that ALL parents take this course as a form of preparedness—before the gender ideology beast comes knocking at your door."

MS in Canada

Our adult daughter lives at home, secretly taking testosterone and trans has been the subject we dare not speak about. The ROGD Repair Course + Community are exactly what we need right now. The course is filled with deep thought provoking questions to help you look at the particulars of your own family dynamics and develop strategies to help guide your child out of the madness. The lessons are filled with information to help you to think calmly and understand and respond to your child in ways you probably haven’t been able to before – right down to the words to say. The Community allows you to learn from and chat with other parents in similar situations – to experience the strange comfort of knowing you’re not alone. We have great hope and this course is making it actionable.

-Mary C. – Rockford, IL

Transcript

(Yes, all lessons come with transcripts + subtitles!)

Unlike almost every single video in this course, I am recording this one with the intention of posting it for public preview. So if you're here, you might be someone who's not enrolled in the course but checking it out and considering enrolling. This message is for you if you are enrolled in the course. Thank you so much for being part of ROGD Repair, and you're welcome to watch this video. It's not necessarily very content-heavy for you if you're already committed to doing the work in the course.

I want to talk right now to the people who are on the fence, who are thinking maybe this is for me, but I'm not sure about the commitment. Why should I join, and why should I join now?

Well, I want to tell you a little bit about the experiences I've had over the last few years, focusing really intensively on talking to hundreds of families like you. The families with the most successful outcomes were the ones who were very proactive and committed to the process. These families were super engaged, willing to learn anything they needed to learn, put new habits into place, adjust their own behaviors, and do all of this while letting me help them manage their overwhelm and keep the spirit of hope alive.

However, I've had a lot of families come to me that haven't been able to commit to the process as much for a variety of reasons, often including a financial component. For the families that were not as able to commit to the process of the type of work that we do together, there were a few common types of struggles that they had, which I was powerless to do anything about as a consultant, given that these families might only meet with me a few times.

One common type of struggle that these families had was a last-minute scramble. Oftentimes families would book a meeting with me after having been in the crisis for years, sometimes with a ticking time bomb. Their kid was maybe 17 and about to turn 18 in six months, or similarly close to graduating high school, leaving home, going away to college, or the kid was about to reach some age of consent that was meaningful in their state with regard to being able to see a therapist on their own without even telling their parents, being able to go to Planned Parenthood on their own and get cross-sex hormones, or whatever the case might be.

These parents might have also had limited leverage in other ways, such as being divorced with the kid sharing custody between two parents where the other parent was so-called affirming of the kid's so-called gender identity. Or families would start the process with me and begin to get that foundation that I like to get with all my consulting clients, where I feel like I really know them. I feel like I have a good mental picture of who their kid is, what makes them tick, what's affecting them. But if these families had kids who, let's say, were away at college, they would maybe book a few appointments with me and then say, "Well, we don't have anything to work on right now because we're not going to see our kid until Thanksgiving a few months away. So we'll just book a meeting with you then."

Unfortunately, the problem in situations like this is that for us to turn around the dynamics that were contributing to the problem would take practice. It would take, again, that proactive attitude of looking at what are the dysfunctional patterns in the relating here that might go back for years—or ways that you as a parent are super well-meaning but have to learn to rein in certain impulses because of how counterproductive those impulses happen to be with this particular type of youth at this stage in their life.

So the families that had the best outcomes were the ones who really committed to the process of changing their habits in terms of how they were communicating with their kids and really learning this framework. Not because there was anything morally wrong or any kind of bad parenting in how they were treating their kids before, but because once your kid has fallen down this particular rabbit hole, there are a lot of normal strategies that will not work for your relationship with your kid or your ability to influence them.

The families that were not, for whatever reason, as able to commit to the process of the type of consulting I provided often found themselves in these last-minute scrambles, feeling really desperate to influence their kid before a looming deadline. Another deadline I forgot to mention earlier was the kid having some kind of medical appointment scheduled. The most extreme example of this was a parent who booked their first and only meeting with me the week before they were scheduled to go assist their kid with getting a surgery.

I found myself in a lot of last-minute scramble situations where a parent wants my advice when they have a very limited window of opportunity to influence their kid. It's really hard for me to give great advice in that situation because I don't know them and I don't know their kid because I haven't been working with them for a while, and patterns take time to change.

I found myself in all these situations where I feel like I could help if only I had more time, if only the family had come to me sooner, if only I had a deeper understanding of the situation. But that being said, I'm not made of money. I understand not feeling like you have the resources to pay a specialist for their guidance on a matter to the degree that might feel ultimately most productive for the types of families that were coming to me for help. I understand the financial limitations. I also understand families feeling spread thin and scattered, feeling like they need to divide their time between all these different types of learning, and then our consulting process was only one small part of that.

So I created ROGD Repair to try to get around some of these issues that families were having. My hope was that I would actually solve some of the problems that were getting in the way of some people getting the help that they needed. The price of membership might seem like a lot, and it does cost more than a book, but you'll also get a lot more out of the course than from a book, and it costs a lot less than hiring a consultant.

For the monthly fee that you pay to join the program, you get access to, as of the time of my recording this video, about a hundred lessons. And you can spend hours a week doing the course if you so choose. My hope is that this will help families be proactive and deal with the problem now rather than finding themselves in a situation where they are scrambling at the last minute trying to affect their kid during that last little opportunity of influence.

At that point, if you haven't been in a process of recognizing how you need to change your approach to your kid, and if you haven't been in a process of customizing your approach to your kid's unique mental state, then it's going to be harder for someone like me to help you. So I really want to give families the resources they need to start right away and take their time with the process of changing those habits and customizing an approach that fits their family.

Some people might be worried about adding on the cost of this program to also going through an individual consulting process with me or someone doing similar work, because maybe you do think that you do need that individualized support. But why should you also add on a program like this?

Well, I actually made this program to save you money because I found that there were so many concepts that I needed to teach families in our individual consulting work. And now instead of hiring me and choosing to spend that time one-on-one, having me explain those concepts, you can access all the concepts. They're already in the course. That way our work together—if you choose to consult with me one-on-one or one-on-two with your spouse—can be a lot more efficient because you've already done some of the coursework and I can point you to specific lessons as I come to understand your situation that will be a good fit for what you might need to apply or incorporate in a given situation.

Really doing the course alongside coaching is a great option. I can't stress enough how much I want anyone who's thinking about hiring me for consulting to do this course as a starting point. It will make the consulting process so much smoother and more efficient for you.

I've seen some really encouraging results from the families who have been implementing these techniques. One thing I noticed is that at first some of the different approaches to communication might feel a bit awkward or stilted. But I recently had a dad essentially read his notes on a speech he gave his daughter that incorporated like five or ten of the tools from this course so fluidly. I was so proud and impressed with how he had developed that thing he said to his daughter so smoothly. It was received very well. He said that he needed to practice it. He said that these ways of talking felt unnatural at first, but that through doing the exercises in the course with his wife and individually and attending some of the group and individual consulting I was offering him as well, it got to the point where he could use these tools in a way that felt really natural and authentic. That's what I want. But it does take time and practice, which is why you should join the course and do the exercises in the course to help you get that practice.

Another thing I think you deserve to know if you are considering doing this course is what makes it different from any other resources. Let me break that down for you.

Number one, ROGD Repair is rooted in psychology. There are many great resources that explain why gender ideology and medicalization are harmful, both psychologically and physically, as well as destructive of things like women's rights. But most of these don't take into account the precise mechanisms by which these destructive beliefs take root in your child's psyche, the exact places where they got in through the cracks of your child's psychological vulnerabilities, and most importantly, what that means in terms of what you should be doing as a parent.

Most resources are not specifically designed to help you understand how family dynamics, your own words and actions, your personality, your nonverbal cues might be affecting these specific vulnerabilities and facets of your child's psychology. Nor do these resources give you specific guidance on communication tools that you can use that will go over better with your kids. I've collected communication tools used in high-stakes negotiations, persuasion, and therapy, and curated how they can specifically be applied to dealing with your child's mental state.

Unlike a lot of other resources for parents like you, ROGD Repair was designed by a mental health professional—that's me—with 11 years of experience in the field, a master's degree in counseling psychology, and thousands of hours of experience working with people who are confused about their gender and their loved ones.

Number two, what makes ROGD Repair unique compared to other programs and resources? ROGD Repair is based on the Trifecta Model of social contagion. As far as I'm aware, I coined this term. I'm not trying to take credit for anyone else's ideas, but I've never heard anyone else describe it this way. Now, I'm far from the first person to have discovered this, but I am the first person to have named it in this particular way: that gender identity ideology works in combination with two other things—woke beliefs about social justice and Cluster B personality traits. ROGD Repair incorporates how the whole trifecta of social contagion is affecting your kid and what that means about how you need to approach them if you're going to have a chance of influencing them.

Number three, and perhaps I should have led with this, but it's not in order of most to least important: ROGD Repair is designed to help parents with limited leverage. There are a lot of great resources now. Unlike a few years ago, thankfully there are much better resources for parents who have kids who are confused at an early age. But as your kid gets older, as they become an adult, especially a lot of these resources just don't apply as easily.

My program is designed based on working with people who discovered that all they could really change was themselves: their communication, their boundaries, their mindset and understanding, and their nonverbal communication—not parents who necessarily have the power to influence their adult children in any other way. Although I recommend this program for parents of kids aged 10 to 30, if you are in that crowd of parents of people over 18 who feel really frustrated by how little power and control you have in this situation, ROGD Repair will offer tools that will be valuable for you.

Finally, number four, what makes ROGD Repair different from other programs? It is organized in a pragmatic manner to cultivate optimism and contain your overwhelm. Yes, you can do a lot of research without going through a program like this, and I do recommend that you have a certain foundation of knowledge in terms of how these procedures known as so-called gender-affirming care are harmful to people and what the history of this ideology and this movement is. I think that foundational knowledge is important. But beyond a certain point, you get really overwhelmed and scattered, and this can lead you to feeling despair.

Especially as you discover, as most parents I've worked with have, that more information doesn't necessarily help you help your kid because it's not like you can just show your kid that information. In fact, if you could just show your kid that information that has influenced your thinking on the matter, then programs like this wouldn't need to exist. I've worked with a lot of people who are really overwhelmed, scattered, and despondent. This program is organized in a way to help you feel less overwhelmed, to help you feel hopeful, empowered, knowledgeable and on track, while also keeping your own emotions regulated and your own well-being a priority.

All right, so those are my four top reasons why ROGD Repair is different from other resources, and I hope that makes a good conclusion to my overall video on why you should act now.

If you are thinking about joining this course, please don't wait till the last minute. Please don't put yourself in a situation where you're scrambling to figure out what to do and you're reaching out to someone who hasn't met you before and doesn't know your kid's mindset. You can get started on this course right now, today, for less than the cost of hiring a therapist, coach, or consultant, and spend as much time as you want every week studying and learning the concepts and tools that are organized in a way to help you feel empowered.

I really think you'll get a lot of value out of this course, and I look forward to seeing you around the ROGD Repair course and community for parents.

Reflection Questions