Gender Identity Workbook for Teens

Got this for my younger sibling for Christmas. Thought it was pretty cute so I flipped through it a bit and it looks really nice, the pages are decent thickness and the questions are relevant and helpful. As a trans person myself, this would have been such a good gift for me earlier on, and would have helped me figure myself out so much sooner! It looks great, I’ll see if I can come back when my sibling opens and reads it!

My kiddo loves this workbook- highly recommend!

This workbook is absolutely my new favorite. It’s written in a respectful, exploratory, encouraging and tone that conveys that there are no wrong answers. The graphics are beautiful and the content is relevant. Many of the questions in the Q and A seemed like they were written by the clients I serve. I am recommending this book to everyone!

I'm a clinical social worker (who is also nonbinary) and this workbook has been an amazing resource for me. I think it would also be beneficial for young adults and not just teens. The art is beautiful too. If you are thinking about getting this book, just do it!

I explored different gender identities when I was a teen and most of the people I know, if they are being honest, can say the same thing. I had both hopes and fears about this book that I want to talk about in this review. I hoped this book would be a solid set of exercises that a teen could work through to help them work through their own explorations. The flow of the exercises is great, the repeated enforcement that there is no one way for you to identity is reassuring, but too often it was also too open and vague. I think more specific questions would help as would more expanded examples from people that author and therapist Andrew Maxwell Triska has known would help a lot. When you are exploring, when you are trying to put a name to your identity you are looking for some words you can use and definite meanings for those terms. I worried that this book would only offer a duality -- masculine and feminine -- and not even grasp that those exist on a continuum. Instead I found the words used often overlapped in meaning and that biological and physical realities were often dismissed or pushed through quickly. Gender signals, that trigger reactions from us all whether or not we act upon them, have fairly stable social meaning and that needs to be addressed for anxiety over how we'll be treated when we dress or decorate ourselves to be tackled. Similarly, without a set of commonly recognized words and phrases to use, it becomes next to impossible to think about ourselves and to talk to others. I really loved that the book was so open about gender but the points I raised above is why I rated it down one star. This could have been a good book for me as a teen, but it certainly would not have done enough for me. Ultimately I feel like this book might be best as a forerunner to getting guidance from a therapist or counselor instead of a solo guide.