Should you tell your mom/dad you're a therian?

Hey all,

This question comes up now and again among younger therians: "Should I tell my mom/dad I'm a therian?"

Even though this question has been answered plenty of times in our forums, I thought I'd post an answer here, so that it helps you find us.


So... basically... It's possible to live with Therianthropy without ever "coming out as a therian". While in the cases of gender identity and whatnot, living with your condition may involve lifestyle decisions which are outwardly apparent, or require others around you to understand what you are -- Therianthropy, experiencing traits and behaviours of an animal, plus the occasional shift, does not really require you to make anyone other than yourself understand.

In other words, we can be therians and be happy with ourselves, without having to have other people treat us like animals or understand our animality.


Obviously, many younger therians among us have adopted lifestyles and hobbies which help you deal with species dysphoria or similar. You may be engaged in practising quadrobics or wear tails or similar. While these things aren't really required for living with therianthropy, you may still engage in them and you may need to explain them to your parents somehow.

It's been my experience that people react poorly to information they didn't wish to know. If you start explaining that you're a therian, what that is and how you identify, it will be a lot to take in at once and they will probably not understand.

Instead the best thing to do is to give as little information as possible: Tell them you engage in quadrobics because you like sport. Say you collect tails because you're a furry or because you like animals. These are not technically wrong and they are easy to understand explanations that are usually well received.


If you are a therian and you have already told your parents you are a therian, consider showing them this page, to help them understand what this means:
https://www.therian-guide.com/index.php/8-Parents


Many of our members have posted interesting threads on the topic:

• Are your parents therians? What is their stance on therianthropy? (poll)
• Do your parents accept and support you as a therian? (poll)
• Should you tell your parents? (poll; also contains PD's video)
• Do your parents know about your therianthropy? (poll)
  

There are also a number of personal stories, where you can see what their experience was doing it, what kind of answers they got from us and how things worked out in the end:

• A jaguar therian
• A golden jackal therian
• A wolf and fox polytherian
• A dog therian
  

LP,
Dusty

I'm glad that some other experiences in threads come over for such topics that can be useful for some therians. This kind of ordering threads is nice idea to make proper conclusion and as the result decision without regretting it. Also I had to add that therian also need to consider traits and political views of parents. It is really important to know that your parents want you to be happy first of all, not they. It would be ideal if they were happy whatever you are.