Child and Adolescent Medicine

A cultural shift toward visibility of LGBTQ people combined with technological connectedness has ensured that today’s children are exposed to a more diverse array of concepts regarding sexual identity than previous generations were. Consequently, children and adolescents are exploring ideas relating to sexual identity at earlier ages and with greater depth than before, and LGBTQ youth are coming out at earlier ages and defining more nuanced self-concepts of sexual identity than ever before (including using a more diverse set of identifiers than L-G-B-T). This chapter discusses psychosocial development of LGBTQ youth including best practices for care; sexual anatomy, gender identity and expression, and differences of sex development across development; and psychosocial vulnerabilities and resilience in LGBTQ youth.