One of the ways children are recruited into the letter community is by making them feel they are special. Every child, every person, would like to thing they are special and will be treated as special and the letter community preys on that feeling. And a lot of parents are subject to the same thing and are willing to expose their children to horrific treatments is the name of feeling “special”. If you are a parent doing this to your child, you are special alright, specially despicable.
Parents are also subjected to emotional blackmail–if you don’t acknowledge your child’s gender or sexuality or whatever, they will become mentally ill or worst of all, commit suicide. So instead of getting a child the help they need to accept themselves as they were born, the parents “affirm” delusional thinking that only worsens the childs mental health in every case and leaves them ruined for life. Honest research, mostly coming from other countries, because the US research and publishing community is captured by the whacked ideologues, shows how bad the transgender delusion is for children’s mental and physical health.
A recent study from the US finds that refusing to allow children to be mutilated by gender-disaffirming care does not increase suicide rates. The study appears to be quite thorough and finds no association of state bans on such care with an increase in suicides. This is consistent with a line of good research concluding that children receiving such horrific treatments are actually more likely to have mental health issues and to commit or attempt to commit suicide. Hopefully we will pass through this terrible era with as little damage to children as possible, but the whackos won’t give up easily. (DNH Report)

Transgenderism by Munchausen. It’s rampant with the Hollywood crowd.
With the parents — the mothers, especially — I think it is a version of Munchausen’s by Proxy, which is probably just a fancy name for what you’ve described as wanting to feel special.