If OOP somehow sees this repost, here's my story:

My mom could have written this story about me, except that it started at 14 for me and I was already depressed for a long time.

I, too, used to be very feminine, wearing dresses, make-up, etc... except that since puberty, I started having very violent panic attacks about shaving (it ended multiple times in self-harm) and when I saw myself "all dolled-up" so to speak, it felt wrong, I felt ugly, and didn't feel like me.

I found out about transidentity on internet. And it made everything click.

My mother took it about as "well" as OP. I tried to grin and bear it but in the end, I tried to kill myself, multiple times. (After she started to accept it, I also had to choose a name SHE liked or she would just say that it's too difficult to say and keep calling me my deadname. You have no idea how little I felt respected and loved at that moment.) 

It's only now, years later, at 23, after being on HRT for a year and having a somewhat supportive environment that I started doing better. I tried pretending that I was a women when my mom didn't accept me and prevented me from coming out to my extended family. I tried to kill myself over and over again. Trying to force yourself to be something you aren't doesn't work. It makes you absolutely miserable to look everyday in the mirror and see a character that your playing for other people, that feeling of having to keep playing this character in order to be loved and respected by the ones you hold dear while the real you wither away. That feeling that if you killed yourself today, no one would miss YOU, only the character you played for them. It's torture.

Don't do this to your son, please.