In the Life: Ep. 2107, "Becoming Me"

[Announcer over theme music] "In the Life," is funded in part by, [Announcer] The H. van Ameringen Foundation. [Announcer] Arcus Foundation. [Announcer] The Estate of Richard W. Weiland. [Announcer] Dewey & Leboeuf. [Announcer] The Estate of James B. Wozniak. [Announcer] And these funders. [Announcer] And by the annual support of, "In the Life," members like you. [Narrator Anisha Kansal over theme music] Children and teens are asserting their gender identities and expression at younger ages. [Kansal] Parents are now faced with decisions about how to let their children express themselves. [Jackie] I'm a girl. I don't play boy stuff. [Kansal] And as they reach adolescence, whether or not to medically intervene. [Sarah] How are we going to navigate puberty? [Kansal] Tonight on, "In the Life," [Kansal] meet eight families who share their journeys with transgender and gender non-conforming children. [Theme music] [Voice over music] We brought everybody together. [Larry Kramer] Act up! [Crowd] Act up! [Cheers] [Pauline Mitchell] There was nothing for him to hide. [Voice] Make a promise. [Theme music] [Joel Baum] Growing up. Did you think of yourself as a boy or did you think of yourself as a girl? [Baum] And how did you know? [Kansal] In Berkley, California, [Kansal] the Gender Spectrum Family Conference is held annually to provide support and information to parents of transgender and gender non-conforming children. [Baum] Gender Spectrum is a haven in which they can be themselves. [Baum] And families can meet the experts that they need to talk to all in one place. [Baum] For many of these families, it literally will be the first time they've met another parent, [Baum] or, seen other kids, maybe like their own. [Edgardo Menvielle, M.D.] Children learn about gender very early in life. [Menvielle] Two, three years of age. A lot of children already are able to label themselves, and label other people in terms of gender based on what they see. [Baum] Often our role as much as helping parents understand differences in gender, is helping them to slow down. And not decide what it means, but instead to let it unfold. The five or six year old is, [Baum] examining gender. There's really not a lot of decisions you have to make except how I want to be in the moment. [Piano music] [Kansal] This is Jake. [Kansal] He's five years old. He was born biologically female and recently went through the process of socially transitioning from girl to boy. [Sarah] As soon as he could talk, he started saying he was a boy. [Sarah] Initially we thought he was just confused about his gender and that it would pass. [Kansal] Jake's parents Yuri and Sarah were open to Jake's expression of his gender identity. [Sarah] I did kind of ask other parents. You know, does your child do these kinds of things [Sarah] Because I wasn't sure how much of it was just normal developmental curiosity about gender and how much of it was really something, beyond that. [Yuri] It started with the clothes. He didn't want to wear dresses anymore. [Yuri] No pinks. [Yuri] Nothing that was even remotely feminine. [Sarah] It really became clear that [Sarah] that it wasn't a phase, that he wasn't confused, that it wasn't going to change. [Sarah] I think our approach is just not to box him in. [Sarah] There are boys that like dolls and there are girls that like boy things. [Sarah] He's a kid. Let's just let him be a kid. [Jake] Two babies are friends. [Yuri] The transition went in stages. He had already asked us to call him, Jake, [Yuri] here at home. [Sarah] By the time he started to transition, I really had done enough research and had enough backing that, [Sarah] I felt comfortable saying to people this is the best thing for our child. [Sarah] Jake really had a hard time. He was very embarrassed about how he felt. And so it took a lot to kind of, [Sarah] let him know, you know, this is okay. [Sarah] And the people that are important are still going to be there for you and still love you. [Music] [Priscilla] My name is Priscilla, and I am the proud mother of Jay. Who's an eight year old transgender boy. [Priscilla] The very first time that, [Priscilla] Jay said anything was with the self-portrait he had done. [Priscilla] And in that self portrait he had short hair, so I asked him, "Do you want, [Priscilla] your hair cut?" and he said, "I would love my hair cut." So I took him to the hairdresser's. [Priscilla] I gave him the book of the kids. And he picked out the picture of a little boy. [Priscilla] And he said, "Can I get my hair cut this short?" [Priscilla] And I said, "If you want to, it's your hair. It'll grow back if you don't like it." [Priscilla] The moment the hairdresser turned him around, [Priscilla] and he looked at himself in the mirror for the first time with that haircut. [Priscilla] His whole face lit up and I will never ever forget that moment. [Priscilla] That night he made it very clear. He said to me, "Mommy, I'm a boy stuck in the wrong body." [Kansal] Jay socially transitioned from girl to boy, during second grade. [Jay] I'm a very nice [?] [Priscilla] One afternoon, Jay woke up from a nap, [Priscilla] and he caught me crying. And he climbed up on my lap, He said, Mom are you crying because I'm not a little girl anymore?" I said, "No, son. I'm not crying because you're not a little girl." And he said, "Good, 'cause, I'm still the same person. So you would just be crying for my ponytails." [Priscilla] He knew at that moment, [Priscilla] I needed a little bit of clarification. [Priscilla] And he gave it to me. [Jay] Five. One, two, three, four, five. [Priscilla] I've had people that have been close to us call me crazy in the head. [Priscilla] They can't believe I'm doing this to my child. [Priscilla] All of those statements prove to me that, there's ignorance out there. [Priscilla] Were you nervous about telling me? Yeah. [Priscilla] Were you afraid to tell me? [Jay] Ah, ah. [Priscilla] No. You were just nervous? [Jay] Yeah. [Priscilla] And how do you feel now? [Jay] Very happy. [Priscilla] Do you think you'll ever want to be that person again? [Jay] No, maybe. [Priscilla] No, maybe. And what do you think will happen if you decide to? You think I'd support you? [Jay] Yeah. [Priscilla] Yeah. [Priscilla] Do you want other transgender children to be happy? [Jay] Yeah. [Priscilla] If you could help their parents, what would you say to their parents? [Jay] I'd tell them to support their children. [Priscilla] Yes. [Priscilla] And, what, how would that make their children feel if they supported them? [Jay] Happy. [Priscilla] Happy. [Priscilla] That's right. And is that the most important thing? [Jay] Mm, hmm. [Jay] Yep. [Priscilla] I think so, too. We make a good team don't we? [Jay] Yep. [Priscilla] That we do. [Music] [Maria] Do you have a lot of friends at school? [Jackie] Sierra, Angel, that's a boy. [Kansal] Brian and Maria are the parents of seven year old Jackie. Jackie socially transitioned from boy to girl at the end of kindergarten. [Maria] Two and a half, three, I'd say, [Brian] is when we first noticed that Jackie was being more girl than boy. [Maria] Preferred lipsticks out of my pocketbook. Would take a shirt of mine and wear it as a dress. [Jackie] Yah, ha. [Maria] And it was interesting because we'd go to the pediatrician and they'd say it was a phase. But, when she turned about three three-and-a-half. [Maria] Um, and she would show up at the pediatricians in the Cinderella dress. The pediatrician did say to us, "This is more than a phase." [Kansal] At first Brian and Maria had a difficult time accepting Jackie's behavior. [Brian] Oh, I thought was a phase. [Brian] There's no doubt about that. I, I was hoping it would go away. [Jackie] Howdy, people. I'm a mermaid. Do you like my dress? [Maria] But I knew. Because she was so vocal with me. "Like mom. What's wrong with you. You don't get it?" [Maria] I got on board. [Maria] It wasn't overnight. But it was faster than my husband. It just took him a long time. [Brian] I wouldn't think naturally. I didn't want there to be, [Brian] where we were pushing her one way or the other. [Brian] I remember the first time she went to the library with her dress on. I was very against it. I was like, it's okay to do it around the house. We were setting boundaries. But I didn't want you going outside, because I was so afraid that other people would laugh at you and make you feel uncomfortable. So I was really protecting her. [Brian] The desk is over there. And I said, "You take your dress off." She was, "Daddy, it's okay." [Brian] And they didn't care less. The librarians are like, "Oh, you want a book, great." [Jackie] "Santa Claus is Coming to Town." I read it. [Brian] Yay. [Brian] We have a transgender child who's fine. You know, we're not special. We don't do anything special. [Brian] She goes to school. She has friends. She goes outside and plays. She picks on her brother. [Brian] She refuses to eat her vegetables. She does everything a normal seven year old girl would do. [Kansal] Parents like Sarah, Yuri, Brian and Maria received support from a local PFLAG group. For families of transgender and gender non-conforming youth. [Catherine Hyde] Parents of transgender kids have a, have a need that sometimes goes beyond lesbian gay and bisexual kids. Because there's such a medical component and a provider component of it. So we broke out a separate parent support group for the trans parents. [Brian] I'm happy to meet other people who are dealing with similar situations that we are. Just some, makes us feel like we're not alone, [Brian] in raising Jackie. [Sarah] How are we going to navigate puberty? So talking to other parents about what's to come. [Laughter] [Sarah] You know, at least I can hear from other parents what the experience of giving your child testosterone is like and, and that kind of information. [Kansal] As transgender children approach puberty, parents have to consider whether or not to medically intervene. [Jennifer Hastings, MD] Just when kids are young, you know, there's a great fluidity naturally. So it's really puberty that presents the, the challenge. [Jack Drescher, MD] There are children who don't go on to become trans adults and they are called desisters. They stop, feeling gender dysphoria. And then there are children who go on, ah, and it doesn't go away. And they, and they really feel that they have to change. Different clinicians have different views. So it's hard to know what the answer is. [Hastings] The topic is actually quite fraught with, um, discussion and disagreement. There's still a lot of research to be done. We, we think there's a lot that we don't know. And there's still a lot to learn. [Piano notes] He talked really early, and he was saying for quite a while that he was a boy and he had to shave his head. [Piano notes] [Colleen] And we thought, oh, fine, fine. Ah, but we still kept calling him, she. [Colleen] And one day when he was about two, two and a half, [Colleen] he slammed his hands on the table and said, "I am a he." [Colleen] And that was when we really got it. [Dan] I've been asked before, [Dan] How do you feel about being transgender? [Dan] And I said, "I, I don't feel transgender. I consider myself a boy." [Dan] When I started on blockers, I was excited that I would actually get to go through puberty as a stereotypical boy. [Colleen] It was pretty new territory when he came out. [Colleen] We're always questioning us, was this the right thing. [Colleen] I mean again, he's leading the way, but he's still a young kid, but you know at that time. [Colleen] But we just decided we would follow it. You know and still I don't know. What was right or wrong. [Colleen] I just know what we did and it worked out. [Colleen] Worked out very well. [Eva Hersh, MD] There is no medical treatment for transgender children before the onset of puberty. Our bodies don't produce hormones, [Hersh] until about age eleven for girls, age twelve for boys. [Hersh] So is the time when hormone therapy or hormone blocking therapy is first considered. [Diane Ehrensaft, MD] And what hormone blockers do is they basically, turn off the spigot, on your hormones, to stop puberty from going forward. So, it's a puberty interruption. Ah, and, what that can do, is stop the youth from going through a puberty that's unwanted. And give them an opportunity to sort out what adult body and identity they do want. [Kansal] Tony Ferraiolo runs a support group in Connecticut where transgender youth and their families, turn to each other for support and information about the medical and social decisions that need to be made. [Lori] Our daughter's, ah, transgender fifteen, Kaeleigh. And she came out a year ago. [Chip] Skylar is, ah, very excited about, ah, the upcoming surgery. [Tony Ferraiolo, CPC] Before these meetings, most of these kids were isolated. They were sitting in their rooms, depressed. Some, some of these kids were suicidal. Some of these kids were cutting themselves. If you intervene early and allow these children to be who they are, [Ferraiolo] and just go through life as the gender they know they are. You can prevent the depression and the suicide attempts and the self-harm. [Lori] You're just in a little world where everybody knows what transgender is. Everybody knows the struggle that you're going through. Everybody knows that it sucks. [Lori laughs] It's awful, you know, it's awful, but, we love our kids and our kids are great. [Lori] [?] marble. [Kaeleigh] This is the marble. [Lori] Let me see that. [Lori] I'm gonna be careful. [Kaeleigh] Oh, you know what, I was depressed for a very long time when I was a kid. [Kaeleigh] And it probably had a lot to do with having to act like I was a boy everywhere even though I knew inside, I wasn't. [Kaeleigh] I'd always gotten the message from society that it was wrong. [Lori] Something was going on. He was in his room a lot. Door shut. He spent more and more time online. [Lori] And, so I began to get so worried, that, um, I was looking online to see, what was going on and she had, [Lori] sent an email to a family friend, [Lori] revealing that she was transgender. My heart just sank, and I didn't doubt it for one second. [Lori, chokes up] So. I was heartbroke. So. [Lori] And, [Lori, sighing] I thought, okay. Where do we go from here? [Lori] Eventually, I told her. I said, I, I know what's going on. You know that we love you. [Lori] And, you know that we're gonna figure out what, where we need to go from here, and what we need to do. [Kaslan] Kaeleigh had already had time to research the medical options available. [Kaslan] And she wanted to go on hormones right away. [Kaslan] Her parents needed time to learn more about the process, before allowing Kaeleigh to start hormones. [Lori] What she ended up getting was a shot, ah, that's called Lupron. It tells her brain to stop producing the male hormone. And then was taking an estrogen patch. Now that I've been on hormones for six months, and more changes are happening. I'm completely, comfortable in my identity. So I don't really even consider myself a trans girl anymore. It's more just like I'm a girl who just happens to be transgender. I feel like I'm just myself. So many clothes, now. In the beginning, I just had a few to choose from. [Lori] These treatments that they're doing, they're brand new. [Lori] And I love our endocrinologist because, [Lori] sometimes I'll ask a silly question and he's very honest. He just goes, "We don't know." You're doing your research. You're listening to professionals. [Lori] And you're following your gut and you're asking your child what they want as well. [Lori] Not all trans people have the body part dysphoria. But Kaeleigh certainly does and that's why now we're at the point where we're talking about the surgery. and feeling that the surgery is very, very appropriate for her. [Kaeleigh] It's just about making the outside match the inside. [Music] [Skylar] For as long as I can remember, I would just get really, really, really confused when people, [Skylar] tried to treat me like a girl. I would just be, like no, that's not right. [Skylar] I eventually went to my mom and told her that I needed to do start doing something instead of just only thinking about it. [Melissa] He actually sat down with me and said, [Melissa] I am transgender and immediately went into the, "I want surgery. I want, [Melissa] testosterone, I want," [Roger] You know, he had obviously thought about it a lot. He was very self-aware about it and was way further along in, [Roger] thinking than we were. [Chip] You have to slow him down and say wait. [Chip] I'm not against this. Let's just make sure it's the right thing because this is your entire life you're talking about. [Melissa] The medical community has been catching up with all of this too. [Melissa] So, even getting testosterone at sixteen wasn't an easy thing for us to do. [Melissa] Having those guidelines in place, um, gave us time to really catch up and do our homework. It felt like I had been waiting forever, but it was just the greatest feeling when I got my first shot. As soon as my voice started actually changing or like, [Skylar] I started getting slightly hairier, it was really, really exciting. And I, I feel a lot better now. Like a lot. I have surgery in, seventy five days. Not that I'm counting down, yes, I am. [Laughs] Looking forward to it, just because I know everything will get so much easier afterwards. [Melissa] There is a grieving process that you go through. [Melissa] It almost feels like you're going to lose one kid even though you're going to get another kid. [Melissa] It's okay to go through that. It's going to be hard. You're going to cry. If you just focus on supporting your kid. [Melissa] You'll get through it. [Chip] It's opened my eyes to so much more about life and thinking about, possibilities, in ways that I never would have before. [Skylar] Now people just, completely forget that I'm trans most of the time. I'm just another guy and like, everybody has come around by now. [Kaslan] Gender identity refers to a person's innate sense of their gender. [Kansal] While sexual orientation refers to whom the person is romantically attracted to. [Kansal] These are distinct and separate aspects of a person's identity. [Kansal] Children who are gender non-conforming may identify anywhere along the spectrum of gender identity and sexual orientation. [Joel] I was adopted at the age of two and a half. [Joel] And, I was adopted into an amazing family. [Ann] He had been with his birth mom up until that time and as we learned later had been very close to her. [Ann] He immediately found the dress-up box that my daughter, his older sister had. [Ann] And dug out the red high heels and would just love them. [Ken] Oh, fabulous. [Joel] I loved high heels from a very young age. I was always trying to walk around in them. [Ann] There was a short period of time, maybe a year, where out of our own fear and protectiveness, we, [Ann] didn't exaggerate our enthusiasm for his gender, atypical behavior. [Joel] When I was little, like, my parents, um, for a period thought that I might have been transgender. I didn't feel, [Joel] uncomfortable in my body. [Joel] There was a time where I wanted to be a girl, only because it was okay for them to [Joel] like the things that I wanted to like. I just felt like, Why, why can't I, why can't I do these things without being judged? [Ken] Maybe one or two times he would say, "I wish I was a girl." [Ken] But in terms of saying, ah, [Ken] I'm in the wrong body. We really didn't, we didn't really get that. [Ann] He liked his body. It's okay with being a boy, but he wanted to dress from pretty things. [Ken] Joel came out to us when he was, ah, sixteen. [Joel] I feel like I was born gay. I don't hide, like, who I am at all anymore. And it feels good. [Hyde] It's called faces and facets of transgender. [Kaslan] Catherine Hyde leads a PFLAG support group in Maryland. [Kaslan] And facilitates cultural trainings on gender nonconformity. [Kaslan] Inspired by her own experiences with her daughter, Will. [Music] [Hyde] It was about age three or four where, Will just wanted to wear tutus. [Hyde] When we first saw this, our biggest concern was that, Will was going to get bullied. [Hyde] So we tried very hard to kind of teach Will to behave differently. [Hyde] Looking back, I think that was so the wrong thing to do. I think it really just shamed this child for being who he was. By the age of six, Will was so angry and so depressed and struggling so hard, that Will actually said at one point, "Mommy, I'm going to get a real gun and kill myself." [Hyde, chokes up] And I, um, I remember thinking. How can this be? How can a six year old child, who is so loved, [Hyde] feel so sad and so desperate to feel that way. [Kaslan] At fifteen, Will came out to her mom as gay. She allowed Will to move into the basement and decorate it to celebrate her coming-of-age. [Will] This is my room. My pink, pom pom, happy little room. I love my room. [Hyde] So we were down there painting the, [Hyde] pinkest pom pomiests bedroom in all of Howard County, I swear. [Hyde] And then later on in the painting frenzy, Will and I got to an argument. [Hyde] I said, "You can be as gay as you want, but if you go trans on me, it's on your own time and your own money and [chokes up] out of my house. Obviously, I didn't understand. [Kaslan] A couple of months later, Catherine listened to an episode of, "This American Life," about transgender children, [Kaslan] whose experiences closely resembled Will's childhood. [Kaslan] From the show, Catherine first learned about hormone blockers. [Hyde] So I went down, to Will and I said, "Come upstairs." I said, "Do you still feel like a girl on the inside and a guy on the outside?" And Will was like, "Why?!" Because you know at this point gender conversations have become so raw. [Hyde] And I said, "Well the reason I bring it up now is, I just heard about these things called puberty blockers that can help you pause time and think about this. "And I want you to know if you're interested I'll help you find them." Things started to change when my mom offered hormone blockers and, first when she offered them I thought it was a trick. [Will] By this time, I have, like, no trust for my parents. [Will] Then I just went up and said I want the puberty blockers and, ever since then it's just been a lot better. I started becoming just more and more me. [Will] It's felt finally like I could just breathe. I didn't have to hold my breath any more. It was just a great feeling. I could just relax into my own skin. Puberty blockers were a really good step in the right direction. And then we moved on to, with estrogen. And decided that, that it didn't feel right, that she didn't want to take estrogen. And I said, you know, this is, this is you, this is your journey. This is your trip and, and we'll stop taking estrogen. [Will] I'm perfectly happy the way, I am. Not everyone that does this journey is going to end up with a sex change. [Will] I don't want a sex change. That doesn't mean like I'm not trans. Trans means a lot of things. [Music] [Will] The first time I got involved with drag was on my seventeenth birthday. My mom took me and my best friend to Perry's drag brunch in [?] [Will] And like the main queen is bringing up people that we got to talking, and, [Will] she brought me backstage and she had me perform a number that day. And ever since then, I went back, once a month since, and I just love it. It's a lot of fun, and it's a nice safe place. In the early days, I desperately wanted Will to pick a girl name, dress as a girl, get in the box, and let me go stealth, so I don't have to explain this to everybody. But that's not Will's path. And I have to respect that. And I, I think it takes a lot of courage to be true to who you are. [Music] [Hyde] I think what we need to do with our kids is let them be who they are, [Hyde] and walk with them on this journey. If it is a phase, it will end. If it is not a phase, it will not. [Hyde] And we don't make that call, the child will make that call. [Music] [Announcer] Thank you for watching, "In the Life." To learn more about our coverage on gender non-conforming youth, visit our website at, ITLMedia.org. [Brian] Ahhhhh! [Jackie laughing] [over music] [Brian] Ahhhh! [Jackie laughing] [over music] [laughing, over music] [Jackie screaming, over music] [Jackie giggling] [Jackie screaming] [Jackie] He's behind you. [Brian] [?] behind me. [laughing, over music] [Announcer over theme music] "In the Life," is funded in part by, [Announcer] The H. van Ameringen Foundation. [Announcer] Arcus Foundation. [Announcer] The Estate of Richard W. Weiland. [Announcer] Dewey & Leboeuf. [Announcer] The Estate of James B. Wozniak. Announcer] And these funders. [Announcer] And by the annual support of, "In the Life," members like you. [Theme music] [Theme music]