Catherine Hyde, Founder, Navigating What’s Next

So by the time Will turned six, our once-happiest-baby-you-ever-saw did not know how to go on; he was threatening suicide: “Mommy I’m going to get a real gun and kill myself,” he told me. So back we went to therapy; this time to a child psychiatrist. She told us Will had anxiety and depression; but like the earlier psychologist, she did not mention gender identity issues. So we worked hard to learn how best to support and parent an anxious child. Though there were many happy moments, overall Will did not have a very happy childhood. He grew into a contrary and belligerent young boy. We did not understand why or how this had happened; we thought maybe it was just innate personality. He seemed to hate spending time with John and me, and we never understood why. We felt we were pretty reasonable, approachable parents, flexible with everything except that gender thing. Little did we know how big a thing that gender thing really was for our kid. Will took refuge in television and video games. His avatars were always women. School was hard: lots of bullying and difficulties with the work. The anxiety and depression worsened and eventually we uncovered that Will had dyslexia and ADD too. Our child was struggling. At that point, we decided to treat the anxiety and ADD with prescriptions, which helped with Will’s moods and with school. But still, there was self-harm, self-medicating and suicide attempts. During these years, we had a great family therapist, who was very helpful, but she, too, never mentioned gender identity. Will was still very feminine, so late in middle school when he admitted he was attracted to boys, it was no surprise. In high school everything broke open. Will hit the local high school like a tornado. He took up dance, and oh my, can that child dance! He came out as a very effeminate gay teen. He explained to me that he had the best of both worlds; he was a boy on the outside and a girl on the inside. We only allowed Will to dress as a girl for Halloween, though he would have preferred doing it all the time. We still did not understand who our child was inside. In a fit of pique, during an argument, I told Will, “You can be as gay as you want, but if you go ‘trans’ on me, it’s going to be out of my house and on your own time and money!”