Mother of Transgender Toddler Gets a Lesson in Love
When the author's fourth daughter insisted as a toddler that she was really a boy, it took years to figure out that he was really right.
BY Tracie Stratton
August 16 2012 7:30 AM ET
http://www.advocate.com/arts-entertainment/books/2012/08/16/mother-transgender-toddler-gets-lesson-loveMy child is now ten. He transitioned at the age of five. By eighteen months I knew that this child, my fourth daughter, was different from the first three. In particular, she was very boyish, a characteristic which I had never thought about much before. Until Izzy, there were a lot of things I never thought about.
One of Izzy's first sentences, even before she was two, was, "Me a boy, Mama." I thought her confusion was cute. By the age of three, I discussed the issue with our pediatrician. By age five, I was in the doctor's office again, and consulting a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist, who came with great credentials and was the head of the pediatric psych association here in Oregon, had no clue how to handle the situation. Our final meeting with him concluded with him stating: "For God's sake, just let her be a lesbian." Of course by this time I knew that gender and sexual identity were two different things. I was upset that there was so little help for children like mine, nor did I know of any other children like mine.
