Mother of Transgender toddler gets a lesson in love

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#I've got a parenting question!#LGBTQ#toddlers#transgender

Photo by frozenchipmunk, used under Creative Commons license.
Tracie Stratton’s ten-year-old began transitioning from female to male at the age of five, and Tracie recently wrote about the experience from a parent’s point of view:

My 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.

You can read more at Advocate. Thanks to Laura for sending this our way!

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Comments on Mother of Transgender toddler gets a lesson in love

  2. This was an amazing story (clicked over to the Advocate and read the whole thing). I just want to say, you are a GREAT mom. Thank you for sharing. I’m really inspired and uplifted by your journey, and also Izzy’s. Wishing your family all good things as you continue down this road.

  4. I *really* appreciate OBM for linking to posts like this. I’m not to parenthood yet, but it helps me think about and internalize the ‘what-ifs’ of when I get there so I’m not blindsided by as many things.

  6. Thanks for posting this. I’m starting to wonder about my child’s gender, and while I don’t want to read too much into it, I get confused. I want to support him- whatever his gender- but he hasn’t blantantly said anything about it yet.

  7. my son has a transgender kid in class, and i am just so proud of our school, our teacher and our community of parents that there is a safe space for this little girl just to be herself. the parents do an extraordinary job, and for my son and the other kids it´s just no big deal. i hope it´ll stay that way as the kids grow up together – it´s a steiner school and they will be together the next 11 years- and it continues for me to be a message of hope in this often hard and hateful times…

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