Post by Ayla on Feb 28, 2016 20:00:20 GMT 8
John, if you ask him, is 8 and 3/4 years old. He plays baseball, argues with his little brother and loves quesadillas. He was a vampire for Halloween. If you saw him at school, he wouldn't stick out.
Unlike the other boys in his class, however, when John was born his parents and his doctors said he was a girl. But John (which is not his real name) spent years insisting otherwise. His parents tried to point out that, in fact, girls could wear or do anything boys could. They tried to explain the difference between being a tomboy and an actual boy. John persisted. He was certain, even if his parents weren't, that he was a boy.
After more than three years, which entailed many discussions with their family, a psychologist and a gender specialist, John's parents came to support that identity. They let him to go to school and everywhere else as a boy — what is called a “social transition.”
A transgender childhood need not be plagued by mental health problems.
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John's is not the commonly told transgender story. The dominant narrative is that transgender people's lives are characterized by trauma, victimization, mental health problems and unhappiness. This grows out of sobering statistics: Transgender teens and adults suffer high rates of depression, homelessness and substance abuse. Underscoring these statistics are the devastating stories of suicides by teens Leelah Alcorn in Ohio in 2014 and Skylar Lee in Wisconsin last fall. Media reports suggest they both struggled to gain parental acceptance of their identities.
But there are more hopeful stories, and we have seen them first-hand. Our TransYouth Project is the first large-scale, longitudinal study of American transgender children, and we're finding that there is a group of silly, friendly, thoughtful and all-around quite average children who also happen to be transgender.
To date we've studied more than 180 children whose parents allowed them to “socially transition” — that is, to live publicly as the gender they insist that they are. This typically involves a name change, shifting pronouns, growing or cutting hair, and letting kids dress as they please. Because the children in our study have yet to reach puberty, no medical interventions such as hormones or surgery are involved.
Our findings — just published in the journal Pediatrics — suggest that transgender children who socially transition with the support of their families, on average, are doing quite well.
www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-0228-mclaughlin-olson-raising-healthy-transgender-kids-20160226-story.html
Unlike the other boys in his class, however, when John was born his parents and his doctors said he was a girl. But John (which is not his real name) spent years insisting otherwise. His parents tried to point out that, in fact, girls could wear or do anything boys could. They tried to explain the difference between being a tomboy and an actual boy. John persisted. He was certain, even if his parents weren't, that he was a boy.
After more than three years, which entailed many discussions with their family, a psychologist and a gender specialist, John's parents came to support that identity. They let him to go to school and everywhere else as a boy — what is called a “social transition.”
A transgender childhood need not be plagued by mental health problems.
-
John's is not the commonly told transgender story. The dominant narrative is that transgender people's lives are characterized by trauma, victimization, mental health problems and unhappiness. This grows out of sobering statistics: Transgender teens and adults suffer high rates of depression, homelessness and substance abuse. Underscoring these statistics are the devastating stories of suicides by teens Leelah Alcorn in Ohio in 2014 and Skylar Lee in Wisconsin last fall. Media reports suggest they both struggled to gain parental acceptance of their identities.
But there are more hopeful stories, and we have seen them first-hand. Our TransYouth Project is the first large-scale, longitudinal study of American transgender children, and we're finding that there is a group of silly, friendly, thoughtful and all-around quite average children who also happen to be transgender.
To date we've studied more than 180 children whose parents allowed them to “socially transition” — that is, to live publicly as the gender they insist that they are. This typically involves a name change, shifting pronouns, growing or cutting hair, and letting kids dress as they please. Because the children in our study have yet to reach puberty, no medical interventions such as hormones or surgery are involved.
Our findings — just published in the journal Pediatrics — suggest that transgender children who socially transition with the support of their families, on average, are doing quite well.
www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-0228-mclaughlin-olson-raising-healthy-transgender-kids-20160226-story.html
