On Susan’s birthday five years ago, her 10-year-old slid a note under her door. Today, she can recite it from memory: “Hey Mom, I wanted to ask, when you talk about me in the future, if you could use he/him or they/them pronouns because she/her pronouns make me really uncomfortable.” Then, “Happy Birthday.”
Susan, the mother of two kids in Connecticut, remembers letting out a deep breath. She had been deeply worried about Kai, her youngest, who had been severely depressed and struggling with school. She hurried to his room and hugged him, thinking: Maybe this is what has been wrong. Maybe this is why he’s been so sad. But in a way, it was a relief to have an answer, because, she realized, “this is something that we can tackle.”
Today, Kai is part of the minority of transgender youth who receive medical treatment for gender dysphoria, the medical term for the clinical levels of distress some trans people experience when their bodies don’t match their internal sense of gender. Kai takes puberty blockers and a low dose of testosterone, which he receives from the family’s trusted pediatrician, who now works at a clinic specializing in treating trans children. “It was an overnight transformation for him,” Susan says of Kai’s medical transition. “He’s in all kinds of clubs. He’s on the honor roll. He has friends over every day. Just a totally different kid, and that started the second I made that appointment.”