One is to get the support or have the support of your family, cause it can be quite lonely and isolated. And seek out connect with other parents of trans kids, because there is a commonality in shared experience. All our journeys are different, but there is a commonality there that means that parents of other trans kids just get it. You don’t really need to explain. There’s just someone like, I know.

I think that I’m really lucky that I’ve got a good friendship network quite a lot of them have got backgrounds in CAMHS and stuff like that. And are, are really amazing, so when things have, when things have been particularly tough I’ve needed to like, you know, pop round for a coffee or something like that and I’ve been able to take him with me that because of how containing they are, you know, it’s made it more doable. Yeah, so they’ve been, they’ve been great. And actually his care coordinator in CAMHS has been really supportive around him. That helps him and I think finally the, they’re getting it.

Where do you get information about gender identity and being trans and the care that’s there?

Where do I get it? Well, I get it from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health. Because of my professional role, I’ve been able to become a member myself. I get, I get first hand access to all of that. There are a lot of academics who are trans or trans friendly on Twitter. They often will link into their, give access to their work and because of because I’m both an academic and a student. I have access to Athens and all of the, I can get past the pay wall and not have to pay for the, to access to the journal articles and stuff like that. Plus there’s loads of really good books out there by people who are trans or—I read quite a lot of I speak to parents, other parents who’ve experienced a variety of different services as well. And I link into Mermaids and their residentials and their forums. I try to get it as from as broad a view as possible.

it’s been really difficult because my parents are finding it, finding it exceptionally difficult not to misgender our son. Well, they will always say, Well you’re always very blah blah blah to me. You will always be my beautiful granddaughter. He’s 15. He’s growing a moustache. Yet you still refer to him as your granddaughter. They find that really hard. And my son feels rejected by them. When it is, it is a form of rejection. But I think that they’re trying and they are getting there slowly, but it’s so frustratingly slow. I think that part of the issue is that my son is really, not secretive, he’s very private about what’s going on for him. And he doesn’t like me to talk to my extended family about it, but actually it’s, to me it’s really important that they know so they can adjust. So sometimes I feel a bit caught in between the, pardon me, the need to talk to them, but respecting his wishes and not to talk to them about it too much. And then he’ll feel betrayed because I have spoken to them about it. But that’s because I want things to be easier for him. And sometimes I don’t think he gets that bit. But that’s being a teenager and not getting the wider perspective of it. That, that’s really hard. I think that I’m really lucky that I’ve got a good friendship network quite a lot of them have got backgrounds in CAMHS and stuff like that. And are really amazing, so when things have, when things have been particularly tough I’ve needed to like, you know, pop round for a coffee or something like that and I’ve been able to take him with me that because of how containing they are, you know, it’s made it more doable. Yeah, so they’ve been, they’ve been great.

I think for some people it’s around grief, isn’t it. That realisation that for some people, it wasn’t for me. I feel that the child that you knew, you thought you had is no longer there and actually when you realise that actually they are the same person. But I think it’s about that feeling, feeling sad, grieving, maybe feeling angry all, it’s almost an acknowledgement that actually these, these are some of the feelings that you might have and that that’s okay and this is what, this is what you can do when you have those sorts of feelings. I think it’s, I think when you’re a parent, you not only deal with your kid’s stuff. You are dealing with your own stuff in response to them. And it’s a hard juggling act sometimes.

His current school are great. You know, but everything in terms of use of toilets and games and stuff like that they’ve all been led by him. He does pull up the science teacher sometimes when they have, have lessons and they talk about, I don’t know, reproductive systems and stuff like that. And he’ll pull them up and they go, that’s it, cause they’re so used to doing things in a typically gendered way. But yeah, school are good. The current system’s quite okay.

Do you have any concerns around surgical interventions?

I don’t. And the reason why is that I fundamentally recognise that my son is trans and that’s not gonna change that it’s not like, I don’t think, I don’t believe that he’s gonna break off in four year’s time I think well, I got it wrong and I’m actually cis. And if he does that, that’s okay. But I don’t have any concerns about going forward with the top surgery at all.

He’s already, he’s spoken to a lot of younger trans men who have undergone the surgery, top surgery. He’s identified the surgeon that he wants, yeah. Ideally, it would be good if it could be done on the NHS. That he has in mind, the sooner the better. Whether that means that I think the youngest is 17 when you can do it private and that’s, there is some specific individuals who do that. So he’s, his research of the surgeons, their technique bedside manner. He’s spoken to loads of trans guys who would say, that guy is good. don’t touch him with a barge pole or whatever else. He knows who it’s gonna be.

He’s done all the research. Are you doing research?

Yes. Yeah, I’ve done, I’ve done the research too, yeah [Laughs]. I have backed him up.

How has it been doing all that research work for you?

It, actually it’s been really proactive, it’s proactive and I think it’s really, really reassuring, because what it feels like, it’s not like something that is on a whim. But you can see that it’s life changing and that and the difference it can make to in terms of positive mental health is huge. We were speaking to a non-binary trans person the other week about that at a point when they realised that they might have a lump in their breast and getting them really excited that that potentially could mean the removal of their breasts. I think then realising well that’s not a typical way that you would respond to, needing a mastectomy, which led them to fundamentally recognising that they were, they were trans and non-binary. And so the way that my son thinks about top surgery is almost on a similar way. Just can’t wait for it to happen, cause of the difference it will make to who he is.

It used to be around, partly it used to be around periods and this huge distress he used to have every month when he had his period. Partly it’s about his breasts. And wearing binders and things like that, so he’s got a few binders that help him and that helps him feel, feel less dysphoric. There’s all sorts of bits around his genitalia and stuff like that and things that and the genitalia, the genitalia that he has the genitalia that he doesn’t have. His perception that penises are much bigger than they actually are [Laughs]. He has a couple of packers one which I bought him, which I think is probably a realistic size for a teenage boy. And one which he chose which is, from my perspective, completely unrealistic in size. It makes him feel better. But, well that sort of thing helps.

While my son was an inpatient, he had a therapeutic session with one of the nurses on the ward around storing eggs and gametes and stuff like that. And I think the nurse has said something like, If I was in your position I’d want my eggs to be stored and stuff like that. Up until that point, this would have been really clear that actually I don’t wanna be a biological parent. I, you know, I don’t want my eggs to be stored. He has a genetic condition as well, which complicates matters which means there’s a 50/50 chance of this genetic condition being passed on to any offspring. So we, he’d already made quite a clear decision. I don’t wanna be a biological parent. The dysphoria I feel when I have my period is huge. I don’t wanna be pregnant. And in that one conversation that I think lasted about fifteen minutes, they decided that he was ambiguous about parenthood and therefore he, the hormones should stop. So that they they’d effectively made a decision like he shouldn’t be on the hormones while he was an inpatient. Fortunately, he persuaded them otherwise and they negotiated a reduced dose, but not stopping it altogether. But still there was all this judgment.

We looked at the pastoral support, in general. The emotional support that they offered to students. But not only what they not only the jargon of, of what is said, but actually speaking to them to see what they did in practice because we had, we’d already moved schools once and the jargon from the second school we went to was all about individualised wellbeing support and stuff like that. And I was sold on it. I thought that, that’s fantastic. But in reality, reality didnt fit. So what they said they’d provided and what they actually provided there was a huge discrepancy. So with this school, I went to great lengths to ensure that actually what they said they provided they actually did provide. That’s the bit that’s made a difference. He’s got a pastoral support, a named pastoral support, that he can link to at any point. He has ways of being able to manage himself and his emotions during the day. And they’ve been great.

The challenges have been the extraordinary long waiting lists to be seen by the Gender Identity Services for kids. We waited twenty months from the first referral through to our first appointment with them, the NHS service. That it was always approached from a cisnormative perspective. So it was never, it was always being seen, being trans was always seen as it was others. So it was an assumption that maybe it was a phase and he’d grow out of it. There was a perspective that the norm is to be cis. And so from the, because he’s been involved in CAMHS for a long time. So the perspective from the CAMHS team was, this was almost like a mental health, part of a mental health difficulty. And we didnt really approach the GP about it until it was around trying to manage his periods and the GP was amazing. And we talked about it and she immediately put him on the pill, which made things a bit worse for a while. But she was trying.

When you say that your son was with CAMHS. So the referral have come from CAMHS?

The referral to GIDS is by CAMHS, yeah.

How did that come about, that referral?

Well partly it was because that he, there was a lot of increase in dysphoria and he had, he’d made several attempts to take his life. There was lots of things like self-harm and overdose type stuff going on. And part of it, I felt, was around him being trans and it not being supported and validated in that way.

They referred him old that actually they can’t GIDS couldn’t expedite his referral, because everybody was on tthen cause I requested it and then they followed it up, because his mental health was deteriorating. So about six months after the first referral they, they chased it up. They were this long waiting list. And it was roughly about that time that we decided to go for a private assessment and it was because my son had been admitted to CAMHS Inpatient Unit at that particular point. It was our second, if I don’t do something, he’s not gonna survive. He’s not gonna live. He’ll end up taking his own life.

We reached out to obviously an independent provider who were amazing and have been amazing and are still amazing in the way that, in the service that they provided for myself and my son and our GP in terms of they, we have a shared care agreement between our GP practice and the independent provider. Which means everything runs really smoothly. There is a practice nurse once every three weeks for his injections and you can’t fault our GP at all. He’s brilliant.

So your GP is in the shared care arrangement with the independent provider?

Yes, yeah.

How does that relate to being on the waiting list?

Well, it relates to being on the waiting list because one of the things, one of the frustrating things around the whole NHS system and the specialists for puberty blockers and cross sex hormones are, are provided and prescribed by GPs across the board for different reasons. So, and they don’t need to go to tertiary service. They need to go to a specialist service. In terms of the gender identity services that they can’t do that unless it goes through like a specialist provider, a specialist. And at the moment, because it’s all tied in with mental health that this mental health screening bit needs to happen first before young people, young adults can be prescribed hormones across or puberty blockers. And so there’s like these levels of gate keeping. And what we really liberating about the other service was yeah, there was an assessment and it did take a good few months to do, because of [participant’s child’s name], my son’s complexities that there was that level of cooperation with the GP and the service that meant that actually as long as the bloods are being checked and reviewed on a fairly regular basis, which they are, that the GP has no issue with prescribing it, which is great. We never knew when the, although when we started off, this is going really convoluted, isn’t it. When we started on the referred first, the waiting list was 18 months. As time went on, the waiting list was getting longer and longer and longer. We didnt really know when we would be seen for our first appointment. We then knew that there was gonna be another six months at least of assessment before we got seen by the endocrinologist as part of the GIDS. I knew that if we didnt put things in place, my son wouldn’t be alive.

it’s been okay, actually. The two sessions we’ve had have been with, they double up. So, they have two clinicians, two therapists. And we were just at the point where, where we’re splitting. Yeah, so one of the therapists sees my son and the other therapist sees myself and my son’s dad. And I think they’re trying to get a bigger picture of what’s going on. They were very good at trying to explain to my son about the, the process, being on the child and adolescent pathway. They appeared not to have really grasped that the fact that stopping hormones wasn’t merely about it, it wouldn’t reverse physical changes that have already happened. They didnt quite grasp actually that since he’s been on the hormones is his mental health has improved significantly. And what coming off the hormones would do to his mental health. They saw it more of a well things aren’t gonna change physically for you. You are not gonna go back—they just didnt get that bit. So I’m like thinking well, how much do they really know. But on the whole it’s not been, it’s not being negative, so far.

It was always approached from a cisnormative perspective. So it was never, it was always being seen, being trans was always seen as it was others. So it was an assumption that maybe it was a phase and he’d grow out of it. There was a perspective that the norm is to be cis. And so from the, because he’s been involved in CAMHS for a long time. So the perspective from the CAMHS team was, this was almost like a mental health, part of a mental health difficulty.

But it just really felt as if, you know, it was for, this is a mental health difficulty, because you’re trans, rather than actually the whole culture is creating a mental health difficulty and him being trans is part of the issue, but it’s not. it’s not fundamentally coming from him it’s coming from the bigger, wider picture, the bigger wider society and they couldn’t see that actually maybe they were part of the problem.

I think fundamentally that we’ve been really fortunate that our GP the whole practice has been exceptionally supportive of us. And that we managed to secure a shared care. But I’m acutely aware that not everyone is in that situation that either their GPs don’t self fund it or don’t do shared care or that actually that they’re not supportive in the way that our GP is. And it’s made a huge difference to not only the way that when I take my son in for his blood test or his injections, the way that they greet him that the way that they’ve organised appointments so he can. Practiorning. But what she does is she has this movable slot for him, so you know, on the day that he needsce nurse usually has like emergency triage appointments in the first thing in the m to be, he’s able to come in first thing to get his injection and then he can go straight to school. You know, that, they will do things. They will ring up to say, the blood test results are in and giving paper copies of it. They’ll, you know, we can have conversations on the phone and stuff like that. But they’ve been amazing and it’s fundamentally made a huge difference to us. And I think that’s the thing that I would like this for, for if only, if all GP practices were like that it would be, it would make so much difference I reckon.

During that wait, waiting list where we heard nothing. There was no correspondence or no communication at all from the gender services of when we were gonna be seen. It would, really we only got a letter to say we’d been accepted on the waiting list and the waiting list was currently 18 months. And we had nothing from them, personally, until we actually got the appointment letter through like 20 months later. So like, we were, we were left in the lurch not knowing when, if and when it was gonna happen. So that was huge.

What would you have liked to happen during that time? What would have been useful?

What would have been useful would have been even just a follow up, just a brief telephone call saying, you are on a waiting list. This is where we are up to right now.

I just felt actually it’s been here years. There was always a sense of actually he was trying to be something for other people. So there was a real sense of like relief, but at the same time oh, oh, shit life’s gonna get really difficult now. But that’s what I remember.

Why did you anticipate difficulties?

Because I, you see the representations on, in the media. You hear about trans adults who were rejected as kids, as teens. And you just read their experiences and you think, this is gonna be, not gonna be hard. This isn’t gonna be easy.

The most important thing for trans kids is to be supported and affirmed. So we already knew that cause we, there was always a point where, for a while, his early childhood his primary school years that, at any point, I was anticipating him coming back and saying, I don’t wanna be known as his birth name anymore. I wanna become this. I was always anticipating it. It just never, never materialised until he hit puberty.