Adele

So my child was born female…They came out to me when they were eleven, a few months off being twelve, so quite young. Before they went to high school. And my, I suppose it was something that didn't shock me, but at the same time it was a shock to me. They had always been incredibly gender nonconforming, had really wore what we used to call boyish clothes and sort of, you know played with what you would call typically, you know, boyish toys. And, you know, were very sort of you know, boyish basically in their whole demeanour and had male friends, et cetera. And that wasn’t because, you know, I’d sort of given them any particular type of toys, but was, you know, from a very young age, from about kind of two, three, four sorts of shown a huge preference for that sort of thing. And I, actually I was really happy to have this kind, you know, uber tomboy as a child and was really thrilled with that. I thought that was brilliant and, you know, really supported that. But when they came out to me they weren’t actually in the house with me, they texted me to tell me [Laughs]. And I’m really quite pleased that they did, because I just kind of fell apart, I was kind of very upset and I was crying, I think from the shock of it as much as anything. And I didn't know anything about trans kids, either what it meant, you just knew the very little that you’d heard and it was before there’d been a lot in the media. So the only thing I really thought of was that film with Hilary Swank called, Boy’s Don’t Cry and, you know, gets killed at the end [Laughs]. It’s just like, and I’m worrying, you know, my big worry was, you know, is anyone gonna love him and what does that mean? And really, really, really worried about bullying and about how it was gonna be received in school and with his peer group. Because he’d had really really hard time at primary school and didn't really have any friends. And I myself had had, you know, bad experiences at school. So that was really my biggest worry. So just lot, lots and lots of worry and fear. And then, immediately after they told me, cause they weren’t with me at the time. They were staying with their dad. I just remember hitting Google and just Googling the hell out of everything and trying to find out as much as possible to inform myself to put my mind at rest. And yeah, to be able to support them in the best way that I could.

And you mentioned CAMHS when you felt that you should get to your GP and then to CAMHS. Why were you thinking that?

Well, I’d been advised that he might, you know, would need it, the maybe for psychological support. I think this was after talking to Mermaids and they sort of said, you know, ‘If he does need any kind of psychological support.’ I mean, it was interesting actually with CAMHS, we then, the GP wrote the referral to both the [Gender Identity Development Services] and to CAMHS. And CAMHS came back and said, ‘No, we are not gonna accept him, because actually he needs to be at the [Gender Identity Development Services].’ And so, we were like, ‘Okay. Are you sure?’ So we actually went and asked again and said, ‘Can he come and see you? I think maybe that would be a useful thing.’ And then, they came wrote back again, ‘No, no, absolutely no, we are not gonna see him.’ And he can be at the [Gender Identity Development Services]. And, I mean, the thing about CAMHS is that I’ve spoken to parents since then who have children, with trans kids and I’ve actually wanted very much wanted my child, you know, later on to want to go to see CAMHS because, obviously it isn’t just transitioning, isn’t just a one moment in time thing. There are things that happen as, you know, continuously through life in the same way, you know, as anybody, things change. And I really wanted him to have some support. And I have been told by several people that the waiting list in for CAMHS particularly in this area is so long. It’s like, you know, it’s about two years long for young people. And actually they won’t see you unless your child has basically tried to take their own life. And, and several people have said that and have that kind of ratified as being reports, you know, news reports about that as well for this area, which just makes, you know, me feel kind of slightly desperate that I really would want, you know, my child to have additional support. And but there’s just no way to actually get it.

Okay. So you never actually ended up getting any support from CAMHS?

No. We were told twice categorically that they wouldn’t accept him. And then later on, as I say, we, you know, being kind of told that actually the waiting list is so ridiculously long in the immediacy of needing support to be there and then. There was just no point, essentially him going onto that waiting list, because you’ll be on it forever and they’ll only see you if your child, you know, literally ends up trying to take their own life with some crisis, mental health problem.

So those first four appointments [at GIDS] were fine and we went along kind of every month. You know, we were just kind of I suppose just discussing where we were at that particular moment in time. The sorts of things that we’d been talking about. How my son was feeling. You know, we separated off into two separate rooms, you know, I talked to one of the therapists, my son would, you know, talk to the other. There wasn’t, to me it was very much a kind of assessment period that they, you know, it seems that there was a lot of us talking and a lot of them making notes. So it wasn’t, there wasn’t really a kind of any therapeutic kind of involvement in that. And then we kind of got referred down to almost, referred down to [hospital] to get blockers. And so that was probably about another don’t know, six, eight weeks or something like that for the first appointment for that. So, there was very much a kind of focus on, okay, so he’s gonna go down there. I had, went down and had the assessment in [city]. So, the first meeting was there some initial kind of blood tests and scans and then we had sort of go back down to them about a few months few weeks later in order to sign the forms both my son and myself had to sign sort of individually the consent, so really there was like this multiple page kind of consent form. I think they’d been sent it previously as well to look at. And to have, you know, the additional scans before they went, ‘Okay, that’s it. We are gonna approve your son to have blockers.’ The GP hopefully would at least be on board to do that. But so we were very much kind of looking at, you know, that journey and that pathway of making that happen. It then carries on, we’d have I can’t remember if he had appointments like every month, initially or if it went to every three months.

At that point, your son has got the blockers?

So, he got the blockers so, he from when he came out - so he came out in August and then we had the first appointment at the end of December. And then he got referred down to [hospital] in April. And then he got the blockers.

So when we actually had our first GIDS appointment was about a week after he’d actually come out at school. So, he made that social transition and actually was already feeling quite a lot better about things and we’d had huge amounts of very in-depth conversations at home. And we went to the appointment and you know, it was positive. We kind of had been given a few ideas of what to expect and understandably the first appointment is really very much information gathering from them. And it’s kind of bizarre, because you’ve been talking about it so much at home and you feel like you’re completely almost talked out about it. You know, talking with your child, you’re talking with you know, family members about it. You are kind of constantly going over all of these things in your head and it’s just becomes this all encompassing thing that you’re going through. And then when you end up, you know, going to his first appointment and you then have to almost go back, right back to the beginning and talk about their childhood and when you were a baby and this that and the other. And you almost expect them to know it by that, because you’ve talked about it so much, it’s not news to you. It’s not new. But it’s all, understandably, looking back of course they need to understand the context, because they really need to understand the foundations that they’re you know, that they’re working from. But it does feel a little bit like, right, we’re here, we want things to start happening and you then have to put the brakes on and go, no, actually we need to kind of like go back again and we need to revisit. All of those kind of conversations and thought processes that we’ve been going through over the last few months.

These blockers well, you know, we want our children to be on them. They can’t be on them indefinitely and they’re having this detrimental effect and you not offering the therapeutic support that is needed. We are not getting any further and it’s spiralling downwards. They need to have hormones in their body. But it’s, you can’t, you have an option, you either take them off blockers which they absolutely definitely don’t wanna do or we have to look at finding an alternative way. So I looked, you know, at potentially taking my son to Boston and also looking at [name of private provider], looking at private options. And so, eventually, I did a huge amount of research. I took my son to another therapist as well to have meetings with them about kind of getting it was like referral documents if we’d need to go off to Boston. But then, in the end, I decided to take him to [name of private provider] for testosterone. So we went through their process and I’d spoken to them sort of quite a few times, already. So we went through to the process with them of getting after a lot of sort of soul searching in myself and whether, you know, this was the right thing to do. And he, you know, my son had been desperate for it since he was like, he was fourteen, you know, at this point. So he’d been on blockers now for about a year, eighteen months when he turned fourteen. And even then, I left, you know, it was like another six months before. So he’d been on blockers for at least two years if not slightly over by the time we actually managed to get cross sex hormones for him. In terms of, you know, the mental process that I went through, as a parent in actually deciding to endorse his, my son’s decision to get testosterone. I kind of thought well, okay, he’s like fourteen and a half now. And yeah, he stays at [Gender Identity Development Service] they will give him cross sex hormones at sixteen. So either I can say to my son, no, you are not allowed to have cross sex hormones now. Given that, I knew, you know, that he desperately needed something over and above having blockers. I thought, well, okay, so I can make him wait for another year and a half...

And so what’s that gonna do? Well that just means you’ve got another year and a half. He’s not gonna change his mind within the next eighteen months, I could not see my son going, I don’t want to have, you know, testosterone given the mental state that he was at. So I could put him through hell for eighteen months or I could even be like really, really awful parent go, no, you’re not having anything until you are eighteen, you know. So that would have been even worse or I could, you know, the only thing I could see happening was him going through this journey of going I’m gonna have cross sex hormones, waiting and waiting and waiting, going through hell, having it. And then, maybe, when he’s in his like thirties or something, he might decide well I don’t want that. But he’s gonna have to go through that journey and then, you know, after the age of eighteen it’s his decision anyway. So I kind of came to the conclusion that, you know, I needed to support what was best for him here and now and so looked at getting testosterone for him. But it was a lot of soul searching, particularly knowing that I was gonna be going against you know, what the NHS was doing. But there was loads of people out there that would criticise me, you know, I’ve been called child abuser and awful things, anyway. And I knew that other people may not make that decision, but just, you know, the personal decision that I made, you know, not just for my child, but with my child, ‘cos my child was, you know, very intelligent and mature at sort of saying, that’s what I wanted to do. So that’s just, I suppose telling you the thought process as a parent that I went through.

My child, at that point was really had already got said, ‘I need to have blockers.’ They were looking for at least that first stage of medical intervention and I was there, you know, to support them to do that and advocate for them, because they were becoming increasingly you know, kind of stressed at the thought that they were gonna, you know, I’m, you know, imminently hitting puberty and were gonna start going go through kind of physical changes. And they knew that they just needed to have that, you know, space. They were so focused on worrying about that that they just wanted to have, you know, this sort of blocker medication to put that kind of worry on the back burner and, and I agreed that I thought that was, you know, an important thing to do.

So we went to the appointment and as I’ve already mentioned, you know, there was a whole load of just talking, going back and telling our story and talking about things. And I was sort of saying, okay, well we are also hearing, you know, we, you know, he’s coming up, he’s hitting puberty and we need to look at blockers. So we kind of talked about how long that would take and how many appointments he would need. So, I think we they sort of said, he’ll take four appointments and they need to be kind of like a month apart. So those first four appointments were fine and we went along kind of every month. You know, we were just kind of I suppose just discuss where we were at that particular moment in time. The sorts of things that we’d been talking about. How my son was feeling. You know, we separated off into two separate rooms, you know, I talked to one of the therapists, my son would, you know, talk to the other. There wasn’t, to me it was very much a kind of assessment period that they, you know, it seems that there was a lot of us talking and a lot of them making notes. So it wasn’t, there wasn’t really a kind of any therapeutic kind of involvement in that. And then we kind of got referred down to almost, referred down to [hospital] to get blockers. And so that was probably about another don’t know, six, eight weeks or something like that for the first appointment for that. So, there was very much a kind of focus on, okay, so he’s gonna go down there. I had, went down and had the assessment in [city]. So, the first meeting was there some initial kind of blood tests and scans and then we had sort of go back down to them about a few months few weeks later in order to sign the forms both my son and myself had to sign sort of individually the consent, so really there was like this multiple page kind of consent form. I think they’d been sent it previously as well to look at. And to have, you know, the additional scans before they went, ‘Okay, that’s it. We are gonna approve your son to have blockers.’ The GP hopefully would at least be on board to do that. But so we were very much kind of looking at, you know, that journey and that pathway of making that happen. It then carries on, we’d have I can’t remember if he had appointments like every month, initially or if it went to every three months.

At that point, your son has got the blockers?

So, he got the blockers so he, he from when he came out so he came out in August and then we had the first appointment at the end of December. And then he got referred down to [hospital] in April. And then he got the blockers.

So he started on testosterone privately and started taking it, probably about this time last year. And he instantly, you know, mentally picked up, you know, and he was starting to get a bit more engaged and I sort of thought yeah, it’s sort of helping. And I could start to see, yeah, it started on a low dose, well it wasn’t an adult dose, it was just this kind of smaller bit.

He’s going through a lot of kind of thoughts in his own head about kind of, do I, you know, what do I want to be trans, you know, he feels that he is, but there’s all of the stigmas surrounding that. And if so, do I want to kind of be taking, you know, go down the medicalised route or do I want to, you know, so he’s really kind of exploring, you know, exploring all of his options now having kind of almost like got the thing that he’s been really focused and it’s now that in allowing him, taking away that barrier that he’s now able to start thinking, you know, thinking about all of those things

Some ways it was straightforward, in other ways it’s a difficulty, because you’re going to a private provider and then there is the whole kind of like interface of how does that work with your GP? And given that, our GP was like really supportive. They’re still, you know, a lot of it is all of these little, you know, technical details, all the devil’s in the detail, really. So it’s the thought of okay, so he was kind of continuing getting blockers and then he was gonna get cross sex hormones from, you know, [name of private provider]. And I guess from the GP’s point of view, that’s been great. From getting it privately, that’s been great. Then there’s just the thing of, okay, so whose gonna do what. There’s like blood tests and whose gonna, you know, administer this. Fortunately, the testosterone is in gel format and so there doesn’t need anybody actually giving it to him or administering it. So that would just be sent, you know, to us, at home, through an online pharmacist. So that, you know, it’s just a lot of like sorting out, well when we get a blood test, whose gonna do it. How we gonna get the results. How does that work? How does that, is that authorised? How do I get that back and that is a lot of, you know, difficulty, because there isn’t that integration with, you know, private health and the NHS. And it’s not anybody’s fault, particularly. It’s just, you know, how different GPs work, you know. It’s like oh I’ve to get the blood tests done and they’ve sent it off, but they have to ask particular things to be done and then sometimes isn’t done, because people go oh, it’s a female. We don’t need to test for testosterone even through they’ve gone yeah, testosterone. And it’s like, so then it comes back and they haven’t done it and so we need to go and get it done again and then they get the results back and then they won’t give me the results until the doctor, the GP has authorised it and so you have to call them and say, can you authorise getting the results and printing it out. Then I have to go and physically get it and then I have to be the one to send it off to [name of private provider], you know, so it’s a really kind of long drawn out process. So, there’s that which is you know, we’re really having to like build this healthcare system from the bottom up. And as a parent, having to manage that, I’m like the case worker, you know, essentially having to kind or organise all of that. So that’s kind of, on that side of it, it’s straightforward, but it isn’t, kind of getting that.

I mean it wasn’t just a one off thing. I did it, you know, it was, it was over sort of weeks, you know, days, weeks, months and continuing going back to it. Just sort of thinking back it was the thing I ended up doing quite a lot of actually was looking at examples of other people who were transitioned, so obviously trans men, cause that was the, to kind of really understand from their own experience and their own voices. And to put my mind at rest as well that actually you being trans it wasn’t this kind of this life of you know, misery or bullying or whatever. It was really, it was really, really reassuring to me as a parent to be able to see those positive stories. But also, you know, real, realistic you know, and talking about things that I wasn’t even kind of aware of. I mean there was, you know, YouTube, I ended up kind of on YouTube and I think that’s really important, because you actually see the person. It isn’t just reading something of a faceless person. And Alex Bertie YouTube videos were kind of like a godsend to me. But they were, they were really truthful as well. They were talking about the bad and the positive, but actually, you know, talking about his journey. But it was really good to see somebody who was kind of going through that, you know, a few stages ahead of where my son was. So I found that useful. I found it really difficult, I suppose, finding a lack of official resources and there wasn’t really any kind of guidance at all for parents. And I think there still isn’t, you know, really.

The only way that you’re really gonna understand what it is to have a trans kid or to be a trans kid or a trans adult is to take that time to do that deep dive and really talk to people on an individual level and give them that safe space to talk, you know. I would implore for the decision makers, you know, within the NHS to meet one on one trans kids and their parents or for MPs to do the same. Not in any public show, you know. But so that they really understand and, you know, what it is to be trans. They understand the struggles. They understand the differences between trans kids that there is no one type. You know, that they understand the way that actually they’ve been painted in the media is completely, you know, not representative of, you know, trans kids. And to understand that they are actually just a really small number and these massive conversations that are going on about trans kids, at the moment, are talking about a really small number. It’s not something that actually is gonna impact anybody else in any big way, you know, at all. So yeah, I think that’d be the one thing. I would, you know, I would love to see more conversations, more leaders of the NHS, you know, coming and saying, you know, to organisations that support trans kids and saying, actually can we talk to you, please. I really wanna hear what you say first hand, not through, you know, reading an article and not through, you know, someone saying, that’s what it is or a researcher whose, you know, found this bit of information, but I wanna hear from you.