Lisa

I went into her room one night and I just asked, we were talking about something and I said, ‘Look, I’ll show you. Pass me your device and I’ll show you.’ And I found some pictures of naked males on the device. And she started getting very upset and I said, ‘You don’t need to be upset. I’m sure you weren’t looking for this. What were you looking for?’ And she explained she was looking for boy’s bodies and girl’s bodies, because she felt that there was something wrong with her body. And that opened the discussion then about what is it that you’re not feeling right about? And it just all flooded out. And she said, ‘Please don’t make me live like this mum. I can’t live like it any more. I’ve tried really hard to change my inside to match my outside. But I can’t do it. Please don’t make me do it.’ I said, ‘Fine. We will change your outside to match your inside. That is no problem.’

We then moved him into a different school and he’s been in stealth since then. We are currently working with whether or not that’s something he wants to continue or whether he wants to start talking to people about his identity.

He just wants to be himself, that’s all he wants. And he wants to be respected for being himself. He wants to be open and honest about who he is. But he’s frightened of doing that, because however proud he is of himself, he knows that as soon as he tells other people that he’s transgender, he opens himself up to a plethora of risk in terms of relationships changing, the way he is treated, not just by other kids at school, but by teaching staff as well.

The waiting list, once we did get onto the waiting list and that took three or four months just to get onto the waiting list. By the time we got onto the waiting list, I think that was in excess of a year, although, because I then kicked up a fuss about the fact that the referral should have been made at x date and I wanted, just because the medical, the NHS had made a mistake in the referral process. I didn’t want to be disadvantaged and make my son wait a further three months or four months, whatever it was. So, they did reschedule a waiting list allocation and moved us to where we should have been, were the mistake not made. But that was a battle…

I think we, originally we were told it was going to be about a year. But because we, because I made the fuss about the mistake within the NHS and having missed three or four months then it ended up being about nine months, because we were moved to the position that we would have been in but for the mistake.

We also went to the GP and asked him to make a referral. That was an awful experience. He was quite obviously unsupportive of our difficulties. He told us that he wouldn’t make the referral because the protocol was to refer to CAMHS. And CAMHS would then refer on if they diagnosed a gender identity disorder, which I knew to be incorrect. He wouldn’t, he wouldn’t listen to me. So I then had to leave the doctor’s surgery. My son said to me, ‘He doesn’t wanna help us, does he mummy?’ And I said, ‘I don’t think he does today. But I’ll make sure he does the next time I see him. Don’t worry about it. I’ve got it.’ And but then we had a battle with the GP to get the GP to make the referral.

When the GP refused to refer us, I contacted Mermaids who had sent me all of this information. And they said that they would refer us. So they did that, as I understand it. And I also made a complaint about the GP, to the GPs surgery about the treatment that we had had he didn’t even look at my son during the consultation. He didn’t speak to him once. It was really, it was really bad. And he obviously didn’t understand the process. He also, because we talked about hormone blockers in that consultation, he also said to me, in front of my son, ‘This is potent medication. This is a cancer treatment.’ You know, ‘this isn’t, not just any medicine. This is a cancer treatment’, which it is used for certain treatment, certain types of cancer, but it’s also used for to stop early pubertal development and you know, therein obviously for the purpose that we were asking about it for my son. So, I made a complaint about all of those things and the fact that the GP had been, had been mistaken in terms of the process that he should have followed. And as a result of that complaint, a referral was made then. But it took a lot of time.

The first meeting that we had was because we had this issue about referral to endocrinology. The reason that endocrinology refused to accept our referral was because [name of participant’s child] was already taking the blocker. And I then had to, I then had to point out that actually, as he was entitled to access private medical treatment as well as NHS treatment, at the same time. And that we could not be refused NHS treatment, because we were accessing private treatment. And, at that point, it, I had, I said I didn’t understand why, you know, what the issue was with endocrinology and I wanted to better understand that. And at that point then, also I think because I was making waves about the fact that my son was being treated differently because we refused to allow him to be assessed along this, the usual path of monitoring his increasing distress over time. And I called into question then the appropriateness of not bringing endocrinology in sooner. So that, the child could be therapeutically and psychologically assessed with this head space that a child of any given age ought to be capable of being assessed outside of that developing distress pattern and self, you know, movement towards self-harm. And it was at that juncture that then [hospital], a member of the, senior member of the [hospital] endocrinology team came to an adult meeting with the therapists that were treating my son. And it was quite a, it was quite a difficult meeting, because we felt that we were having to challenge everything that was being suggested. And it felt quite, it felt quite difficult to me being in that meeting, even though I am quite robust and I’m used to speaking publicly and to professionals and challenging professionals in my line of work, it still felt difficult because the subject matter was so emotive, for me. But, you know, we, I don’t think we really got any answers. We made our views clear. I don’t think we really got any answers. But one thing that we all did agree on was that the meeting had been useful insofar as having both disciplines there were concerned. And subsequently then we were given an appointment for a separate meeting at [hospital] for endocrinology. And so, we’ve been, because I have asked at each juncture that somebody, whenever we are at [hospital] I’ve asked that somebody from the [Gender Identity Development Services] be there, so that we continue with this joined up thinking. I’m not sure how much actual difference it’s making in practice. But it feels much more coherent in that to be in those meetings and to have both sides of the same coin in the same room.

It’s like it’s a therapeutic, well it’s an assessment session, but it feels like a therapeutic session, so, we were asked lots of questions about our history, our family composition about our experiences, our individual experiences, the people who surround my son and their experiences and their relationships with him. Initially, we had appointments altogether. Then they separated us off, so my son would go with one of the therapists and then his dad and I would stay with the other. It’s just been a mixture, really. It’s clinician led. So, if they say they want separate appointments then provided that’s okay with my son then we don’t, we go our separate ways. We don’t, know what my son says in his appointments. Obviously, we’ve seen the, we’ve seen the interim report. My son’s response to it. I took him through it. He’s very articulate and intelligent. His response to it was, ‘I don’t think they really get it.’ He said, ‘They’ve made the big things little and the little things they’ve made so much of and I don’t really understand.’ There were some factual errors in there, which I didn’t think given the, given the number of time we had talked about specific issues, I thought they were pretty silly mistakes to make.

What were they emphasising, so when he said they made little things big things?

There was a great deal of focus on the family environment. It was basically a summary of what we had told them about our family and our life. There was no focus on the actual assessment of my son, his experiences related to his gender identity. There was no, there was nothing in relation to diagnosis. There was no interim conclusion. There were no there, there were no recommendations for future assessment or, you know, where do we get—it was just, I could have written that document in half an hour, an hour, let’s say. It was just the info, it contained the information that we had given to them. And all the big things, all the reasons why my son felt that he was there seemed to be missing. So from his perspective, the big things were the things that he thought he was there to sort out and to be supported by, and they were completely absent from the document. Whereas all the silly little things, as far as he was concerned, you know, who’s in my family? How do they relate to me? Who am I close to? You know, those aren’t big things to him. It’s just his life. It’s kind of, you know, that’s how it is.

We had been seen by the [Gender Identity Development Service] with these two therapists for, I think a little over a year. All we had to show for that was an interim report, which didn’t draw any conclusions. Didn’t reach a diagnosis. And the reason that they gave for that was that, before we started seeing the therapist at the [Gender Identity Development Service], we had been to see [name of a person] and we had begun to pay privately for hormone blockers for my son.

The reason that we did that was because we felt that he deserved an opportunity to be able to explore his identity free from the pressure of time that pubertal development was bringing. And we felt that we did a lot of research. We’re both educated people. We consulted closely with [name of participant’s child]. We knew what the risks were. And we knew what the benefits were likely to be. And we felt that it was worth trying. The, my son didn’t have any side effects from the blockers, none whatsoever. If anything it gave him, it gave him peace of mind that he didn’t have to worry that he was going to see even more problems created like breast development, like hip development, like the change in the shape of his hands or his face. He didn’t have to worry about a period starting. He didn’t have to worry about how he was perceived by other people. He could just get on and look the way he wanted to look and be the way he wanted to be and be the person he wanted to be, free of any pressure. I think that’s the best decision that we have made for [name of participant’s child], so far.

We went to – or my son, I should say. We went to, after we’d had this interim report from the [Gender Identity Development Service], we felt that we had made no progress over such a long period of time. Our hope was that, we would be able to secure a diagnosis for [name of participant’s child] and then be referred to the endocrinology team at [name of hospital]. And that we would then be able to bring his blocker treatment under the NHS protocol. What we were told when we challenged the therapists about the absence of conclusions in the interim report was that it’s been difficult if not impossible to assess my son, because they hadn’t been able to assess or monitor his distress over time. And I challenged them as to why that was a necessary component of their assessment of a child. And that actually, it would be far better for my son to have been able to think clearly, be free from the encumbrance of developing mental health issues. And be free from, you know, thoughts of poor self-worth. Poor self-esteem. He’d just been able to get on and be a kid and think about this issue with a clear mind.

They said that it wasn’t their normal protocol to assess whilst a child was on hormone blocker treatment. And therefore, they had no, they had no proforma essentially. And I felt that our assessment was just bobbing along on the ocean. No direction. No rudder. Nothing.

We had begun to pay privately for hormone blockers for my son. The reason that we did that was because we felt that he deserved an opportunity to be able to explore his identity free from the pressure of time that pubertal development was bringing. And we felt that we did a lot of research. We’re both educated people. We consulted closely with [name of participant’s child]. We knew what the risks were. And we knew what the benefits were likely to be. And we felt that it was worth trying. The, my son didn’t have any side-effects from the blockers, none whatsoever. If anything it gave him, it gave him peace of mind that he didn’t have to worry that he was going to see even more problems created like breast development, like hip development, like the change in the shape of his hands or his face. He didn’t have to worry about a period starting. He didn’t have to worry about how he was perceived by other people. He could just get on and look the way he wanted to look and be the way he wanted to be and be the person he wanted to be, free of any pressure. I think that’s the best decision that we have made for [name of participant’s child], so far.

We have discussed that. And that’s all part of the knowledge that we are trying to [clears throat] extract from [name of hospital] because he has lots of questions about how he might have a baby. Whether, in order to be able to have a baby, he would have to menstruate. Whether that would also have to be accompanied by physical, obvious physical changes like breast development and physical changes for other parts of the body which would make him look effeminate, feminine and would be impossible then to reverse. So there are all, there are lots of questions in his mind and we, and of course, the cross gender hormones are—so whereas the hormones blockers are a pause button on pubertal development the cross gender hormones then do start to impact fertility, less so for female to male transitions. More so, more quickly for male to female transitions.

But, nevertheless, it’s still impacts upon future fertility and options. And so, it’s really important, I think that children who, because children who are exploring their gender identity, unless they have any other cognitive issue that prevents them from thinking about these things to a deeper level that will, they will make the associations with, you know, their external development and their internal development and their ability to procreate and, you know, how do I, is there a way that I can look like my chosen gender, but leave the door open to be able to have a baby. And, if so, what does that look like. And it’s been quite difficult to get that information from anybody.

It’s really important, I think that children who, because children who are exploring their gender identity unless they have any other cognitive issue that prevents them from thinking about these things to, a deeper level that will, they will make the associations with, you know, their external development and their internal development and their ability to procreate and, you know, how do I, is there a way that I can look like my chosen gender, but leave the door open to be able to have a baby. And, if so, what does that look like. And it’s been quite difficult to get that information from anybody…

At the moment, we are trying to keep as many doors open for my son as possible. I don’t think there will ever come a time when my son says to me, actually, I’ve got it wrong or I’ve changed my mind. I don’t think he will ever live as anything other than a male. But I need to keep that possibility open for him as a responsible parent. And with that in mind, and his father agrees, we have to try to – again, it’s just about balance.

He started to be quite unsettled in his allocation, if you like as a girl, in school. He asked if he could wear boy’s uniform when he was probably about six. So, I think he only had one school year of wearing summer dresses. Head teacher was very accommodating and she said he, or ‘she’ at that time, is here to learn, and that’s fine…

I really struggled to get other than school who purported to be helpful, but actually, they were helpful, but they were scared…

The school were helpful and they did implement what we wanted. On a couple of occasions they tried row back from that. I had to be very robust and say, I had to equip myself with legal knowledge, practical knowledge and encyclopedia of contacts, articles.

We had a planned transition over a half term period, where she had her hair cut… And he went back into school. All was well for a few months. Then the bullying started. Really we’ve always encouraged him to be quite independent and not to follow a crowd and behaviour was starting to deteriorate and I think that’s where it started. He didn’t want to involve himself in the behaviour. But then, soon, he became a bit of a target and so that got really uncomfortable. We then moved him into a different school and he’s been in stealth since then.

They have lost some of his blood test results in changing his record from the earlier record to the new record in his male name. In merging those two records, the test results from the original medical record have been lost, somehow in the merge. So, that’s a technical issue, which they haven’t been able to resolve. So, we’ve lost all of his blood tests that he had done before his transition, which has made it really difficult then to demonstrate that before he started the hormone blockers, he was already at Tanner Stage 2, which is the requisite stage for endocrinology, to prescribe blockers. So, because of that technical issue, we are now finding ourselves having to undergo and assessment process which I think is unnecessary.

I was with my son, in a café the other day and the table just – it was only very small, like four or five tables – and the table across the way started talking to the owners about that one of them had a transgender nephew who had transitioned. And they kept using the wrong pronouns. And they kept referring to this kid by the wrong gender. And I said to and I said to my son, ‘Do you want me to say anything?’ And he said, ‘Let me just listen.’

And then so they started saying, you know, ‘Well, you know, these days you can be whatever you want to be and so on.’ And he then said, ‘Yeah, I would like you to say something, mum.’ I said, ‘Okay, well how about we offer some support. How about we say, if you feel comfortable with me saying that you are transgender. We can then say: Look if you would like, if your family member would like some support, either the adults or if the child would like to talk to my son, that’s okay because a lot of people don’t really understand that being transgender isn’t actually a choice’ and then we’ll give them my phone number.’ And he was like, ‘Yeah, that’s brilliant. We’ll do that.’

And we did that and the people who were discussing it were really embarrassed. But, you know, you could see that they were sort of checking, like ‘oh, what did we say, what did we say?’

I found it as a mother, I found it, I could cry about it now thinking how tough it was. I felt like I lost my daughter. I didn’t feel like I could, there was nothing, I couldn’t, I couldn’t engage in a grieving process, which is what I think I should have done to manage the process for me in a healthy way. Because I was trying to support everybody else and it was a very busy time. Not only was I trying to support my son in his transition, I was also trying to make sure the other children felt supported. Also, trying to make sure they didn’t feel neglected, because obviously a lot of my time and focus was on my son. Also, trying to get in place everything that he needed at school. Also, trying to manage the issues that it was creating within my household. And in all of that, my little girl had gone and it got lost.

But, on the positive side, I had this amazing new son. He changed overnight, wasn’t just his physical presentation. His personality changed; it was remarkable. And so I had a new child that I had to get to know, which was really exciting, but, at the same time, it was kind of, in my mind it was tied in with the loss of my daughter. So I probably couldn’t enjoy it as much as I would have wanted to. So I felt that that was probably the most difficult time for me.

I was also actually trying to understand the concept of trans, transgender living and gender identity issues and disorder, because I didn’t know anything about it. I thought my child was gay. So, I think for anybody else coming through that experience it’s that’s probably going to be the most difficult time in my experience. And it’s the things that helped me were just taking one day at a time. Giving myself, giving myself the space to make mistakes and not feeling too badly about that and recognising that I was doing my best. I was learning as I was going along. I wasn’t an expert, however much I would have liked to have been, I wasn’t an expert. But also, but making sure that I prioritise my role as a mother above everything else and that’s helped, I’ve done that all the way through and I think that’s helped me stay connected to my son and to my other children. Because it started like a really difficult process and it’s continued as a really difficult process.

So this isn’t my son’s father. This was my partner at the time. And I made it absolutely clear that there was a zero tolerance policy that my son was to be called by his new name. That male pronouns were to be used and that there was to be no deviation from that. And it caused, it caused dreadful problems in our relationship it, you know, really it was for me, if I’m honest I felt like I was having to choose at times between my son and my partner. And of course, there was never any contest. My son won hands down every time. But it was it was really, really unpleasant. But you, any parent of any transgender child is likely to experience that from some family member or other. It’s highly unlikely that you will have, you know, given the generational differences between the older members of the family and perhaps younger siblings or different relationships or, you know, different belief systems. It’s highly unlikely that you, that one would find oneself in a family where everybody just said, ‘Oh this is great.’ You know, ‘Yeah let’s do this all together.

So all of them have embraced the change. They’ve been very protective of him, at times. They, obviously, they, there have been a few niggles, especially between him and the younger sibling who when she cottoned onto the fact that this was a really big button that she could push, she tried a few times. But again, it was just within the household we have just had a zero tolerance policy. This is how it is. If you have an issue with that, you come and talk to mummy about it and we will resolve whatever queries you have, but that’s not going to change what we do here on the ground, which is that we support my son. We refer to him as male with male pronouns and that’s the way. And we don’t speak in any way unsupportively of him outside of the family. If we have any questions around it, we talk together. It’s those issues are not to be discussed outside of the family. That’s, you know, if you want other support, we’ll find it for you, but, you know, don’t be bad mouthing about things to your friends or someone’s parents or whatever.

The best information I had come from Mermaids. They had a, when I first contacted them they had a package, a sort of ready-made package of information that they sent to me. The reason why it was so helpful is because the remit was wide. It was easy to find its way around. So, it was sort of in organised in sections. It was available to me quickly, literally, I had it within a couple of hours. And it was helpful in that it signposted me to legislative provision to, you know, policy to, it was really, it was really helpful. And it gave me a really good head start in loads of different areas. And I could then take what I needed from that and develop my learning and read around whichever given subject matter was relevant to us at that time. There does tend to be a bit more information available now on the internet, but it’s kind of watered down a little bit. It seemed, but compared to any other ‘condition’ for want of a better word that would be treated by the NHS there still is very little information, very little objective information available.

What kind of support has there been for you?

None. No professional support. Even when I’ve asked for it. Which I think is just poor. But I’ve been really well supported by my own friends and, you know, certain members of my family. So, I would say, along the way, I have not had enough support. But that which I have found for myself has been really helpful. I think there is a huge gap in the, I think there’s a huge gap for support of parents.