Oonagh

I have a concern about the lack of knowledge GPs have initially I think about transgender children. I think they've got experience of adults and they seem to have experience of that. But locally, in [name of the area], I don't think there's a lot of knowledge within GP circles. And the GP that we saw, initially, he admitted he hadn't had any dealings with a child that young. And he needed to take it to a panel to approve funding, which showed that, I didn't know at the time, but it showed that he wasn't aware of the process that he needed to go through to support the child. And the referral that we wanted to GIDS he was going to take it to a panel to decide whether that was gonna be the case. So, I pursued it by getting advice from Mermaids and wrote them a letter and asked them to refer us and then, then it happened. So he obviously wasn't aware of what he should do in that situation.

Was that the first time you discussed your child's gender identity with a health professional when you went?

Yeah, yeah.

Do you remember how that meeting was?

He seemed open to it. He seemed open. He was professional. He didn't display any prejudice or anything. But he, you could tell that he didn't really know what the process was or what would happen with a child and how the referral, what would happen with a referral to GIDS, yeah. So I don't think he, I don't think he's, he's quite high up GP sort of on the [name of the area] level I think. At his level, I think he should have known a bit more about the process.

And the referral that we wanted to GIDS he was going to take it to a panel to decide whether that was gonna be the case. So, I pursued it by getting advice from Mermaids and wrote them a letter and asked them to refer us and, then it happened. So he obviously wasn't aware of what he should do in that situation.

Was that the first time you discussed your child's gender identity with a health professional when you went?

Yeah, yeah.

Do you remember how that meeting was?

He seemed open to it. He seemed open. He was professional. He didn't display any prejudice or anything. But he, you could tell that he didn't really know what the process was or what would happen with a child and how the referral, what would happen with a referral to GIDS, yeah. So I don't think he, I don't think he's quite high up GP sort of on the [name of the area] level I think. At his level, I think he should have known a bit more about the process.

I'm keeping my eye on things. I'm keeping my eye on what is available and the options that are out there. And if I felt – I've thought about this – if we were at GIDS and they were putting us on hold and I could see that see the [name of participant’s child] was suffering and her mental health is deteriorating and they were maybe saying, “we’ got to wait a bit longer. She can't go on puberty blockers” or whatever. “We need to wait” and then she was, I could see that she was suffering, I would be really tempted to try and go elsewhere to help to get her the help she needed. I'd prefer to stay in the NHS if I could if she was getting the right support and I feel like possibly we are gonna get the right support for her, because we're in the system soon enough. But if, I can see other families in the situations where I definitely would go private, because they're just not getting the support they need at the time they need it. I know of the Gender GPs and all the controversy around that. So I am aware of all the things that are going on with that. And then I've seen stories of teenagers that have gone down that route. But it just depends on the child and what happens, what age they are.

At the moment she's, at the moment she's okay. But I do feel like she could be susceptible to a deterioration in mental health, because she's quite, she's quite sensitive. I don't know what will happen if and when puberty starts happening. I know that she is, as she's getting older, because she's just becoming more aware of everything. And I think the more aware she is of her peers and how they're developing. She's always felt a little bit different anyway. She's always felt like she didn't fit in with the boys and she didn't fit in with the girls. And now that she's a trans girl, she doesn't, I think that she has got a fear that she's not quite like all the other girls and that she wants to fit in with them. And she just wants to be normal and just do all the things that all her peers are doing. And I can see as well that she's noticing that other girls are developing in a different way, because they get, they're shooting up. They're getting, developing breasts and all those things that go along [with] it. I think she's just, things becoming a little bit more acute for her and she's not distressed as yet, but I think there's a potential there. So I am just keeping an eye on her really and making sure that she's okay and if anything happens where I think her mental health is deteriorating then I would be quick to try and sort it out in whatever way I could. So I don't know what that would be if we hadn't reached the point where we were in GIDS then maybe I would go to CAMHS, maybe. You know, there's always these options available. So, I, I'm just waiting to see what will happen and just keeping an eye on, on how she is. Just answering all her questions and making sure she knows that we're there to support her.

I'm introducing ideas as well about what's gonna happen when we go to the appointments and that will be discussed about, I say, how do you feel about puberty. Cause she's seen her older sister go through puberty. She's aware that it's happening and she sometimes she doesn't really ask a lot of questions. If I try and initiate discussion or she's quite open about talking about it with me. And she just, with the puberty blockers I think she understands what it means. She knows that it gives her some time to think about what she wants for the future. And I think that's appealing, as far as I can tell that that's appealing to her at the moment, yeah. So definitely, she doesn't, she definitely doesn’t want to develop the male things that she sees you know, like her dad, you know, hairy and you know, beard and all that stuff, she definitely doesn't want any of that.

We'd been waiting, ‘cause a lot of people go to the system a bit later and it's all a bit of a worrying time, because the children at sort of started puberty and things like that, whereas she said time was on our side. We can make sure that any intervention is at a time, timely point. She was reassuring. But she said, you know, you just have to, ‘cause this is watch, watch and wait approach that they have. I mean my worry is that [name of participant’s child] doesn't really display dysphoria. And my worry is that because she doesn't display dysphoria about her body that they're gonna see that as some sort of indication that she's not trans. To me, I'm giving it the benefit of the doubt, everything's pointing to the fact she is trans but she doesn't necessarily have to have dysphoria to be trans. But I worry that the GIDS system seems to think that you have to be really, really in traumatic, trauma about your body to be trans.

You think about all these things, because obviously that's one of the things that you do worry about. You know, if you were gonna go down the route of puberty blockers, cross sex hormones and things, you're gonna go down that route then the child needs to know that that is gonna effect their fertility. And I've, we, I have talked, I have said to her about it. I've talked to her. We've talked around the subject of puberty blockers, already. And I said, ''What about children? What if you can't have children? What would you do?'' She said, ''She'd adopt.'' I mean I know she can't really know for sure how she's gonna feel now as she would when she's older. You can't, as a child, you don't really know the consequence, the full consequence of it, do you? But I don't know a lot about the actual process for fertility preservation. But I do know that if the earlier that you go on puberty blockers and sex hormones then it's harder to be able to preserve fertility, I think, because of the hormones just affect so much.

I was pleased that the school were being accepting. I was sort of set, I was worried that there'd be a challenge. You know, they might challenge it in some way. Cause I'd heard of other situations where schools hadn't been accepting. So it was a relief more than anything, a relief that they were going to be supporting of her. And then it made me confident and we could instil confidence in each other so the day that we walked, we went to school when she was first dressed. We both were scared. But we supported each other and that gave me confidence that she could do it and she was confident that I supported her and that I would do my best to make it as easy as possible for her. And anything, any little bits of bullying that she had initially, the head teacher just nipped it in the bud straight away and she hasn't really had a problem at school at all since then.

The teacher, as soon as this situation happened, he obviously researched locally and found other schools locally that had trans kids in their school and he wrote up a policy based on some of the websites that I sent in through my contact with Mermaids. I sent him like a toolkit and things from [city] and he took that along with the advice from other schools in the area and he wrote the policy, quite quickly, which he gave to me to look at. And then once that was approved, that was in place.

I didn't want her to be in that position where she was teased and bullied for wearing a girl's uniform. But eventually, after we bought her a pair of girl's school shoes and she wore those with her normal rest of it, boy's uniform, trousers, everything and she just, it was like one step at a time for her. She was trying it out. I felt like she was trying to move forward and sort of questioning me whether she'd be able to do that and so we, we decided to go and see the head teacher. We made an appointment. Oh no, actually, just before we made the appointment, we went to a parents evening and with her teacher and she was like, “tell her, tell her, tell the teacher” [whispers]. So I said, ''He - at the time – wants me to tell you that he wants to come in a girl's uniform.'' And the teacher's response was, without flinching, ''That's fine. Don't worry. There's no problem with that, you know.'' As soon as she said that, the teacher, [name of participant’s child] started crying. It was like a relief and then the teacher accepts me and I can move forward with what I want to do next. And she wanted me to go see the head teacher and so we made an appointment with the head teacher and again, he was accepting. So all these, all these accepting steps meant that she felt more confident, every day through this quite short process, really. He said, ''When do you want to come dressed in the girl's uniform.'' And she said, ''Tomorrow, tomorrow.'' So we left the head teacher's office and went round to George at Asda then tried on all the uniform, bought her the uniform. The next day she went in the girl's uniform and that was the beginning of it all of her just becoming this confident little girl that she always was and we didn't realise.

He's a very business-like type teacher. And he wants to everything right. I think he had a bit of push back from some parents and governors, you know, he never said much about what that was. But he was challenged by some of the governors, I think and several of the parents did go in with concerns about toilets and things to him. But he, one example he did give me was that a parent had said, ''My daughter is, I'm concerned that my daughter is going to have to share toilets.'' And he said, ''Well that's fine, she can use this other toilet.'' So he was quite business-like about it and set them straight. So [name of participant’s child] was always been allowed to use the girl's toilets from the start.

Well I've always known about transgender being a term and but I didn't really know about the difference between transsexual and transgender. I was a bit confused about that and then, and then I was, I was with the LGBTQ umbrella, you know, the terminology. I've tried to educate myself about what that one means. It's, it's confusing initially for somebody that has got no knowledge. I had some but there were a lot of people that have literally no knowledge whatsoever. So things like pronouns. I've learned a lot about, about why it's necessary to for example display your pronouns, to be inclusive.

I'm just hoping with the—on the one hand you've got all this horrible negative stuff. But I'm hoping that as a result of that, people as well are getting more educated, I'm hoping on the flip side of it. That's my hope, anyway. This is why I think trans people and trans children, the more visibility there is, then it becomes more normal that these people exist and they're just the same as everybody else. That's what I'm hoping. But yeah, it's scary as well to see the anti trans stuff that's been published and particularly the way that Mermaids has been accused of being like some sort of political organisation that's pushing parents to turn their children trans and it's just ridiculous. I just have to do my little bit to try and educate the people.

I must say that the main, the main resource that's still Mermaids and still the parents that post on the forums. So, I'm a member of the Facebook group and the forums on there are the best, the best information you can get for a practical, practical support, because you can read as much as you want on the in articles and research, but if you want practical advice on different ages of children and what's happened to people and what's, you can find out so much more through the forum. So I mean, they are the main support, the parents and getting to know if you've got any questions you can go and ask the other parents, you know, “has anybody got any experience of this?” Little things like does anybody know where to get good underwear, you know, for children, trans girls, that sort of thing. There's nothing like that anywhere, apart from asking other parents and getting recommendations, swimwear, you know, a child wants to go swimming, you've got a whole other dimension to think about. You've got all these things to think about. If they're confident about going in the swimming pool then they'll be, they'll like, they can go swimming. Swimming costumes is an important aspect of that to be able to do it. It's like all these things. But you don't get that sort of practical support anywhere else. So I would say the parent forums on Facebook are the most, on the Mermaid's forum, are the most important place. But then if you want, if you want background information about the research that's been done then yeah, there's research papers. But that can be confusing as well, because you've got so many conflicting papers about and you hear things quoted that you can't necessarily rely on and so there should there are organisations like Gendered Intelligence and there's another one, I can't remember there's a few different organisations that you can rely on and Stonewall even you can rely on for good information. So I would go to those organisations probably first and then look at their resources of what they recommend to read.

Cause you just feel, you just feel lost without the information you need to help you understand what's happening with your child and that you, there's nothing wrong with the child. I think as well that to navigate, to navigate all the things that are being said in the media and what other people, friends or family say, all these things that people are telling you all the time about what you should or shouldn't be doing to support your child. If you've got a network of support there with other people that are having similar experiences, you can come to a better understanding about what's happening to yourself without anybody's sort of uniformed views coming into play all the time, which I think, I think might happen if you didn't have that support.

I would say that you should just be led by the child and if a child is saying that they want to go to school in a uniform, particular uniform or they want to dress in clothes different to what they are dressing in at the moment, that you should just go with what they want and take, take it day by day and be led by the child also just to try and get as informed as possible. Join local support groups and seek out other parents who've gone through the experience. Everybody's experience is different, but everybody can bring, every experience can bring something that'd be useful for you to know. And even just having that community that you can call upon if you need to ask a question can make the difference and give you confidence really to do the best for your child. And not doubt, yeah, not doubt, not doubt your child and not be pressured by anybody else. Just go by what your child wants to do.

If they come across trans kids as part of their job, so they work in A&E or in a different, in a different kind of clinic where, you know, any sort of NHS service then every single member of NHS staff needs to have an understanding about trans gender children, I would be hopeful that they would have that in place, diversity training and organisations coming into the workplace and explaining what it means to be trans or gender diverse and a willingness to understand what it means and to be able to implement the recommendations in their everyday practice.

When you get referred to GIDS then they should send you information, which they don't do at the moment, they just send you a letter saying you are on the waiting list and how long you are gonna wait. They should send you information about the process, what might happen. And also, they should send you information about support. Support is the most important thing. Support groups, if the healthcare system and the NHS can't provide that themselves, then they should point you in the direction of the support groups that can help you at that stage while you are waiting, cause a lot of people are waiting for a really long time with no support and that's a key time to get the support in place and if GIDS recommend groups, charities like Mermaids then I think that's a way forward to help the parents and the children understand what's gonna be happening and what the next steps are. I do know that some parents have said that they've been to their appointments at GIDS and they've other families in the waiting room who have never heard of Mermaids. I don't think that should be the case at all. They should, if families are getting to that stage where they're going for their first appointment after two years and they're in the waiting room and they haven't even heard of these organisations that can support them, there's something going wrong with the support mechanisms for families.’