Mel

She seemed to do a lot of research and then confided in her mum. So, we, my husband and I were the last ones to know. So, we were way behind in terms of kind of getting to grips with what this was. Was there some sort of collusion going on between her daughter and her mum. We were worried about the mum’s mental health because there had been issues in the past. So, there was all sorts of kind of like ‘uh!, what is going on!’. And, for me, I just wanted to be able to support my husband and the kids as much as I could, but also understand like what on earth is going on. This is completely, is it completely, it felt like it was. And it had felt like it was accelerated. We went from her wanting to say that I’m trans to right, now I want to go to school and I wanna dress as a girl and it was really quick. That’s what I remember about it the initial transition; it felt like it was quick. It felt like it was a bit rushed. And we were just concerned. We, I felt like I wanted to have as much information as I could. And were we involving as many people that needed to know in this, in this process, which was really important. My husband just was, I think his world was turned upside down, ‘cos they have a really close bond, very, very, very, very close. I don’t like to use the word ‘favourites’, but there’s something that really ties or maybe it’s because his, his first born, I am not sure. So, yeah, it was a lot.

I think it’s, children these days are so accepting. They kind of just got on with it. And as far as I know then in those really early stages, there wasn’t the same bullying. There wasn’t, she still had friends and had friends round to stay and would go to sleepovers and go shopping and with all her friends from school, there wasn’t many major shakes at all. I think people just forgot. I think when they saw her, as a girl it was like, ‘ah right!’ It’s the person she was always meant to be. But now it just felt like—I mean I’m projecting what I guess that they were thinking, but it just felt right and she seemed happy.

I mean, she did, there were, don’t get me wrong there were some real issues in terms of shame around people finding out and like real, real anxiety that she was carrying around with her and is still is to a certain degree about people finding out her real gender. And not wanting to lie. That’s her main thing, not wanting to lie and wanting to be open, but being really fearful of being rejected by her peers. I mean it’s a huge amount for someone to take on at such a young age.

I mean, it’s been fairly mixed, I think. One thing I know they really struggle with, the fact that they have to travel to [city]. It’s a huge effort they, my husband has to come from here and pick them up, where they live, in [name of a county] and then they all have to go on masse to [name of city]. It means missing school. Then often really early in the morning, it’s a lot of money for them all to go. You know, they have to find a lot of money for it in petrol and food and so on and so forth.

I think they feel that the overall experience has been a positive one and that she has been heard.

I know that they recently there was, they had an appointment with someone who was trying to explain to her what happens in terms of if she does decide to have surgery. You know, what happens, you know. And, but they were very course about it. And I know my husband he was really quite upset about that. And, she didn’t like it either. But normally I think the people that they deal with, they’ve been dealing with the same people, which really helps. Someone who knows the journey and someone that you build a rapport with over a period of time. So that’s been really, really good for them. Yeah, the sister’s gone as I said and grandma has gone as well. Just trying to think. Yeah, I mean, it’s, so far so good. They’ve not come back and said, ‘It was terrible and blah, blah, blah.’ I feel that they feel that they’re understood when, when he comes back and talks to me about it. And, you know, she was able to come back and really explain to me, ‘cos I asked her ‘you had the appointment and what does it mean, hormone blockers?’ And she just explained it to me. She doesn’t talk about it all the time. But, you know, it’s strange I think when they’re going through what she goes through. People often have questions and then you’re really private personal stuff is just open for debate. And I don’t think any child really wants to talk about. I remember, when I was a kid, I started my period when I was ten. I was mortified. I had breasts and pubic hair when I was at junior school. I was just like, mmm. It was horrible. And I never wanted to talk about it. And I never wanted anyone to know and so, although they’re not the same, it’s still like a focus on you that don’t really wanna have on you, but it’s necessary. It’s necessary, I think.

I mean it’s a huge amount for someone to take on at such a young age. I mean, it just, when people used to say things to me, ‘Well, it’s just a phase. How could you, how could you let them do this, that and the other wha, wha, wha.’ I said, ‘Do you think any child would choose to go through this? Do you genuinely. We’ve all been through it. Do you think that you would choose. We all, at that age just kind of wanna fit in and be accepted and belong.’ You don’t, you would never choose to do something just so difficult, so life changing, to everything and everyone. But I think, yeah, just managing that anxiety was tough for her and for us to continue to be supported. And I feel that we all, as much as we could just held, held her and held her sister and just held the space as best as we could and give her, because sometimes she would be prone to outbreaks where she would just sort of scream. She would scream or she’d roar or she would burst into tears and, which was understandable, and be moody. She was just carrying like all this stuff [softly]. And I heard her not knowing how to express it, you know, at that time. But, on the whole, we didn’t, there was no sort of self-harming. No depression as such. No panic attacks. Nothing else. No other sort of major symptoms that I keep hearing time and time and time again. And no other like mental health diagnosis that says she’s not being diagnosed with autism of any kind or any sort of personality disorders of any kind.

I mean, everyone’s been so on board. I think I just need to make sure I catch up and what, what does it mean for us. How do we support her. What are the side-effects. This is what I really wanna know, the side-effects of these hormones and, and blockers. Putting an awful lot of chemicals and hormones in your body. How can we keep her well. We’ve been talking about doing a lot more meditation and mindfulness with them and really start practising that, that now, because we feel like we’re gonna need it. They’re going to need it, really, really soon. And, yeah, just all the stuff that comes with being a teenager.

But yeah, now it’s been agreed that she can have hormone blockers. We’ve gotta wait for the last possible moment in terms of her showing symptoms of, not symptoms, I guess, you know, sort of displaying. Showing, you know, sort of traits of going through puberty. I feel like that must be, for me, it feels like waiting for a time-bomb, almost. And waiting for it. And I find myself sort of looking not looking at her, but like I’ve noticed she’s got a slight darkening of the top lip. And what that’s gonna be like for her having to wait until the last moment and then get treatment. How will it be for her and her peers.

What it means to then not necessarily be going through puberty in the same way that your peers are? I worry about how she will empathise or how she will cope when her, especially with her sister and her mother when her sister starts having periods and she can’t have them. I do worry about that. And will that cause any resentment.

We had some really big conversations around, you know, she wants to get married. She wants to have children. And started in the process of how that might work and you know, part of the hormone blockers and waiting for as long as waiting for the, you know, for the sperm to be produced and then they could extract it. These are massive conversations to be having when you are eleven. She gets it. We get it. But it’s huge. I never thought in a million years we’d be having those kinds of conversations and they can be really challenging, at times. Because the person you are at eleven is not the person that you are, you know, when you’re 21 or 31 or whatever. But, yeah.

So, the fertility preservation is that something that was discussed at the GIDS or is there something that you discussed as a family?

Oh yeah, both, all the way through, yeah they’ve spoken about it and so that’s something she really, really wants. She really wants having children.

When I think of her journey from transitioning at junior school, last year junior school or was it the year before. I can’t quite remember the dates. It was all pretty much, I mean it was a bit tricky in the beginning because I mean the talk was around toilets. Which toilet does she use? And then a letter went round. And then it was obvious because she went to a very small village school that he was now a she. Everyone knew that this letter that went round the school was referring to her. And I think there were a couple of comments like ‘my mum says or my dad says you’re a pervert’, something like that. Which was really, really hurtful. However, I think it’s, children these days are so accepting. They kind of just got on with it. And as far as I know then in those really early stages, there wasn’t the same bullying. There wasn’t, she still had friends and had friends round to stay and would go to sleepovers and go shopping and with all her friends from school, there wasn’t many major shakes at all.

I think there is a lot to be said for the way the media handle a lot of things. And, 98% of the time it’s all fear based. Anything that comes out in the media, you know, a lot of the time, against the trans community and it’s all about fear. It’s all about sort of dividing and causing people to be fearful of something that they don’t understand. And then the other side of that is people confusing gender with sexuality, ‘Oh no, she’s just gay.’ Not the same thing. The amount of times I have to say that. But, I think what these sorts of conversations are doing now are really getting people to think and research and question their own thoughts and ideals about what they think is, because it’s society that says, ‘Well this is how things should be and this is the status quo and na, na, na, na.’ I think it’s about time its all been challenged and sort of blown wide open. I think it’s an evolution that needed to happen.

Do you feel like you have to educate people around you and that you had to do it in the past about it?

Yeah. Still. And we are not, yeah, absolutely and some people are really shocked and ‘How could you let a child make these kinds of decisions? Why don’t you wait until they’re older?’ There is a lot, you know. And I can, I can understand what they’re saying, but it, from their perspective they haven’t got the full facts or the full picture. So, they’re just thinking, ‘Oh, wouldn’t it make sense if they…’—no it wouldn’t, not in her case and not in many other’s cases, you know. It’s just to even think of her going through a life of like self-harm and depression and you know, like severe anxiety because she can’t be who she is. I don’t think any of us would be able to live with ourselves. And as hard as this route is, really, really, really difficult, she is much more content and more happier child because she’s allowed to be who she wants to be or who, who she is. And that’s any time anyone has anything to say about it, that that’s what my line is. And, and actually I try not to take on board other people’s opinions. I don’t wanna try and convert them, but I do put across, well this is how it is for us. And it’s probably like that for quite a few others. You, you, you can’t know until you are in the situation and also you can’t know until you have all that information in front of you so you can make an informed opinion on kind of what’s going on.

I know from my husband he, yeah, he had to do a lot of soul searching around what it meant, and grieving. This loss of a son. But to me, I think it was just like son in word, like the, what a boy is, what boys are supposed to do, she was never any of those things, ever. She was only ever the person that she is now. So, but I understand it from his perspective, you know, what having a son means to him or meant to him and all that sort of thing.

In the really, really early days, going to a party before we even, I don't know if we even knew that she was trans then. I can’t remember. Went to a party and she wanted to go as a girl. But we weren’t up together with it. We hadn’t, we wasn’t, we weren’t in the same place where she was. So, we were really confused. And going out in about and, and just out in public, but she was dressed as a girl, but she hadn’t chosen her female name yet. We were calling her by her boy name. It was, now I think about it, yeah, that was pretty tough. That was tough on everybody. I don’t think she cared that much. But it was tough, because we were more worried about what people would think. We didn’t want people to be unkind or ask questions or make her feel uncomfortable. But, these things are all phases, really. They thought they were all phases and we seem to have been really fortunate to have dealt with each one [laughs]. And then, kind of accepted it and then moved on, really.

I feel a bit, it was weird ‘cos took part in it, but not part of it and so I’m on the periphery and running in a circle of anything because she has her mum and she has her dad and I am neither of those. But I’m just slightly outside. So, I feel like I can see more. When they’re in it, they are so close to each other and the issue that sometimes they can’t be, you know, objective. Is that the word? Objective or subjective? You know, of what’s going on. So, normally, with me and my husband I’ll be like actually have you considered this and da, da, da, da.

Actually, I haven’t actually spoken about her sister. She’s really, really important, her younger sister at that time who was incredibly accepting, but also was really challenging because all the attention was going on her older sister. And she was just sort of became invisible for a while. Which was really difficult and it still is in a way. But her younger sister was really accepting pretty much of the situation. She’s been an absolute champion and was very protective of her and was very understanding. She’s very mature for her age. And was just really supportive. Even though it’s been really difficult and a lot of the time she had said, ‘I am just an extra in my sister’s show.’ Which breaks my heart. I’m always advocating for her younger sister all the time.

And I’m sure it’s like a child who is ill, you know, the families of the child whose critically ill or has a long term disability or illness that the other child somehow maybe gets forgotten or they don’t get considered as much and really how to make sure that the other children, child feels so included and held and is given as much attention, I think is super, super, super important. I was, I was genuinely like really worried at one point about her younger sister and what it meant for her just to be invisible. It doesn’t matter what’s going on. I know this stuff with her older sister is really full on. But you can’t let that distract you from the fact that you are a family. There are all of you and there are other children to consider, you know, in it, so that, I don’t know how that will translate. But, for me, I just felt it was really, really important to make sure that the siblings are supported as well as the child is going through the process.

They just didn’t quite—understandably they are of a generation where they were really confused. And so, first of all, they were trying to put the blame on the mum: ‘It’s the mum. It’s the mum. It’s the mum! She did this. It’s her fault, mental health, mental health, mental health.’ Then it was, and it wasn’t any of those things, actually, it really wasn’t. Initially, I thought uh, is it? But it really wasn’t. I just think the mum was seeing it all and was a lot more on board with it and a lot more quickly. I think she’s probably guilty of not bringing us in sooner. I think that’s probably what it was. But I think, between the two of them, they were trying to negotiate what to say and how to say it, because it’s such a big thing. The grandparents wouldn’t, as I say, call her by her chosen name. There was lots of confusion between gender and sexuality, all that. And that really quite opinionated actually in that respect, quite violent reactions to things in what they say and how they behave. And my husband was like, ‘look, this is happening’, you know, ‘and if you continue to behave and say these things then we just won’t see you.’ And they, the grandparents love the children. I mean, to just love them, but they really struggled. The husband’s siblings, his brother and sister, people would make like snide comments and it was, it upset us. It upset us an awful lot because we’re a really close family and we do spend a lot of time together. But it did take them a good year, at least for them—bless them, now, I feel like complete acceptance. There’s no changing of the name. There’s no, the grandfather would merge her boy name with her girl name. ‘Oh, she’s gonna change her mind.’ And it really challenged them in all sorts of different ways. But I think when they saw this isn’t a phase and actually how important it was as a family to be supportive and to show love and to show understanding. And if they didn’t, you know, that there could be some really, you know, there could be some real consequences like real meaningful consequences, loss of contact you know, real sort of behaviour issues in terms of age. She felt like she’d been rejected. And they, yeah, they’ve really, everyone’s really come on board.

You know, and things like having photos around the place of when she was a boy. In the grandparents’ house, there were loads. We were, right, it’s time, last Christmas or the Christmas before, like right we’re going to get brand new photos done, family photos done that we can give because one of the last family photos we have and it’s, you know, she just looks so uncomfortable because she’s in her boy skin. It feels like she’s wearing a costume. To me, when I look at her like, I feel like she’s wearing a boy’s costume and it just looks so uneasy. We all, funnily enough, in that family photo, we all look really weird. We don’t look like ourselves at all [laughs] it’s really strange. And none of us like the photos. We all hate them. But they were really special.

And I felt like we really need to get something else up there as well to show this is the person that she wants to be. This is the person who she is. But yeah, I remember that being tricky. And I think there is still the odd baby photo around. She doesn’t mind the baby photos. It’s just when, you know, she was a bit older

Really, really, listen to what their child is saying. To have patience with themselves, with their child, with the process. To try and get as much balanced information as they can and not worry, ‘cos so many are saying, what’s such and such is gonna say. It really isn’t important what others think. We may think that it is, but, for us it’s just not important. What’s the most important thing is that, you know, your child’s wellbeing and their health and that’s the most important thing. Everything else can just wait and fall by the wayside. Everyone else can manage their own opinions about stuff. But that understanding and love. If you can support and understand your child and give them unconditional love and give them a place to feel safe when they can like really express and be themselves, I think they’ll be in a lot stronger position and everyone would just feel a lot more [sighs] ah, don’t know, don’t know. I don’t know.

Each of these people have got an individual story behind why they, they are there. And it’s the same for the children, you know, and whatever personal judgements there are cannot be seen by the children. They just need to be dealt with in the best possible way, so they have the best possible experience because they’re such impressionable ages. These experiences that they take with the GPs, nurses, will follow them for the rest of their life and so, it’s got to be good and consistent as well.

Really listen. I think doctors can be accused of being, not having such a great bedside manner because, you know, people are in and out all the time, in out, in out. And to be, there’s a way of being, this really, really sensitive stuff and in dealing with children and being able to meet the needs of the kids in a professional manner whilst being respectful to them and being sensitive to their needs I think is really important.

It’d be great if there was more provision. You know, it’s so sparse and I think, from what I understand the services are oversubscribed. There’s huge waiting lists, which means there is a real demand for this kind of service and to have them, you know, and that means we need more practitioners. We need more specialists. We need more understanding. We need more places for young people and their families and carers to go and access it.