Boy wants to return to school as a girl

[Serenity]

HIGHLANDS RANCH – The issue of being transgender usually pops up with students in high school. However, a 2nd grade biological boy wants to dress as a girl and be addressed with a girl's name.

"As a public school system, our calling is to educate all kids no matter where they come from, what their background is, beliefs, values, it doesn't matter," said Whei Wong, Douglas County Schools spokesperson.

Wong says the staff at one of Douglas County's schools is preparing to accommodate the student and answer questions other students might have. In order to protect the child as much as possible, 9NEWS has chosen not to reveal his school or other names that might identify the child.

"I see this as being a very difficult situation to explain to my daughter to explain why someone would not want to be the gender they were born with," said Dave M.

His daughter will be in the same class as the student.

The student had attended this same school in years prior, but had left to go to classes in another district for about two years. The transgender student will be returning to what is the child's home school. Dave M. thinks classmates will recognize the change.

"I do think that there's going to be an acknowledgement that 'Why are you in a dress this year when you were in pants last year?'" said Dave M.

Wong says teachers are planning to address the student by name instead of using he or she. The child will not use the regular boys or girls bathroom. Instead, two unisex bathrooms in the building will be made available. The school is handing out packets to parents who have questions. The packets contain information about people who are transgender.

"I think it is unusual," said Wong. "It's something we haven't had discussions about before. It's something that we haven't maybe really had to think about before, but now we will."

Family Therapist Larry Curry hopes the child and the child's parents are seeing a counselor just to be safe.

"I am very concerned because with the guidelines in place, this is a very early age," said Curry. "I don't know too many parents who are equipped to answer that kind of question or deal with it without some other support."

Kim Pearson says the family is getting support. She is the executive director of a national organization called TransYouth Family Advocates. The group has been working with the family and Douglas County Schools.

"Initially there was a lot of resistance," said Pearson. "Now, their position is they want this child to be safe in their school."

Pearson says their group is working with an increasing number of families nationwide who have elementary age transgender kids.

"We know that families are more comfortable talking about this," she said. "There was no place for parents to go."

Pearson says children as young as 5 years old are realizing their true gender identity and her group wants to help parents who may be resisting the acceptance of this.

"Parents are likely to think this it's a phase, but how long do phases last?" said Pearson. "With these kids, it's something that's very consistent."

That thought is not comforting to Dave M., who believes his daughter is not ready to think about the issue of being transgender.

"I don't think a (2nd) grader does have the rationale to decide this life-altering choice," said Dave M.

He is also unhappy with the way the school is handling this. The district has been preparing for the child's return to this school for months. Dave M. thinks other parents should have been made aware of this sooner.

"I just find it ironic that they can dictate the dress style of children to make sure they don't wear inappropriate clothing, but they have no controls in place for someone wearing transgender clothing," said Dave M.

Curry says parents like Dave M. should not bring the issue up to their students until they ask. However, he says parents should be ready to answer tough questions from the student's fellow third graders.

"I think reassuring them and letting them know that they'll be alright. Their classmate is alright," said Curry. "This is something their classmate has chosen to do. It is not contagious."

Pearson says the most important thing is to make sure the transgender student does not become the target of bullying or verbal abuse which can lead to suicide.

"These children are at high-risk," said Pearson. "Our number one goal is to keep kids safe."

Wong says mental health professionals will be available if students, staff, or parents have any concerns at all. She says the district views this as just another diversity issue and hopes everyone can accept and respect the student's wishes.

"Our staff has been briefed and trained to look for concerns," said Wong.

The family of the transgender student did not want to comment.

(Editor's note: 9NEWS was originally told, and reported the student was in 3rd grade. We have since been told the student is in 2nd grade.)


(Copyright KUSA*TV. All rights reserved.)

http://www.9news.com/news/article.aspx?storyid=85989

[Serenity]

Heard about this story in GSA on Monday. It's so weird thinking about kids that young thinking about stuff like this, let alone making such a monumental decision...I mean I guess it's good? Because she's recognizing really early in life who she wants to be and she's meeting full support.

[Kaleidoscope Eyes]

In the third grade classroom I aided in last semester, there was a transgender student. Biologically female, but I honestly thought at first that she was a boy who happened to have a girly name. They dress like a boy, have short hair, the only clue that they aren't biologically male is the higher voice, but even that doesn't mean much when the kid is 8. I think as long as the child's parents and teachers and supportive, there's nothing wrong with making a decision like this so early in life. I think in some ways it'll make childhood easier for them, not having to feel like they're pretending to be something they aren't.

[Tyleisme]

Hopefully she will get the support one deserves with her decision from parents, teachers, and students when they are able to understand. I think the school is probably going to be ridiculed for allowing a trans gender student to attend school and how they are making accommodation's for the student. I just hope the child isn't harassed because parents disagree with it. People have a tendency to be afraid of what they don't understand and they tend to hate what they are afraid of.

[serial-thrilla]

sorry i just cannot agree with this. Its totally ridiculous. If your born a boy/girl you will be that forever no matter what you wear or change your name to. Surgeries are especially stupid. You cant change gender through a surgery, all they could do is mutilate your genitals or give you a fake penis, sounds great lol

[The Resurrected One]

sorry i just cannot agree with this. Its totally ridiculous. If your born a boy/girl you will be that forever no matter what you wear or change your name to. Surgeries are especially stupid. You cant change gender through a surgery, all they could do is mutilate your genitals or give you a fake penis, sounds great lol

I know of some transsexual celebrities.

There was this one I actually emailed once. :P lol

It was a woman who got a gender change to a male, which I call FTM (Female to Male).

But as I have heard (gosh, and even seen before), those who get sex changes change every part of their body to the opposite gender, except for their genitals below the waist.

So imagine that.

[serial-thrilla]

yeah its not right. definatly not something that was meant to happen.

[Kaleidoscope Eyes]

Serial, you obviously don't understand the situation. Transgendered people don't just WANT to be the opposite sex. They ARE the opposite sex in the wrong body. Imagine being exactly who you are now, but being in a girl's body and being treated as a girl. How would you feel? Would you want to be treated based on who you are, not based on your body? Would you find it easy to pretend to be a girl, for the rest of your life, and never once tell anyone that you were really a boy? That's the kind of situation these people are faced with. It's not a wacky desire, it's a sort of biological error, and just because you don't identify with it is no reason to call it "ridiculous".

EDIT: And Johnny, I think transsexual and transgendered are two different things. It was my understanding that transgendered people are in the wrong body, and transsexual people have messed up sexual organs. Such as a female with the outward appearance of a female, but testes in place of ovaries. I may be wrong though.

[Serenity]

Pssssssst look at the nifty TEEN SEXUALITY STICKY I spent like A WEEK writing!!

[The Resurrected One]

Pssssssst look at the nifty TEEN SEXUALITY STICKY I spent like A WEEK writing!!

Yup. Here is the main part of it that we were discussing:

Gender Identity/Role
Androgynous- Being neither distinguishably masculine nor feminine, as in dress, appearance, or behavior; having an ambiguous sexual identity (Hermaphrodite)
Transgender- A person who feels that the gender they were assigned at birth does not fit them (Often one who cross- dresses)
FTM/F2M/Trans-Man- A person who was born female but identifies as a male
MTF/M2F/Trans-Woman- A person who was born male but identifies as a female
Transsexual- A person who chooses to surgically change their gender because they feel that the gender they were assigned at birth does not fit them
Gender Non-conforming/Gender Queer- One who refuses to accepts society’s label of male or female and presents themself as a gender-free individual
Intersex- A general term in reference to any person whose genitalia/sexual anatomy doesn’t fit the typical qualifications of male or female
Two Spirit- An individual, usually indigenous or tribal, who usually believes they have 2 spirits in their body
Third Sex/Gender- An individual who considered themself neither male nor female; also used in cultures where a gender aside from male and female exists


I bolded the main parts of what we were discussing above.

[Kaleidoscope Eyes]

Alright then, I was misinformed, haha. Thanks for clearing that up.

[The Batman]

This is something that I truly don't believe in for two main reasons. 1.) He's just in the second grade and I doubt that he really understands how he feels and part of me doesn't even think he wants to be a girl for the right reasons. 2.) Sadly I don't believe in trans gender's mainly boy's who want to be a girl and to be honest some of them scare me but I do want to change and be more accepting.

[always_learning]

[POSSIBLE SPAM] This post contained links and was either posted by a guest, a restricted account, or a member with less than 10 posts. This may be an advertising spam message from a bot or an eager salesman. In short, please disregard this post :)

[Kaleidoscope Eyes]

Sorry, you can't post a link until you have at least 10 posts.

[always_learning]

Sorry, you can't post a link until you have at least 10 posts.

Well that stinks! I have a link to a very important follow-up story on this family.

[The Resurrected One]

Well that stinks! I have a link to a very important follow-up story on this family.

You can copy and paste the story here, and then once you have 10 posts edit it and put the link in at the end as a source or something.

[always_learning]

Trying to post the story about this family again:

Editor's note: The names of members of the "Holtz" family have been changed to protect their identities.

It hasn't always been easy for Jamie Holtz to simply be herself.

For the first six years of her life, her parents thought they had a boy.

She knew better, probably around 20 months of age, and became increasingly uncomfortable as a boy. By age 4, she wanted to die, and she told her parents, Mark and Cheryl Holtz, repeatedly.

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"She had self-loathing and an obsession with death and funerals," Cheryl said.

Jamie's obsession with death disappeared once her parents figured out what was going on.

Cheryl started researching online.

Until 13 months ago, she had never heard the word transgender.

She certainly didn't know that a child could be transgender, until Jamie yelled at her.

"Mommy, I'm a girl!" Jamie cried.

So after research, agonized parental discussions and time with doctors and therapists, Jamie's parents also came to the realization that gender and sex are different.

Jamie was born into a boy's body.

"But I'm a girl; I have a girl's brain," she said from her Highlands Ranch home.

She remembers knowing she was a girl as young as age 3, and her parents see all the feminine traits in Jamie in retrospect, back to 18 or 20 months of age.

"It's like all the puzzle pieces fall into place," Cheryl said. "I never had a son. I had a daughter.

"Looking back at events in our child's life, it all makes more sense," Mark said. "Like many people we didn't understand [transgender] and we had to do a great deal of research to educate ourselves."

Mark had a sudden education - he was out of town the week Jamie claimed her identity as a girl and Cheryl was researching transgender.

"I came in the door and Cheryl said, 'Jamie is a girl. It's called transgender and this is what is going on,'" he remembers.

He watched carefully. Mark is a thoughtful person who takes his time with new information and ideas.

"Transgender is not something we ever thought about before," Mark said. "We are not activists; we are a centrist couple, middle of the road politically. This entire process has been one of slow reveal over a matter of years."

That revelation was punctuated when Jamie was able to express what was going on inside.

So Jamie began dressing in girl clothes and acting like a girl at home, but still trying to be a boy to the outside world.

The summer passed with this arrangement. One week, the family went on vacation and Jamie was being a girl in public full time.

At an Independence Day outing, Jamie was running and wrestling with several boys.

Hoping they were wrong in their assessment, Mark asked her later if she thought that was male behavior.

"We were playing Star Wars and I was Princess Leia," she told her father.

"We tried to put her back in the boy box," Cheryl said. "The box exploded."

From the first day Jamie started living as a girl, the obsession with death vanished.

"We feel very clear that our child would never have made it to adulthood if we had not allowed her to transition," Cheryl said. "Against that background, the hateful comments and misunderstandings seem like nothing. We would rather have a girl who struggles against the prejudices of the world than a dead son."

Statistics on known transgender children and adolescents suggest 50 percent attempt suicide.

"But this is a silent community," Cheryl said. "How can anyone ever know? Maybe that boy who went underground at age 5 who was talented and capable and so handsome, and suddenly out of the blue commits suicide - maybe he was transgender. How do we count him in that statistic?"

After vacation came the fall semester.

The year before, Jamie went to school, forgetting about some red polish on her toes.

"Some boys noticed and I was really scared, so I said it was bleeding," she said. "I got some tissue and acted like it was bleeding."

Neither the school nor Jamie was ready for her affirmed self, so she homeschooled.

"She was miserable," Cheryl said. "She wanted to play with her friends at recess, go to the Halloween, Christmas and Valentine's parties."

So Jamie returned to her school, after the school district prepared the staff and put safety plans into place before her arrival.

At first, she had different explanations for her new self.

She told some students she was the sister of the classmate they remembered. Another time, she said he had died.

But she was in class with children who had known her for years, some since birth.

With close child friends and family, once they have a simple answer about why Jamie looks different to them, they are satisfied and ready to go play. Usually, Jamie's statement that she has a girl brain is enough.

Only one child needed some more explanation.

The friend was concerned about Jamie becoming a woman in the future. He was satisfied when the family explained that they didn't know what the future would bring, but the doctors could help Jamie with whatever she needed, so there was no reason to worry.

The school district has worked with the Holtzes and the rest of the school community to keep Jamie safe while getting the job of educating all the students done.

Jamie's sister's class has been told about Jamie and the school's fifth-graders have taken it upon themselves to protect her.

"One girl comes up to me on the playground and makes sure no one has been picking on me," Jamie said.

Some of her friendships have picked up where they left off, and she has made new friends with no problems. Jamie has not mentioned any bullying.

"We are very grateful to the school and the efforts they made," Cheryl said. "The school focused on all the children. Not everything was handled our way, but we understand that the school is trying to do the best they can for the entire community. For our family, it would have been better if there could have been more explanation given to the families and students throughout the school. This is very hard for a child to have to explain to old friends on her own. It leaves everything to the misunderstandings that are rampant in our society."

When looking at bringing Jamie back into school, the Holtz family, like families of transgender students across the country, faced a couple of choices.

They could move and put Jamie in a new school and tell only the principal, which would have Jamie as a stealth transgender child, or return to her same school and be out in the open.

Moving and going stealth had several downsides: an older relative in the community that needs the family's support, Jamie's older sister, would have to make a new set of friends, which would not come easily to her, and the family values truth and openness.

"We are not comfortable with secrecy," Cheryl said. "We would not be comfortable with this secret. It would upset the dynamic of the family. What you have to understand is there is nothing wrong with our child. We don't want Jamie to live her life thinking something is fundamentally wrong with her, that she has to hide who she is because she is so bad."

The family also considered what would happen if Jamie did enroll in a different school with almost no one knowing her past.

What would happen if it blew up in her face? Who knows, who can she trust? Secrets have a way of coming out.

The Holtzes understand there are people who will violently disagree with their stance.

"We are not out to confront people who see this as a moral issues," Cheryl said. "We just want to provide answers. We came to the community, not national news outlets, so our community could understand."

Jamie's parents did not simply take her at her word.

"We researched from many viewpoints. We read [James] Dobson's book. We read about reparative therapy. We talked to our pediatrician," Cheryl said. "All the time, the source of our child's suffering became more and more clear."

James Dobson wrote "Bringing up Boys."

Mark and Cheryl were haunted by their own misunderstanding of what it means to be transgender.

Some of the stereotypes played across the screen of their minds.

Once they learned more and came to understand that their little girl would most likely want nothing more than to blend in society as a normal, productive female, acceptance became easier.

This wasn't about being gay, but being a girl.

Supporting Jamie has had costs.

Both Mark and Cheryl grieved for the life they had envisioned for Jamie, the loss of assumed championships in a sport, the loss of a son.

Her sister has had a difficult time losing her brother.

Friends and family have adjusted at their own paces.

"When confronted with our child's transition, each of them took the time to compassionately explain to their children what we were doing and why," Cheryl said. "None of the other children in our lives have had difficulty. Many have said they always knew she was a girl. It hasn't always been seamless. Some kids thought it was weird for a day or two. Some took a long time to adjust to the name and pronoun change; after all, they have known Jamie their entire lives, but now they play as if it was never any other way."

The Holtz family wants the same things for Jamie as any family wants for their children: compassion and simple respect.

"It won't be easy for any of us," Cheryl said. "Not for our child and not for the children and families who will be on this journey with us at our school.

"We worry about the future and we hope. We hope that somehow in this great country there will be a place for our beautiful, highly talented and charismatic daughter."

303-566-4107 | rlydick at ccnewspapers dot com

[Kaleidoscope Eyes]

That's great that things are working out well for Jamie and her family. I can see how it must be a difficult transition for everyone, but it sounds like the community is adjusting well and doing a lot to accommodate Jamie. It's always nice to hear a story like that. :)

[The Batman]

I still don't get how someone that young can have thoughts that mature

[Yasmine]

i'm a male to female transgender, but i didn't get to transition yet

[Kaleidoscope Eyes]

Well, if all else fails, once you're 18 it'll be up to you which gender you choose to identify with. :)