An interview with the mother of a transgender child

"I will keep you safe, and they will have to come for me. I don’t care. I will fight."

President Donald Trump has issued at least four executive orders intending to dehumanize and erase transgender people. Though these executive orders have zero impact on Rhode Island State Laws and policies that protect our transgender siblings and children, they feel like a first step, and they create a permission structure in some spaces that has led some anti-trans Christian Nationalists in Rhode Island to demand that these meaningless executive orders be treated as orders from a king.

Our elected officials have been noticeably quiet. We need to wake them up.

Here’s the interview. Names and details have been withheld to protect the family.

Mother: Our biological daughter was born just over 16 years ago. And right off the bat, we were dealing with some health issues. They were born early, and they were in the NICU for a little while. We just wanted our kid to be healthy. Around toddlerhood, we noticed that our daughter had a lot of male friends. We didn’t think anything of it. We figured she was a tomboy, but she - and I will use the gender from before they changed their gender - he’s okay with that - Sorry. It gets a little confusing.

Steve Ahlquist: It is complicated. I understand.

Mother: She gravitated towards more masculine clothes, and we didn’t think anything of it. We thought she was a tomboy. She progressed normally in terms of growth, development, and all of that. She taught herself to read at two and a half. She was a very smart kid from the get-go, but she was very different in how she thought or interpreted the world around her.

She went to summer camp the summer she turned nine, came back, and said they preferred to be called by a masculine name and referred to as they/them. We asked them what was happening, and they said, “I believe I’m non-binary.” We said, “Okay,” and we rolled with it.

We’re very progressive people. I would say that we are liberal in our beliefs. I had grown up with friends who were in the LGBTQ+ population, so I felt like I could deal with this. I had read books and taken classes on gender identities, so I didn’t feel as unprepared as another parent might. We rolled with it and told our family and close friends that this was their preference. And for anybody else who asked, we said, “That’s their preference.” We didn’t want to start any debates or fights or anything political. At that time, everything was very progressive, open, and comfortable.

In sixth grade, at age 11, they went to the middle school. It was still the tail end of Covid when he started sixth grade because he had a 504 plan, which later turned into an IEP plan due to an ADHD diagnosis. He was able to attend in person while everybody else wasn’t attending in person, and he did relatively well. The school was very positive. They referred to him by the name he chose and used his pronouns, which wasn’t a big deal. They had gender-neutral bathrooms.

We felt pretty good about it. And then, right around the end of sixth grade, they started matriculating the rest of the students back to school. Some were kids that knew our child before by his given name and previous pronouns, and he started getting bullied. Kids were coming up to him in the hallway, screaming his dead name in his ear to upset him. He was socially awkward, and it got worse. We went through partial hospitalizations - for three years because he was struggling in school and couldn’t figure out why he was having a hard time being around large crowds of people.

When he was 12, he was diagnosed with autism. I had guessed that he had autism from the time he was a small child because he was quirky and very bright. But because he was a girl then, they said, “Oh no, he’s just precocious. It’s just this, it’s just that.” But the minute he identified as male, all of a sudden, they said, “He’s autistic.” The minute he looked and acted masculine, they were like, “Yeah, he’s autistic.”

Steve Ahlquist: That is such a shame because there are so many young women who would do better if they were properly diagnosed with autism earlier.

Mother: There’s a lot of science behind it, and I’m like, “Why is there such a disparity, and why did he not get diagnosed until he was 12, almost 13?” It makes no sense to me. But that diagnosis helped because he was able to get an IEP, and he was given more - I don’t even know the word - provisions - at school to help him. But he was still struggling. In eighth grade, he tried a different medication for his anxiety, and he had a reaction to it and ended up in Bradley again.

So we knew something was going on. He started letting us know that he thought he was transgender. We switched him to a therapist that’s gender-affirming. She’s been great with him, but it’s been a very difficult process for him because everybody in the school system knows who he is and knows who he is before transitioning. That is where we are facing the biggest difficulty, and he’s had difficulty attending school. The middle school called truancy on us. We met with truancy, and they responded that this is a mental health issue, not a truancy issue, and that the school needs to do better. That was their response, not ours.

Steve Ahlquist: I don’t understand why the school has allowed this so long.

Mother: I’m not sure either. There are issues here that I’m now seeing through my kids’ eyes. They are under a lot of pressure to perform and be superstars on and off the field.

They let the kids who are neurodivergent and struggling fall by the wayside. And I’ve seen it in my practice working. Kids who are neurodivergent, kids who are so-called different, receive less than what they need to do well in the school system. I know teachers who work in other school departments whose kids go to school here, and they say, “We hate the school department. We’ll never work for them. They can’t get their stuff together.”

But at the same time, the school on the transgender side of things has been relatively positive. They do not call our kiddo by his dead name at all. All of his stuff sent to us from the high and middle schools was in his preferred name. So that’s been positive.

The high school has only two gender-neutral bathrooms, which frustrates him, but at least they’re there. At least they haven’t changed that, and I have not seen a change in the school department yet. I say yet because there are tiny things our son has told us that we’ve picked up on. He’s a sophomore. Right after the election, kids showed up to the school in MAGA hats, and it made my autistic kiddo anxious and uncomfortable.

Steve Ahlquist: That’s hard.

Mother: He texted me, saying, “There are kids here with MAGA hats. I feel sick to my stomach. I’m scared. I’m afraid they’re going to do something to me. They know who I am. They know I’m transgender. I don’t feel safe here. I want to come home.” And that’s how things have been for us since November. He has had a very difficult time attending and staying in school. I contacted the school. They say, “We haven’t seen anybody with MAGA hats.” Are you paying attention? That’s part of the problem. Nobody there is paying attention to any of this.

Luckily, he will attend a charter school halfway through the school year. It’s not ideal, but he’s moving to a school system with a much smaller group of people. It has a higher number of LGBTQ+ students there. They’re very supportive. The first thing I asked about was what is the safety going to be like for my child who’s transgender. And they said, “We take their safety very seriously. We have a huge community here of LLGBTQ+ kids, and we’re not going to change anything based on whoever’s in charge at the White House.”

Steve Ahlquist: That’s good to know. However, your call to me was prompted by the recent executive orders from Trump that have had at least a mental effect on your family. What are you going through right now?

Mother: It’s very scary. I am in more of a go-to mode. Before the inauguration of President Trump, we made it a priority to get his name changed in the probate court. It was relatively easy, but the judge who was doing it said that for now, these name changes would be continued in the probate court, but that for minors, it would get dicey. It will most likely become a family court issue, and we will have to go to family court and fight for it. He said that because both parents are here, he will grant the request for the name change. We’ll give you your certificate, and then you can take it and get his name changed for his birth certificate. This is all good stuff. We can get his birth certificate done. I’ve made an appointment. We’ll see if anything happens there.

Trump came into office, and for our child’s mental health, it’s been excruciating. He woke up the day of the vote, and I told him that Trump won, and he got very upset and said, “When are we moving to Canada?” I said, “Well, we’re not going to move to Canada right away because we just don’t know what it will look like.”

Now, fast forward to February 1st, and it’s very frightening. I try to maintain a realistic approach to everything. I try to stay off social media, but it’s very hard because, in some ways, that’s the only way I’m getting information. Sometimes, my son tells me he doesn’t want to go to school, and I don’t send him there. I don’t bother. I know it’s the wrong thing, but to me, his mental health is paramount at this point. If he is feeling unsafe at school, then I’m going to let him stay home.

Steve Ahlquist: I wouldn’t second-guess your intuition on that. His education will come. He’ll get his education, but his mental health is paramount at this age. We send kids to school so they can socialize and learn about the world and each other, but if he’s not getting what he needs from school, it will damage him.

Mother: He doesn’t want to socialize with those kids because he has in the past, and he’s been burned several times by people who have made jokes or they’ve done something where they act like they befriend him, and then they say something, and it’s horrible. We’ve reported this to the school, and the school’s dealt with it how the school dealt with it.

Do I think they dealt with it in the right way? Not really. Telling a kid to stop bothering somebody, and that being it, is a slap on the hand. These kids are in their teens. They should know right from wrong at this point. There is a town-wide thing here where I feel our kid is not accepted. We have friends who have transgender kids in the town. Their kids have had fewer issues at the school because my son is a little bit socially inept due to his autism.

He can’t always discern somebody’s true social intentions, which has made him a target. This has been very hard for him, but his doctor at the gender clinic has been super supportive of him.

He started testosterone this year. I’ve never seen him come out of his shell more than when he started testosterone. It was like a piece of him had been missing. Once he started testosterone, that piece was put in place, and he had more confidence. That confidence took a huge whack on November 5th, and he’s back to being scared and reclusive and does not want to do things in public because he’s afraid somebody will look at him and say, “That kid looks odd. I don’t know if he’s male or female.”

He does present more males now as he’s grown, but there are still questionable parts that people can notice, depending on what he is wearing. People have said things, and it’s hard for us because we don’t know how to protect him. We don’t necessarily know how to protect him. We can tell him things. We can role-play. We can do all the things that parents of transgender kids do, but at the end of the day, it’s not going to protect him from the things people say the glances people have, o the things on TV and in social media.

We’re scared.

I received a text from my community group. A group of transgender parents and other people in marginalized communities have come together to meet and talk about what’s going on. I got this text yesterday morning saying, “They just removed the gender clinic from Hasbro’s website,” and I can’t even tell you; I felt like somebody had punched me in the stomach. I couldn’t breathe. I thought about who we have in Rhode Island that’s going around and causing trouble for transgender communities. He’s calling for people to harass our son’s doctor. I can’t even tell you how angry I was. All I could think was that this would affect many people, but at the end of the day, it would affect this clinic.

I’m scared about that because that is my kid’s safe space. He goes there, and he’s able to talk to his doctor. His doctor is on the front lines. He can speak to my kid and talk him off a ledge. And if he’s not there, I don’t know what’s going to happen to the transgender community in Rhode Island. I don’t know.

Steve Ahlquist: It’s a very dark time. As a community, we need to protect our trans kids - and their doctors.

Mother: As for me, I go and see my therapist, and we both cry because she’s going through the same stuff. She’s got tons of kids seeing her who are all part of the LGBTQIA population. She has transgender kids coming in who say, “I’m terrified.” She has kids who come in whose parents don’t even know they’re transgender yet. That part is scary to me. I think we’re on the precipice of something potentially devastating, and that’s scary.

The big thing people need to know is that you must take everything you read and see with a grain of salt, even if it’s terrifying. This is a time for communities to start forming groups, meeting, and talking about how they will support one another. Because I think if I didn’t have that social networking, I’m not sure I would be doing as well as I’m doing.

It’s a day-to-day thing. One day, things seem like they’re going to be okay, and the next day, things seem catastrophic, biblical, and just terrifying. And you are like, “How do I get through?” Those are the days to reach out to your friends and say, “I need to talk, I need to cry, or I need to vent.”

You find the things that you can do. Right now, it’s getting my kids’ birth certificates done. Hopefully, they will allow us to change his gender marker. I don’t know. We’re not going to X. We’d be looking at males, and then we have to apply for passports. I was naive and didn’t get our passports done when I should have. I should have done them as soon as we had these children.

Steve Ahlquist: Passports are federal. But the birth certificates, at least, are state-issued.

Mother: There’s nothing more disheartening than going to get information that is supposed to help you and your family and realize that they’ve now taken the T and the Q off LGBTQ.

Steve Ahlquist: Wow.

Mother: It’s LGB, and I’m like, what the fuck? Pardon my language.

Steve Ahlquist: Not at all. There is a time for such language, and this feels like it.

We need our local electeds to step up. The Attorney General, the Governor, and anyone wanting to be Governor must do the right thing. This applies to our federal delegation, the General Assembly, every Mayor, and every municipal councilperson.

Mother: That’s exactly what we need. We need school departments in this State to say they will fight for our kids.

Steve Ahlquist: I agree.

Mother: Because I’ve heard zip, zilch, nothing from any school department in Rhode Island. Other states have school departments coming out and saying, “We’re going to fight for your kids. We’re going to protect your kids.” The school, our son, will tell us, “We’re protecting our kids,” but we need people to come out with press releases. We need somebody to say, “We see your kids. Your kids are not being erased, and we’re going to support your kids.” We need people to come out and say that they’re not going to watch our transgender kids just be erased from existence.

Steve Ahlquist: That’s a call to action. We can get people to start bothering their school committees and superintendents. Angélica Infante-Green could be on this; the Governor could be on this.

Mother: This is not the time to hide behind a couch or under a rug. This is the time to be coming out and saying, “I’m not going to lie down and take it.”

Steve Ahlquist: The other side doesn’t win because they’re correct, smart, or decent. They win because we don’t show up. Republicans don’t win elections. Democrats lose them - and this is how we lose them. We lose them by not showing up and not taking the other side seriously because they make no sense. They might as well be talking about UFOs and Bigfoot.

Yet here we are. They say vaccines don’t work. We had the first case of measles in this State in 13 years.

Mother: It feels like a dystopian novel. I will stay here and fight as much as possible, but I have two kids who rely on me ... This should not be happening.

Steve Ahlquist: I won’t judge you. You do what you have to do. We’re all going to do what we have to do.

Mother: My son asked me, “What will we do?” And I said, “They will have to go through me, and I don’t care.” I don’t care. They will have to go through me. I will keep you safe, and they will have to come for me. I don’t care. I will fight.

Steve Ahlquist: Thank you so much for your time.