Success at the School

I am the father of a gender variant child and I could not ask for better support from my child’s school. Recently my wife and I met with our child’s current teacher, the school counselor and the principal. We had some trepidation, but it went quite well. As a couple we talked about what we were going to say. We wanted to be on the same page and show a united front. We also decided it was best to be very positive. We didn’t want to come in with a list of demands or try to force them to grant our child special privileges.

To our surprise, the school counselor showed up with a copy of “The Transgender Child,” which is an excellent book my wife has started reading which helps explain the science and emotions behind transgendered kids. We were shocked she had taken the time to read the whole book so she could understand our child’s needs. Our child’s teacher also went over to her desk and pulled out her own copy of the book. Amazing!

I started out the meeting by explaining how we didn’t have a list of demands. We just wanted to meet so they could understand our child and where he is at with gender variance. We explained how our child is still 6, so she doesn’t set all the standards and make all the decisions about what is best. Although she feels like a boy and identifies mainly as a boy, our focus is on helping her feel happy, comfortable and as anxiety-free as possible. We changed his name, which helped lower the anxiety level considerably, but that is as far as we are taking it for now. We still intermix the pronouns he and she. We explained how we feel it is important to keep the doors open so she can move back and forth between genders in the future as she pleases. We don’t want to stick our kid in a box, label her a boy, and leave it at that. Maybe later she won’t feel like a boy so much anymore.

One of the issues our child has at the school is using the bathroom. He feels ok using either one, but he avoids using the bathroom completely because of some bad experiences. Once, a child questioned him about using the girl’s bathroom: “Why are you in here?” That was embarrassing to him and caused some stress. Now, we usually have to high-tail it home from school to get him to the potty before he wets his pants. So, we wanted to avoid these issues and asked the group for some help with the bathroom problem. The counselor and principal offered the health bathroom as an alternative. We were happy with that solution because it will help our kid feel more comfortable. The counselor said there are other children in the school who use the bathroom due to anxiety issues. Last week the counselor had one of the kids who uses the health bathroom show our child where it is and how to get there. Our kid was so happy and came home really excited.

I felt so relieved after the meeting was over. Everyone was so nice and so supportive. I really felt like they listened to us and were willing to support our child. They made some excellent suggestions on what they could do to help lower anxiety levels and help transition our child into 1st grade smoothly.

Since the meeting my wife baked each of them cookies and delivered them to each faculty member with a thank-you and a hug. We were both so grateful to each of them. We are really excited and hopeful for a successful 1st-grade experience!