When my son told me he was transgender at 11 years old, I wasn’t sure what he meant. It’s not because I have lived under a rock?I am an educated woman, a former registered nurse, and this was my third of four children. I wasn’t even new to parenting. But I was frozen in place by what being transgender implied for his social life, health and future.
You see, I automatically equated transgender with surgical procedures. And, I am ashamed to say, it also brought to mind late 80s tabloid talk shows on cross-dressing. None of that seemed to match what my fifth grader was telling me. I needed to listen. I also needed to figure out what transgender meant before I explained it to my youngest child, niece and nephew, and other kids in our life. Because being transgender is considered an exception, it can be easy to brush the topic under the carpet for when our children are older. But we aren’t talking about just a handful of people. According to the 2021 Census, approximately 1 in 150 people aged 15 to 34 in Canada were transgender or non-binary. If your child’s cousin, babysitter, or classmate were to share that they are trans or non-binary, you?ll want to be prepared to answer the big questions kids may have.
Since my son came out, I’ve not only had to explain why the child I once brought to the dentist as a girl is now to be addressed as a boy, but I?ve also had to teach children and adults of all ages what exactly transgender means. Here are s...