She said she and her parents make medical decisions together because, “of course, they can’t decide on a medicine for me to take.” Now, Jennilyn said, her worries have shifted to Flower’s spelling skills and how she’ll navigate crushes.įlower, for her part, appreciates being heard. I always thought that that was something adults figured out, and so there were times that it was really scary because I didn’t know how the world would accept you. “Before I knew you and before I walked this journey with you,” Jennilyn told her, “I would not have thought that a kid would know they were trans or that a kid would just come out wired that way. It’s all that I have a memory of.”Ĭonversations between Flower and her mother are often marked by uncommon candor, as when discussing early memories together at an Indianapolis park. “I remember that I really disliked my name,” Flower said of her birth name. Flower cherished a Little Red Riding Hood cape and felt certain of her identity from the start. Ultimately she and Kris dismissed those theories, ungrounded in science, and listened to their daughter, who recalled the euphoria of wearing princess dresses at an early age. She wondered if she had failed as a mom, especially while pregnant - was it an incorrect food? A missed vitamin? Jennilyn recalled asking early on whether her daughter’s gender expression was permanent. The decision for Flower to start puberty blockers two years ago wasn’t one the family took lightly. They considered whether they could make the drive every three months, the necessary interval between Flower’s puberty blockers. They brought a care plan from Indiana University’s Riley Children’s Hospital, the Hoosier State’s only gender clinic.Īt the time, the pair worried whether Chicago providers could meet their request for full-time support or as a backup if Indiana’s ban went on hold. On June 13, Flower and Jennilyn set off on their trip, unsteady but hopeful. “Most parents are going through some kind of developmental process themselves as they come to understand their child’s gender.” “Most parents exist in a kind of gray area,” Marx said.
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The perceptions of most parents, Marx said, don’t align neatly with the extremes of full support or rejection of their kids’ identities. “It’s rather new to people, this idea that gender is not just a binary and that your kid is not just who they thought at birth.” “I think most parents want to do best by their kids,” Inskeep said. Attendance at monthly meetings spiked after the state legislature advanced bills targeting trans youth, she said. In Indiana, rancorous legislative debates, agitated family relationships and exhaustive efforts to find care have drawn families to the support group GEKCO, founded by Krisztina Inskeep, whose adult son is transgender. “They need to feel included and part of a family.”
Marx studies support systems for LGBTQ+ and trans people aged 13 to 25. “What transgender expansive young people need is what all young people need: They need love and support, and they need unconditional respect,” said Robert Marx, an assistant professor of child and adolescent development at San José State University. In the Nichols family alone, support took many forms as they traveled to Chicago: a grandmother who pitched in to babysit Flower’s 7-year-old brother, Parker, while their father Kris worked a community of other parents of trans kids who donated money to make the trip more comfortable. But now they are dealing with the added pressure of finding out-of-state medical care they say allows their children to thrive. Some trans children and teens say the recent bans on gender-affirming care in Republican-led states send the message that they are unwelcome and cannot be themselves in their home states.įor parents, guiding their children through the usual difficulties of growing up can be challenging enough. Preserving a sense of normalcy and acceptance, she decided - well, that’s just what families do.įamilies in Indiana, Mississippi and other states are navigating new laws that imply or sometimes directly accuse them of child abuse for supporting their kids in getting health care.
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