A couple of weeks ago several people contacted me about a show on SBS about transgender kids.  I love my “village” so much, so many people who love and care for us!

We watched this episode of Insight on line the day after it aired, Jeremy and I were on the couch, sick as sick can be.  Jeremy watched, engaged, making thoughtful comments. He was most taken with the parents who were so open and loving.  He was very vocal about the couple who identified as lesbian originally then one partner became a man.  There were heated debates between Jeremy and his friends as to whether the couple should be called heterosexual now or if they were still a lesbian couple, The debates were respectful and challenging.  I forget how passionate being 16 can be!

I took comfort from the young person who talked about trying on labels of sexuality only to identify that he was “none of the above” but was transgender.  His journey so mirrored Jeremy’s.

I came away with this thought – it is worth the time for Jeremy to investigate fully, assess fully.  Stage two hormone treatment is not fully reversible.  Jeremy has time.

There is an option after the age of 18 to bypass the psychoanalysis and go straight to surgeries, hormone treatments, this is known as informed consent.  IF (and it is a big IF) you have other stuff going on in your mental health you may confuse gender dysphoria with any other number of things including mental illness.  These are the 1% of 1% people (pretty sure this is not an actual statistic but you get what I mean).  Following the informed consent model IF something else is going on the actual cause of why you feel the way you do may not be uncovered until you have done something to yourself that may not be reversible.  I am not saying that psychoanalysis provides an ironclad guarantee but I do believe that it will provide a level of assessment that can identify if there is something else going on.  The more checks the better I say, especially if you are undergoing surgery of any type!

So time, a precious gift for anyone, is a gift we have in abundance.  Jeremy is motivated to continue conversations with his psychiatrist.  He has time to get to the end of formal schooling while living as a boy.  He can test out long term if being a boy is what he wants physically.  We can talk to other families and  young people and learn all we can.