On March 20, 2012, I gave birth to my second child, a male, who I named Braeden. It was around 3 1/2 that Braeden began expressing that he was not in fact male, but female. He told me that he thought “God made him wrong” because he didn’t have the parts he was supposed to have. I remember assuring him that God had made him perfectly, and that we would figure this out. But as soon as I had a moment alone, I broke down completely. There was something ‘not normal’ with my baby. How did I help him? I reached out to several close friends and family members for advice on how to help. I had no idea how to let a child of four now, make such a large life decision. (Now, forgive me for the pronoun usage here, even now, I still stumble over how to refer to the past to make sense when writing.) He threw fits when getting dressed because he didn’t want to wear ‘boy clothes’. He preferred to wear oversized t shirts, and a blanket over his head as hair. Even if it was 100 degrees out, he would always have a towel or blanket over his head, pretending to have long hair. Lol. I allowed him to do as he wished when we were at home, but when in public I asked that he did not wear the ‘hair’. We found ways around each issue as it came up, but decided to wait on any permanent decisions until after Braeden had started school. I thought at the time, that if perhaps this was a phase, maybe the socialization of school would help him figure things out. Then if it wasn’t a phase we would go from there. Not really a solid plan, but honestly, I had not a clue what I was doing. So the kindergarten year commenced, and Braeden had issues with huge meltdowns over almost everything. I talked to the teacher almost daily trying to solve the situation, offering him special snacks and alone time when needed, extra attention, positive reward systems, anything and everything to avoid having the large screaming, crying meltdowns that were occurring. Working with the teacher, we were able to improve the situation, but even as he entered first grade, he still needed to have breaks occasionally to calm down and refocus himself. There seemed to be a lot of pent up anger and emotion. I never could figure out why. It seems so clear to me in retrospect. But as they say, hindsight is 20/20.