"WE'RE GOING TO DO WHATEVER IT TAKES TO KEEP HER SAFE"

How families are fighting to survive Trump’s war on transgender kids

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ON SUSAN'S birthday five years ago, Kai, her 10-year-old, slid a note under her bedroom door that she still can recite from memory: "Hey Mom, I wanted to ask, when you talk about me in the future, if you could use he/him or they/them pronouns because she/her pronouns make me really uncomfortable." Then, "Happy Birthday."

Susan remembers exhaling. She had been deeply worried about Kai, who had been severely depressed and struggling with his classmates and schoolwork. She hurried to his room and hugged him, thinking: Maybe this is what has been wrong. Maybe this is why he's been so sad. It was a relief to have an answer, because, Susan realized, "this is something that we can tackle."

Today, Kai is part of the small number of transgender youth who receive medical treatment for gender dysphoria, the formal term for the clinical levels of distress some trans people experience when their bodies don't match their internal sense of gender. Kai takes puberty blockers and a low dose of testosterone, which he receives from the family's trusted pediatrician, who now works at a clinic specializing in treating trans children.

"It was an overnight transformation," Susan says of Kai's medical transition. "He's on the honor roll. He has friends over every day. Just a totally different kid-and that started the second I made that appointment." Because Kai "doesn't have anybody in his life, really, who has ever batted an eye at his gender identity," Susan says, he could focus on being a kid. "He's living in a rose-colored-glasses world that we're trying to maintain."