At Three Years Old, Their Child Expressed a Trans Identity. What Did They Do?
Eli and Joanna Morningstar’s child, who was assigned male at birth, started going by a girl’s name and growing out her hair just ahead of her fourth birthday.
As a toddler, Daisy Morningstar often reached for her mother’s clothes to play dress-up and loved anything bright and sparkly, like many other little girls do. But Daisy wasn’t born into a society expecting this behavior from her. Assigned male at birth, Daisy was 3 years old when she expressed to her parents, Eli and Joanna, that she preferred to go by a girl’s name and wear feminine clothes.
Eli and Joanna aren’t sure how their daughter, now 4, picked her new name, but they suspect she was inspired by Princess Daisy, one of her favorite characters in Mario Kart.
While many parents wouldn’t embrace their child’s desire to present as transgender at such a young age, Eli and Joanna, who are both trans, have a personal understanding of the importance of respecting gender identity.
“If somebody is expressing something to you clearly and consistently, especially as a parent, you have two choices: Either you try to beat it out of them, or [you] accept them where they are,” says Joanna, a 34-year-old who works in tech in Brooklyn, who remembers suppressing feelings of gender dysphoria as early as 8 years old.
But can a preschooler really have that level of understanding when it comes to their gender identity? While some may be skeptical, Dr. Michele Hutchison, a pediatric endocrinologist at the University of New Mexico, who has treated around 600 transgender youth, says she’s seen patients like Daisy before. “I'd say a good 30% of my patients are very solid about their gender by the time they can speak,” Dr. Hutchison, who started treating trans kids in Arkansas in 2017, told Uncloseted Media.
And a 2008 study that reviewed 110 responses from trans adults in the United Kingdom found that a majority of participants recalled first becoming aware they were trans around age 8. Roughly a third of respondents—36 people—say they were aware by age 6. And 11 respondents said they knew by age 4.
Since Daisy chose her new name and told her parents she is “a she-person,” Eli and Joanna have allowed her to grow her bright blonde hair shoulder-length. Both Daisy and her 6-year-old sister, Sophia, who is cisgender, often wear dresses inspired by Elsa, their favorite character in “Frozen.” Joanna and Eli asked Daisy’s school to refer to her as Daisy and to use she/her pronouns, to which her teachers obliged with no issue.
To some, these changes may seem drastic. But Joanna and Eli say they’ve made a big difference to their child’s wellbeing. Before Daisy presented as a girl, Jonna described her daughter as “withdrawn” and “somber.”
“She'd get angry. She would start viciously misgendering her sister; she would misgender me. And you’re like, ‘What's going on?’” Joanna recalls. Since changing her name, hair and clothes, Daisy’s behavioral issues have dramatically improved.
In addition, Daisy’s teacher—who was originally worried about Daisy being held back from advancing a grade because she was so quiet—told Joanna and Eli that she has become more talkative in class. “After, she wasn't worried about that anymore,” Eli told Uncloseted Media.
To Joanna and Eli, embracing Sophia’s cisgender identity is no different than supporting Daisy. Contrary to folks who may suggest Eli and Joanna are pressuring their child to adopt a trans identity, they feel they are granting both of their children the agency to live authentically. “It’s obvious that the kids aren't being pushed around by us. They know what they want to do, and the only question is whether they know it's an option,” says Joanna.
Given Eli and Joanna didn’t begin transitioning until adulthood, they acutely understand the damage that would be done to Daisy if they rejected her gender identity. Eli says his earliest understanding of being transgender came in the first grade when he preferred to wear boys’ bathing suits during swimming lessons.
Eli was raised by his aunt and uncle, a trans man, until age 8, after which he moved in with his mother and her partner. Though Eli had a trans role model in his childhood, it didn’t make his coming out experience any easier. He remembers expressing feelings of gender dysphoria around age 5 or 6 and how it “stressed out” his uncle. Eli attributed his uncle’s stress to “the same rhetoric we see now about transgender people of, ‘You're going to convince them to join your lifestyle.’”
In the current political climate, trans kids are under attack and their parents face accusations—that aren’t supported by evidence—of pedophilia, grooming and indoctrination.
President Trump recently signed an executive order aimed at limiting trans youth’s access to gender-affirming care. In addition, Trump has repeatedly and falsely suggested schools were indoctrinating students into becoming transgender and performing gender reassignment surgeries without parental consent. In October, Trump told a crowd of 20,000 at Madison Square Garden, “We will get … transgender insanity the hell out of our schools.”
“[Joanna] is deeply scared to be a visibly trans woman out with children,” Eli told Uncloseted Media. “Because of what is said about us, the groomer rhetoric, I don't think she's wrong to be scared.” Though Eli embraces Daisy’s gender identity, he isn’t immune to the power of transphobic narratives. Looking back, he says, “[My aunt and uncle may have] felt some anxiety about their kids being queer because it could reflect badly on them. So, when Daisy asserted that she is a girl, I certainly felt some of that come up for me.”
Eli takes solace in having seen his older daughter express a female gender identity before Daisy had. “It helps a lot that we had Sophia first because of the absolute sameness of their starting to express their genders, and that gender being ‘girl.’ I have less uncertainty and more clarity [with Daisy]. That is what self-expression looks like.”
According to Dr. Hutchison, Eli’s anxiety over Daisy’s gender identity is common in queer parents of trans children. “I have had genderqueer and gender non-conforming parents who are not excited about the fact that their children are gender non-conforming because they themselves had to walk a difficult pathway. They don't want difficulty for their children. They want life to be easier for their child than it was for them,” says Dr. Hutchison.
Eli is inherently aware of the difficulties Daisy would face if she had parents who weren’t affirming. He remembers experiencing intense gender dysphoria himself and feeling trapped in a body against his will.
Joanna, who grew up in a “charismatic, Evangelical family,” had no trans or queer role models growing up. The first time she can remember anything LGBTQ-related being discussed was on a drive with her father. “He announce[d] that homosexuality is a problem. The quote I remember was, ‘I'm not saying that it is, but you at least have to consider the possibility that HIV is punishment for sodomites.’ This was the environment that I grew up in,” she says.
In an email, Joanna’s dad told Uncloseted Media: “I don’t remember saying anything like this and certainly do not believe it now and never have … Joanna and I do not speak regularly anymore, which saddens me greatly.”
After going through experiences of suppressing their trans identities, Eli and Joanna feel it’s critical that Daisy feels heard.
They reject a worldview in which being trans is cause for fear and are instead focused on Daisy’s well-being. “It's my job to figure out how we get from where we are to where she wants to be in a way [that] is respectful and doesn't lock her into anything early. We're not crazy people,” says Joanna. “We're not doing anything that you couldn't reverse.”
For now, any physical intervention that Daisy may want in the future wouldn’t be a consideration for many years, until Daisy is closer to puberty. Joanna’s emphasis on giving her youngest daughter room to grow and change is an important part of Daisy’s story. On a recent trip to the Brooklyn Children’s Museum for a pajama party night, Daisy sat with her father while decorating a plastic construction helmet with alphabet stickers, spelling out her name. But in addition to writing “Daisy,” she also chose to spell her birth name.
For the remainder of the party, Daisy ran around in pink pajamas and matching sneakers, wearing a helmet labeled “Isaac” on one side and “Daisy” on the other. “Daisy's been pretty genderfluid lately and sometimes prefers to present as a boy, other times as a girl,” says Eli.
Eli’s method of gently asking Daisy what she wants is the approach Dr. Hutchison suggests to parents of genderqueer children. “I like to use the word ‘affirming,’ which just means if the child comes to me and says, ‘I'm a boy,’ you say, ‘That's great. What would you like to wear today? What name do you want to go by?’ Give that child space to see who they are,” she says.
Philip Graham, professor emeritus of Child Psychiatry at University College London, is slightly more cautious. He suggests “gentle discouragement” to dress in the opposite sex to the one assigned at birth. “I would just say, ‘I'm not sure that's right,’ and see where you go from there,” he told Uncloseted Media.
If a child remains consistent in their gender identity by age 9 or 10, “You've got a difficult decision to make with a trans child [about] whether you're going to embark on puberty blockers or not,” Graham says.
Though Graham and Dr. Hutchison suggest slightly different initial approaches to a child expressing a trans identity, their views converge on the matter of a child’s agency.
“We have a somewhat inflated idea of the importance that parents have. Children are their own people; they make decisions,” says Graham.
Both Graham and Dr. Hutchison also agree on the importance of moving slowly and thoughtfully when it comes to healthcare for transgender youth. “As somebody who works with children, we don't do any of this quickly. We take our time. We're very conscientious, we're very conservative, and we want to make sure we got it right,” says Dr. Hutchison.
Eli and Joanna are taking Daisy’s gender fluidity one day at a time. In the last few months, Daisy has often asked to be referred to with he/him and they/them pronouns and—in many instances—has asked to be called Isaac. “There are times when she insists that her full name is Daisy Tulip Mac and Cheese. [4]-year-olds are silly, uninformed humans. [But] they're still humans. They still know what they want,” says Joanna.
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Kudos to these parents for giving their children agency. As a parent of a trans son (now an adult), I can relate to realizing he was not who we thought he was rather early—first grade. He wanted a tie for school picture day. He was frequently seen as a boy and he was not at all bothered. He used his feminine birth name but shopped for clothes in the boys dept. By middle school, he no longer wanted to be seen as a boy, and instead presented as a tomboy and then came out as a lesbian at 14. He came out as transgender during his sophomore year in college, when he lived in an environment where he met trans and nonbinary people living just their lives. He told me, “I understood it was possible.”
I have gay friends who knew they were gay as small children.
I am baffled why we as a society simply cannot let people be who they are.
What Dr Graham is suggesting pisses me off. It's diet conversion therapy