Diane Ehrensaft - The Gender Creative Child

As quoted in Julia Prodis Sulek, “Transgender Grandchild: Rep. Mike Honda Says 8-Year-Old’s Gender Change Not a Phase,” San Jose Mercury News , February 19, 2015, mercurynews.com.

As quoted in Anne Saker, “Raising Zay: A Family’s Journey with a Transgender Child,” Enquirer , February 21, 2015, cincinnati.com.

Colleen Schrappen, “Max Was Born a Girl, but Always Felt Like a Boy,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch , October 5, 2014, stltoday.com.

As quoted in Hayden Manders, “Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt Support Shiloh’s Wish to Be Called ‘John,’” Refinery 29 , December 22, 2014, refinery29.com.

As quoted in KC Baker, “Cher: I Admire Chaz’s Courage,” People , May 1, 2011, people.com.

White, Stuart Little , 9.

For a complete discussion of expectable parental narcissism, see Diane Ehrensaft, Spoiling Childhood: How Well-Meaning Parents Are Giving Children Too Much—But Not What They Need , Chapter 2 (New York: Guilford Press, 1997).

Andrew Solomon, Far from the Tree : Parents, Children and the Search for Identity (New York: Scribner, 2012). Quote is taken from p. 6.

Waldron, My Daughter, He , 204 and 218.

See Derald Wing Sue, Microaggressions in Everyday Life (New York: Wiley, 2010), for a further discussion of microaggressions.

Leelah Alcorn’s mother’s statement was quoted in Mikey Prizmich, “Accept Trans Youth and Value Their Diverse Experiences,” San Francisco Chronicle , February 25, 2015, sfchronicle.com.

See Anna Freud and Dorothy Burlingham, Infants Without Families: The Case For and Against Residential Nurseries (New York: International University Press, 1944), for a discussion of the wartime nurseries and effects on the children.

Even though India has given legal recognition to third genders, in everyday life those individuals are often perceived (not always so kindly) as an adult enclave all their own, and the social mores and expectations of clearly differentiated gender behaviors and presentations for girls and boys remain firmly in place.

See Abraham H. Maslow, “A Theory of Human Motivation,” Psychological Review 50, no. 4 (1943): 370–96; A. H. Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being (New York: D. Van Nostrand Company, 1968); A. H. Maslow, Motivation and Personality (New York: Harper & Row, 1970).

Sheryl Ubelacker, “CAMH to ‘Wind Down’ Controversial Gender Identity Clinic Services,” Globe and Mail , December 15, 2015, theglobeandmail.com.

See Kenneth Zucker and Susan J. Bradley, Gender Identity Disorder and Psychosexual Problems in Children and Adolescents (New York: Guilford Press, 1995), and Kenneth J. Zucker et al., “A Developmental, Biopsychosocial Model for the Treatment of Children with Gender Identity Disorder,” Journal of Homosexuality 59, no. 3 (2012): 369–97, for a full description of this model.

As reported in Jessica Smith Cross, “Outcry Prompts CAMH to Review Its Controversial Treatment of Trans Youth,” Metro News , Toronto, March 18, 2015, metronews.ca.

Robert Wallace and Hershel Russell, “Attachment and Shame in Gender-Nonconforming Children and Their Families: Toward a Theoretical Framework for Evaluating Clinical Interventions,” International Journal of Transgenderism 14, no. 3 (2013): 113–26, 119.

See T. D. Steensma et al., “Factors Associated with Desistence and Persistence of Childhood Gender Dysphoria: A Quantitative Follow-up Study,” Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry 52, no. 6 (2013): 582–90.

The Child and Adolescent Gender Center mental health group has created a gender affirmative assessment packet available to clinicians working with children and youth, provided they are first trained as gender specialists. The subcommittee preparing the packet—myself, Dr. Shane Hill, Dr. Joy Johnson, and Lisette Lahana—worked as best we could to develop nonbinary assessment tools to encompass children and youth of all genders within a health rather than pathology model.

Robert Stoller, Presentations of Gender (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985), 200.

See S. R. Vance, D. Ehrensaft, and S. M. Rosenthal, “Psychological and Medical Care of Gender Nonconforming Youth,” Pediatrics 134, no. 6 (2014), 1184–92; I. Sherer et al., “Gender Nonconforming/Gender Expansive and Transgender Children and Teens,” Contemporary Pediatrics , 2014, contemporarypediatrics.modernmedicine.com; I. Sherer et al., “Child and Adolescent Gender Center: A Multidisciplinary Collaboration to Improve the Lives of Gender Nonconforming Children and Teens,” Pediatric Review 33 (2012): 273–75.

As quoted in Sherer et al., “Gender Nonconforming/Gender Expansive and Transgender Children and Teens.”

P. T. Cohen-Kettenis et al., “Puberty Suppression in a Gender-Dysphoric Adolescent: A 22-Year Follow-up,” Archives of Sexual Behavior 40 (2011): 843–47.

See Vance et al., “Psychological and Medical Care of Gender Nonconforming Youth” for a fuller discussion of medical interventions.

Anemona Hartocollis, “The New Girl in School: Transgender Surgery at 18,” The New York Times , June 17, 2015, A1 and A20.

Quoted in Hartocollis, “The New Girl in School,” A20.

I would refer the reader to an article written by the medical director of our Child and Adolescent Gender Center, Dr. Stephen Rosenthal, for a discussion of the biologic aspects of gender, Stephen M. Rosenthal, “Approach to the Patient: Transgender Youth: Endocrine Considerations,” Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism 99, no. 12 (2014): 4379–89.

Norman P. Spack et al., “Children and Adolescents with Gender Identity Disorder Referred to a Pediatric Medical Center,” Pediatrics 129, no. 3 (2012): 418–25; Annelou L.C. de Vries et al., “Young Adult Psychological Outcome After Puberty Suppression and Gender Reassignment,” Pediatrics 134, no. 4 (2014): 696–704.

John Donne, “No Man Is an Island,” Meditation XVII, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, 1624, from Henry Alford (ed.), The Works of John Donne , Vol. 3 (London: John W. Parker, 1839), pp. 574–75.

Solomon, Far from the Tree , 26.

genderspectrum.org.

See R. B. Toomey et al., “Gender-Nonconforming Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Youth: School Victimization and Young Adult Psychosocial Adjustment,” Developmental Psychology 46, no. 6 (2010): 1580–89.

Asaf Orr and Joel Baum, Schools in Transition: A Guide for Supporting Transgender Students in K–12 Schools (2015), genderspectrum.org.