Speaker 1: 0:36

Welcome back to Speak Out Standout. I'm Elizabeth Green and today I'm here with Tammy Plunkett. Tammy is a certified life coach and she helps parents, families, organizations, caregivers, interacting with youth to understand gender identity and to help create, grow and create healthy, happy children, connected families and a strengthened community. Tammy, super excited to have you here and have this so important conversation that sometimes we're just not quite sure how to address. So thanks for taking your time. First and foremost, I'm so happy to be here.

Speaker 1: 1:08

So, tammy, you are a certified life coach, but you focus on gender identity. How did you get to this point where this is your, your main focus, your main calling?

Speaker 2: 1:18

Having trans children is really what threw me into this. I learned by drinking from the fire hose of life. My third. I have four children.

Speaker 2: 1:29

My third child came out as transgender when he was 11 years old, which is seven years ago now. He's now 18 and off to university, which is a huge change in our lives. And then, about a year and a half ago, my youngest child shared her truth with us that she's a trans girl. So I learned a lot with my son, mitchell. I took some university courses, I've led a peer led support group for a while and I wrote a book about it on the social transition.

Speaker 2: 2:07

When Rose came out my youngest child, because of her age, we embarked immediately in a medical transition. So I have a lot of experience in it and I have become passionate about making sure people understand what it means, because a lot of times people would ask me especially after Mitchell came out, how can children be transgender? They didn't understand what gender identity was and they would confuse it with sexual orientation, which is understandable. That's how the television portrays it. A lot of times it's bunched in with LGBTQ all in this one acronym, but they're two very separate things and children can absolutely be transgender.

Speaker 1: 2:59

Even when they're not to the point of having crushes on boys or girls, right, like you said, it has nothing to do with that at that stage. So we could go with many different ways with this conversation. I think what I would really love to talk about two things One, the family that is going through this right now and how they can best support their child, and also just some education for those of us who don't have anyone close in our lives that is transgender, and we want to make sure we don't say the wrong things or you know and that kind of thing. So two very different conversations, but hopefully they can kind of mesh together. So, tammy, starting with the, let's start with the family that might be going through something like this, and it sounds like you went into it with quite the open mind and you were ready to learn in order to support your kids. But not everybody, you know, is going to go into it like that. What is your very first advice whenever a child comes to their parents and says listen, here's what's going on?

Speaker 2: 3:54

Yeah, I don't know if I had an open mind. Well, guess what? My first advice is always to take a breath and take a beat. It is so, so instinctual for us as parents to want to fix everything and to want to get into reactive mode and doing mode. And none of this needs to be done immediately. Of course, we want our children to be safe and if they're in distress or having mental health issues suicidality is a theme for this population those need to be addressed and decisions don't need to be made five minutes after your child told you that you know they feel different than the gender that was assigned to them when they were born. The best advice I always say is let your child drive the bus, which can be terrifying when it's an 11 year old, an eight year old or even a 16 year old. You know, giving them the keys to the car and saying where are you taking us is scary, but it is the best way to affirm a child. Of course, when they are eight years old or 11 years old, you are right up front of the bus with them and you're helping them along. But it's important for parents to understand as well is that there are rules of the road there are, there's legislation, there are medical Studies and standards of care. None of this is a decision that you have to make alone on your own, and none of this is again happening within five minutes.

Speaker 2: 5:39

And I was not the mom who whipped out my pom-poms my rainbow pom-poms and said, yay, my kid is trans. My background is nursing. I was a registered nurse and you know, luckily, on a podcast I can look as young as you'd like it can imagine me, but I'm not. My nursing degree is quite old and at the time being transgender was a pathology. It was considered a mental illness. So when he told me he was trans, my brain went immediately to my kid is broken, I need to fix him, which is wrong. But I knew enough, because I was open-minded enough and knew enough, that fixing him didn't mean conversion therapy and trying to remove you know his gender or remove who he was. I knew I needed to affirm him. I just didn't know how, and that is something that I hear a lot from other parents is I don't know what to do, I don't know how to do it and unfortunately, society right now is making it difficult for parents to access that information as well.

Speaker 1: 6:59

Yeah, yeah it definitely is a taboo subject to even discuss in a lot of ways, and I guess that's why I think it's so important that we're having this conversation. So when you were you, you said he was 11. Were you shocked by this revelation?

Speaker 2: 7:16

I was, and I think it was some form of denial as well. It was, I would say I shocked, not quite fearful a lot, and it was because I knew this had a huge implication for him and his life. Once my husband and I sat down and we talked about things, we started noticing signs that we had missed or turned a blind eye to. From the time that he was quite young. He would use male avatars on his video games. He dressed in T-shirts and jeans, avoided the dresses Once he could start choosing things on his own, played with the boys at school, you know, had very difficult Time building relationships with the girls because he just didn't get the way that they talked and socialized. It didn't register right for him. So those were all signs. And the other big sign that we laugh at now is if we look back at Halloween pictures from the time he could choose what to be for Halloween. He was always a male character.

Speaker 1: 8:28

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 8:29

So those were our signs and you know, with Rose the signs were very different. Like we knew something was up. She always had a very feminine aesthetic. We automatically assumed that she was just going to be a gay boy Like, and she embraced that for a long time. She's like no, I'm just gay, no, I'm a femme boy. And it took a lot of conversations after the fact to say you know what was your hesitation to come out. And it truly is. Because women have a hard time in this world and trans women also have a very hard time in this world. And she had to give up what she calls her male privilege. You know, and she says it as a joke, she's like I had to make the decision to take the pay cut.

Speaker 1: 9:25

Wow, wow.

Speaker 2: 9:29

So I mean, it's not that she was choosing to be trans, it's that she was choosing to live according to what was on the inside, instead of playing this role and this ruse of I'll be a man, because that's what everybody else expects me to be.

Speaker 1: 9:48

Right. What do you say to the people that say there's no way kids of that age can make that kind of decision? Kids that are 18 don't even know who they are in the world. What do you say to that kind of mindset?

Speaker 2: 10:00

I say yes and no. I think it's a very nuanced conversation and it's not a matter of the day you turn 18,. All of a sudden, you know who you are and when you're 17 years old and 364 days old, that you don't right. I don't think that that's a magical thing. I think it's very subjective for each child.

Speaker 2: 10:26

However, when we look at sociology and psychology and child development, children understand the concept of gender as early as two, three years old. They understand that in society we have roles that we all play as women and men, and there are some of us who go against those roles and there are some of us who adhere to those roles. By the age of five, six, seven, eight years old, they know what role they're meant to play. They can tell I do align a lot with what mommy does in the world, or I do align a lot with what daddy does in the world, and those are the roles that I'm expected to play. Of course, in today's day and age, they have more than just mom and dad as role models. They have teachers and babysitters, and television and YouTube. I can't believe sometimes the amount of toddlers who are walking around with tablets. Everyone is exposed to a variety of gender displays, which is good, because variety is a wonderful thing about life.

Speaker 1: 11:42

Yeah, I went back to one of the things you talked about, mitchell, and you said that he always chose boy costumes for Halloween. What do you say to the parent? That their child is not trans, that they know of yet. They're little, they're young child and maybe it's one thing I think in society to let the girl be Batman, but very different to let the boy be Cinderella. What do you think the idea of? Well, if you let your child dress that way, you're trying to make them trans. Can we do that? Do we have that kind of authority over our children? What are your thoughts on that?

Speaker 2: 12:23

If I had that authority over children, my children wouldn't be trans, because life and I adore them and I would never change a thing about them. However, life is more difficult for them, for sure.

Speaker 2: 12:38

I don't believe that we can make our children trans. I don't believe that a four-year-old dressing as Elsa is automatically transgender. I think there's a huge difference between gender expression and gender identity and that gets muddled up. There are children who are gender creative. They're gender nonconforming. They just like to buy clothes from both the boys section and the girls section. That's okay. It's just the way they express themselves. Gender identity is who you know yourself to be when you wake up in the morning. It's who you want to see in the mirror, even without the clothes and the hair. It is your core on the inside of you. Your child can just be gender creative in their gender expression.

Speaker 2: 13:35

I am a cisgender woman and after my children came out. So cisgender means that you align with the gender that you were assigned at birth. When I was born, the doctor looked between my legs, saw the body parts that I have and said you're a girl. My mom dressed me as a girl and conditioned me as a girl throughout my life. It aligned with who I am. I feel like a girl. After my kids came out, I had to double check. I'm like am I just playing a role or is this truly who I am? It is. It is truly who I am. That's my gender identity, how I dress. If I choose to wear jeans and construction boots and a flannel shirt tomorrow with a ball cap, that is typically a masculine presentation but it still makes me a woman. There are some Hollywood stars if you look at Harry Styles or Billy Porter who they bend and they'll wear a ball gown or they'll wear lacy dresses and stuff like that. That is going against gender norms. It doesn't necessarily make the person transgender.

Speaker 1: 14:49

Okay, that makes sense. What are some of the myths that surround this, especially when it comes to people really taking a stance against it, against supporting your children if they're coming out as a child? What are some of the myths that you think perpetuate that?

Speaker 2: 15:08

Yes, oh, thank you for asking this question. The number one myth is that and I will use the language that people are using they are hacking body parts off of children. Children do not go through surgery. It depends on the state or country you live in. Where I live, there are no surgical procedures performed under the age of 18. The reason for that is to bike.

Speaker 2: 15:42

For me, I'm quite happy that my child did not have access to surgery before the 18, because it made me feel even that more secure in this being the right path, because he didn't have enough gender dysphoria to require surgery right now. The other reason that is very important is bodies are still growing. You know you can't perform surgery on an eight-year-old. I mean, I was a nurse. We had children who would come in for a heart transplant and they would need a repeat transplant later on in life, because if you have a five-year-old heart it's not the same as a 20-year-old heart. So their body is still growing. So there is no surgery that is happening immediately.

Speaker 2: 16:31

There are some states and provinces that are doing top surgery for masculinization before the age of 18. It's usually around 16. But again, this isn't done as a whim, like oh, I feel like a chocolate bar for supper tonight. It is done under medical supervision, with a lot of evaluations that happen immediately. The other huge myth is that in order to be transgender, you have to have a medical transition, and that is not true either. And you can be transgender and never have any surgical procedures, never have any medication, and only go through what we call a social transition, which means that you change the way you dress, the way you style your hair, the way you speak, your gestures, you use a different pronoun, you use a different name. Those all fall under the umbrella of a social transition.

Speaker 1: 17:36

Okay, so before we, I have another question, but are there any other myths that you want to dispel for us right now, because these are great?

Speaker 2: 17:46

Okay, let me see what else do I get. I think and we kind of touched on it the myth that parents can make their kids transgender. I can't make my kids empty the dishwasher. There's no way that you can make someone transgender. I think that it is such an ingrained part of who we are that parents don't cause this, we can't encourage it, and you can't convince a medical board either that it's because you want this to happen. Like I said, this is not an easy path. These children have a very. There's a lot of people out in the world who don't want them to exist, right, and so why any parent would impose on their child the pressures of the world to not want them to exist is just beyond me. So I don't see why a parent would force that onto a child.

Speaker 1: 18:55

Right, and I feel like that kind of comes to the age of question is is it a choice? And that goes for gender identity but also sexuality, and I am a straight woman, so I don't have any experience in this personally to say, but I just can't imagine that people would choose a harder path because we know that it is going to be a harder path for them. Like you said, they're going to face so many more pressures than we already do in the world. So I just you know, I think that that's you know. You just kind of always comes up like it's who chooses the to climb the mountain instead of walk through the valley. You know, yeah, yeah was. So back to.

Speaker 1: 19:38

We discussed, I think you touched on especially children and adults that fall into the LGBTQ plus Population. There is a very high suicide rate and Directly tied right to the social pressures that we're feeling or that they're feeling. So how do we, how do we Take a teenager who's already like teeny-pinky, you're so hard right, regardless of where you fall, being a teacher's teenagers, so fall hard. How do we support our teenagers if we're in this space to To do our best to protect their mental health as they go through this transition?

Speaker 2: 20:16

Yes, great question. And this is this is also when I say, like one of the first things that parents can do this isn't something you do on the first day, but it's definitely something all parents can do and that is to increase our children's distress tolerance. Life is hard if you're trans or not, like being a teen, like you said, is very hard. So the more that we can arm them with tools to Bolster their amount, mental health, ways that they can cope with the stressors of life, that that is so important. So I I'm a huge advocate for therapy. I think that is a wonderful thing. I can't Be a therapist, I'm only a life coach. Not only, but it's a completely different skill set. And when I started Supporting parents of trans kids, I I tried to be a life coach for parents of trans kids, but it's such a different skill set and they truly needed therapy. I and, and so Parents need the therapy.

Speaker 2: 21:23

We are still in couples therapy because it helps make our car, our Relationship stronger with our children. Our children are in therapy and I know it's a cost and you know sometimes we have to find alternatives and get on wait lists for lower cost Therapy, but it's so important because then the kids can, can tolerate what we hear in the world. The other thing is there's the continuum. So when your kid first comes out, you are in survival mode. You are like, okay, when they first come out it's very expensive because you are changing their clothes and you don't realize how gendered Toys and like we needed new skates, a new bike, a new backpack, a new lunchbox, a new pencil case and a new jacket, like there's all of these things that are gendered, that we had to switch over. So you go through that cost, you go through. How do we tell grandma, how do we tell the school, like there's just so much to be dealing with. And that's why I think having a support group if you can join a Support group, have a therapist, that type of thing.

Speaker 2: 22:37

But back to the suicidality. That that's where you want to make sure that your child has distrust, tolerance. But you need support as a parent because you are the person that they come to. You are the one. Luckily, if you're lucky, they come to you when they're under distressed and and the hardest thing I ever had to do was bring my son to the emergency room after a suicide attempt and explain to the triage nurse why we're there. It is so difficult. So I needed help as a parent as well. The children always come first. They always need all of the resources, but if we, as parents, aren't taking care of ourselves and don't have resources to bolster us, then we're of no use to them and it makes things worse for them.

Speaker 1: 23:46

I feel like, as parents, we need a support system, regardless of whatever we're facing or whatever our children are in their lives. If you have a child with special needs, there are support groups for that. If you have a child with ADD, there are support groups for that. If you have a child with a disease, there are support groups for that. I think that is so key and so important. Regardless of what your children are dealing with, we need support too, like you said, in order to support them.

Speaker 2: 24:16

Just to piggyback off of that and I'm just going to be vulnerable and say sometimes I find it difficult because I don't speak for the trans community. I'm not transgender, I speak for the parents In my position. I often hear being transgender is not a pathology, it's not a disease. It's just who they are From my perspective. Sometimes it is okay to compare it in my mind to if my child was diabetic. They would need hormones, they need insulin for the rest of their life. It's just part of who they are In my mind.

Speaker 2: 25:00

If I look at it that way, then I can understand why metroline's testosterone for the rest of his life is just a hormone that is going to make him better. I don't want to pathologize being trans, but it is like having a child with special needs. It is like having a child who is going to be on medication for the rest of their lives if they choose medical transition. So yeah, I just wanted to put that out there, because I hear when people say let's not make this a disease and let's not make this a problem that needs to be fixed. But on the other side, as a parent, it does sometimes feel like I'm dealing with a medical condition.

Speaker 1: 25:46

Yeah, no, that makes sense. That was very well explained. I completely get what you're saying. Before we run out of time, what do you say to the parents that maybe you're suspecting, but maybe that they have always the old school way of thought. They've grown up in the old school way of thought and now they feel like you know what I feel, like I understand this more, but I don't know if my child would feel comfortable telling me what do you?

Speaker 2: 26:11

say to that parent Allow them space and allow them opportunity to tell other people. So I wrote a book beyond pronouns the essential guide for parents and trans kids, and in there there is a chapter on a section on why kids will tell their friends or their babysitters or the school before telling the parent. And that's because that relationship is so important to them that they don't want to lose that relationship. So if you don't need to keep asking your kid if they're trans over and over again, but make sure that they have a support system available to them so that they can come out to someone else or so that they can explore their gender and it doesn't mean that they, you know, if you're suspecting well, maybe there's something up with your kid, doesn't necessarily mean that there is something up with them, right? Sometimes they're just pushing the boundaries of what the rules are. I mean, if anything, teens are rebellious. So if some teens and I know them I've told me I use they them pronouns just to screw with my mom, and if that is part of being a teenager, it doesn't mean that they're going to go on and have a medical transition or need to legally change their name. So allow them that room to explore, allow them to have these experiences and experiments without jumping to the conclusion that you now need to rush off to a gender clinic and yeah, if you can.

Speaker 2: 27:51

Just the other really important thing is if, even if you don't have any suspicions is watch your language, because if we are using derogatory terms and telling you know, colored jokes, like off-color jokes, just to you know, be funny, the kids hear that and they will not come out to you because you're no longer a safe person. And maybe it's not them, maybe it's their friends that they have come over, who are trans or transitioning. They will not feel like you are a safe person if you just think it's funny to be making fun of people. So that's some. And I have had parents tell me you know, I don't understand why my kid is so ornery with me as and I'm doing everything to support them. And then you know, a couple of months later they've finally had that conversation with their kid and their kid was like because you weren't safe, because you used to say this and that about Uncle John, and now I'm realizing that you are safe, but it took me a while before I could trust you.

Speaker 1: 29:02

Yeah, and of course, I mean we want to, like you said, it's so interesting that they don't come out to parents first, but we want to be that person that they feel the most comfortable and the most safe with, regardless of what it is. Yeah, so well. Tammy, this has been really, really helpful, and I know you have lots of resources. You have a book. Obviously, your social media is filled with resources and you have a freebie that people can check out on your website. If they want to dive into this a little bit more, tell us just a little bit about that.

Speaker 2: 29:29

Yeah. So it is a very, very introductory look at what it means to have a child who is transgender. So it's defining transgender and it's answering the three biggest questions that parents have when their kids come out. Like what do I do? First, is my child broken? Those are the big questions that people have in those first days when their child comes out. So defining transgender is a great resource for that. And then the book is for the first hundred days after the kid comes out Gotcha.

Speaker 1: 30:06

Well, thank you for putting these resources out in the world because it is needed. You know, as parents, we want to do everything we can to support our children in who they are, so I appreciate you spending so much of your time and your life on this focus. So we will link to everything, of course, in the show notes, so you can reach out to Tammy if you have questions. If you're interested in working with her, we want to check out her book. We'll put everything down there for you. Again, tammy, thank you so much for your time.

Speaker 2: 30:30

Thanks for having me and thanks for having this podcast. It's so important. Thank you,