It didn’t take long.
“We were in the car; I was driving,” Stephen told me.
Kathryn was in the back and grabbed a book off the seat.
“Daddy, I’m going to read you a story, okay?” Kathryn said, opening a random book and pretending to read. “It’s about a little boy who was born. But he was born like a girl.”
Stephen nearly slammed the brakes, then listened as the story unfolded about how unhappy the little boy was.
“Okay. I’m listening, Jean,” he said after he got home.
The diagnosis
They took Kathryn to a psychologist outside of Philadelphia who specializes in treating the transgendered. Michele Angello confirmed what Jean had long suspected: Kathryn had gender dysphoria. She recommended that Kathryn be allowed to live as a boy, a prospect that filled Stephen with dread but his 4-year-old with elation.
Kathryn wanted to be called “he” right away. And Kathryn wanted to be called Talon, then Isaac, but finally settled on a permanent boy’s name in the fall. (The Post is using Tyler, the name his parents say they would have given him if he’d been born a boy.)
“When we finally let Tyler shop in the boys’ clothing department, it was like the skies opened up,” Jean said.
They switched to saying he/him/his and stopped using the name “Kathryn” at home.
It was a huge upheaval, a change Jean and Stephen had to remind themselves of every day. Then came the next challenge: telling family, friends, teachers and other parents that their daughter had become their son.
The reaction
Tyler made his public debut at Sunday school at their Presbyterian church.
The teenagers who help out in class laughed that it took Kathryn’s parents so long to figure out they had a Tyler.
The pastor there was so supportive of the family that she invited a panel from a transgender support group to come just before services one Sunday in January and explain what Tyler and his family were going through. The room was packed.
“We’re so happy to be here. They usually put us in the basement,” said Catherine Hyde, the leader of the group and the parent of a transgender teenager with a tough story.
At 4, Will told his mom: “Something went wrong in your belly. I was supposed to be a girl,” Hyde said.
She and her husband wheedled the Barbie dolls out of Will’s hands, told him over and over again that “You can’t wear tutus!” They put all their parental might into erasing his behavior.
In response, Will threatened suicide when he was 6. He hated the five years of relentless karate lessons they insisted on to toughen him up. Given the chance to decorate his own room, he came up with “the pinkest, pom-pomiest bedroom in Howard County,” Hyde said.
They went to therapists, who said Will was probably just gay. Hyde and her Marine husband could live with that.
“You can be as gay as you want, but if you go trans on me, it’s on your own money, your own time and out of my house,” she remembered telling her son, then 15. Hyde gives lots of speeches and presentations about her journey. Each time I’ve seen her speak, she still tears up a bit when she recounts what she told her child.
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