Colorado pediatricians see growing number of cross-gender kids like Coy Mathis
Experts say increasing numbers of little kids are showing up in doctors offices insisting they were born into the body of the wrong sex — kids like Coy Mathis, the 6-year-old child banned from using the girls’ bathroom at her Fountain school because she is biologically male.
“We’re seeing it all across the state,” said Dr. Daniel Reirden, a Children’s Hospital Colorado physician who said his referrals “went up 200-fold” after he spoke on the issue of children and gender-identity disorder at a recent conference.
Described as “gender-variant,” these children typically begin to demonstrate cross-gender behaviors between the ages of 2 and 4. They express a strong desire to live as the opposite gender — clothes, toys, pronouns.
Sometimes, it’s typical preschool curiosity. But for other kids, it’s the beginning of a life out of the ordinary, challenging societal expectations of what defines their gender.
“In many rural communities, or places with less metropolitan areas, a lot of times kids will know something is different about them, and they identify this way, but there is social pressure to be your birth gender,” Reirden said.
Some adults who grew up in the ’50s and ’60s felt this way but never talked about it, said Karen Scarpella, program director for the Gender Identity Center of Colorado.
“There all these adults who say, ‘I knew when I was 3 or 4, but I couldn’t tell anyone. That was made very clear to me.’ But now we’re in a society that allows more gender-bending, and we can express ourselves more,” Scarpella said.
Sex is assigned at birth according to biological status, but gender deals with the roles, behaviors, activities and expressions that society deems appropriate for males and females.
Children who are gender nonconforming are not considered to have mental disorders unless they experience great distress and discomfort at being unable to express who they believe they are.
As the general public becomes more aware of the issue through stories about kids such as Coy, the scientific community is also starting to expand its research into life cycles of transgender people to include children.
In 2009, the Endocrine Society released evidence-based medical guidelines for endocrine treatment of people with gender-identity disorder, including children.
In 2010, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health released its standards of care that for the first time included children.
Because the field is so new, especially regarding children, “It’s not without controversy,” said Reirden. “Even within the psychological community, there are people on both sides of the camp.”
There are two basic models of treatment.
One advocates allowing the child to express cross-gender identity, which is what medical doctors and therapists recommended for Coy Mathis.
The other advises conditioning the child to fit the gender norm.
There are only a few clinics in the U.S. that specialize in gender-identity disorder in children, and the leader is the Gender Management Service Clinic at Boston Children’s Hospital, founded by pediatric endocrinologist Norman Spack.
Last year the medical journal Pediatrics published the first U.S. study of children and teens with gender-identity disorder, based on 97 patients of the clinic.
More than 44 percent described experiencing gender dysphoria — the feeling of a mismatch between biological sex and gender identity — or cross-gender behavior in preschool years.
The study found that gender-dysphoric children who did not receive counseling are at higher risk for behavioral and emotional problems.
In Denver, parents of gender- dysphoric children usually find their way to Reirden or clinical psychologist Sarah Burgamy, who specializes in working with gender-variant children and their families.
“It’s important for people like us to collaborate because this is a medical issue and an emotional-psychological issue,” Reirden said. “I don’t view it as psychopathology. That generally comes about because families refuse to offer support, or society doesn’t allow the child to express as the preferred gender.”
When a parent shows up in Burgamy’s office with a gender-dysphoric child, she usually advises a wait-and-see approach, because research shows that young children can be gender-fluid. In most children, gender dysphoria will disappear around the age of puberty or before.
“I tell the parents, let’s give the child some room to tell us who they are,” she said. “But that can be a tricky thing, because in practical life, it’s a gendered society — sports, bathrooms, changing rooms, even boys’ and girls’ birthday parties.”
Reirden knows of families who work with their children to transition in steps. They go to school as their biological sex, he said, “but come home to a safe and supportive environment where they can express their perceived gender.”
Children who are insistent about being cross-gender for a sustained period of time, he said, “are probably not likely to change by the time of late childhood and pre-adolescence.”
Coy Mathis seems to be one of those children.
Her mother, Kathryn Mathis, recalls that as early as 18 months, Coy loved dresses and tutus. By age 2, she refused to leave the house dressed as a boy.
“Ever since she was able to talk, she expressed to us that she was a girl, not a boy,” said Kathryn Mathis.
As a triplet, Coy has a brother and a sister, so the Mathis parents were able to watch one boy develop a male gender identity, while the other became ever more insistent about being female.
Coy started kindergarten as a boy but soon became unhappy when classmates treated her like a boy. Being made to stand in the boys’ line made her cry.
Doctors diagnosed her with gender-identity disorder. After a few months in kindergarten, Coy’s parents consulted with therapists and began to help her make the social transition from boy to girl.
“When the transition happened, some kids asked what happened, that Coy was a boy and is now a girl,” said Kathryn Mathis. “The teacher said, ‘Coy is a girl, and that’s it.’ Kids at that age are very accepting.”
In December, officials in Fountain-Fort Carson School District 8 ruled Coy would have to use the boys’ bathroom at Eagleside Elementary, or the staff or health-room restrooms. Her parents on Feb. 15 filed a complaint with the state Civil Rights Division.
The Mathises have no second thoughts about their decision to allow Coy to express herself.
“When she was able to be a girl,” said Kathryn Mathis, “she blossomed.”
Colleen O’Connor
Interesting. I’m going to guess that this has to do with more single gender parent households and having boys raised without dads.
Huh? So Coy’s problem is that she has a mom and a dad?
Sex is a spectrum about which most of society is terribly ignorant.
Our individual bodies are hormonal soups that are affected one way or another by the environment that surrounds us and the nutrition that we consume.
Evidence is mounting that pharmaceuticals in our water ways are altering the endocrine systems in fish populations and even transforming the gender of fish and skewing sex population ratios. This is even happening at the Boulder Creek here in Colorado and has been observed and documented for some time.
“Research into waste water treatment effluent impact on Boulder Creek fish sexual development” http://bcn.boulder.co.us/basin/topical/haa.html
Regardless of the causes of the social ignorance about gender, sex and humanity are better understood as a spectrum rather than a black and white scale. We are what we eat. We better pay attention and know thyself.
Children who don’t “identify” mentally and emotionally with the physical equipment that we identify them as, have been around since written history. It’s not anything new, nor is it caused by air or water pollution.
You might even call it natural, since it just is.
What has changed in our society, particularly in our Western culture of religious judgment, is that people have little understanding, tolerance and acceptance of this. In some cultures, like the Native American, the culture reveres the cross-gender child as someone special, and accepts the idea that it is ok, maybe even closer to their Spiritual beliefs of God. And there are other societies that do also.
It’s the judgment, the feeling that the society embeds in the little soul that they are NOT ok, that causes so much damage. I’m not certain how this became so twisted, but it is not what I believe of either God, the Christian Bible or what Jesus taught of Love.
People do this damage. And it is so wrong.
http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/video/sear … 8349243001
The above is a link to an editorial from a Canadian News station. It is on the topic of Coy and worth watching. There is a commercial prior to the story, but this is not spam. BTW, Canada pays for the SRS (sex-reversal surgeries) for adults in their national health care. Maybe they pay for them in adolescents too, I don’t know.
There are at least 150 on-line comments on the school/Coy issue from Thursday’s Denver Post editorial if someone wants to read more.
The stakes are high on this, by the trans supporters own admissions. Cross-dressing preschool/elementary and beyond is unproven in children and they claim the long-term effects (also unknown in every case) of not allowing is worse than taking the parental role of “no, you will be what you are born biologically”. The inmates are potentially running the asylum here, but anyone who disagrees with me will just name-call and put me down. An opinion cannot be an opinion if it doesn’t agree with the trans supporters.
This reminds me of 15+ years ago or so when ADD was the diagnosis of popularity. Half-way into the 1st grade year, my son’s teacher came to me and said she suspected ADD and recommended testing. I thanked her for her concern, but I said I disagree and testing won’t happen. Whatever was going on (undescribed to me in the classroom other than vague “feelings” from the teacher) went away as my child grew. I know that if I had thought “OMG! ADD” and gone for the testing, we would have gotten the meds because if you didn’t like the diagnosis, the dr just referred you to another “expert” and on it went until an “expert” did agree with you. I had seen it in my other children’s classrooms as well; I was not a rookie parent by any means.
The next year in a discussion with other parents of boys, it was discovered that this teacher had “suspected ADD” in over half of the boys in the classroom. The ones I talked to felt the same as I did, but I don’t know if she found parents who took it seriously (the teacher was serious, this was not a joke to her).
This is not a debate about ADD and what works/doesn’t work; if it is/isn’t valid. Meds for ADD don’t change everything in society. What the trans supporters are demanding (by their own admission) is that the entire society change everything to accommodate a child/parents and potentially cross boundaries of family values (be you Muslim, Jewish or Christian or skeptical) by having to tell their child that being born biologically one gender does not mean you are that gender. This is what Coy’s classmates are being told, and trust me, the kids know or will know.
Before expressing you opinion you would be advised to learn correct terminology relative to this topic.
If you want to use the term “biologically” then you are refering to the genitila of the subjects body. Our culture equates biological sex, and gender as one and the same. They are not.
The topic concerns transGENDER..It is a situation where cultures demand a prescribed way of presenting oneself based on what’s between the legs. That’s not how it works in real life. One can be biologically a male and still perceive self as a girl (not the same thing as female) Girl / boy is gender, Female / male is biological sex. In order for the two to match up as cultures demand the hardwiring in the brain has to be aligned that way. Nature prefers to create diversity…it is a natural survival tactic. Transgender is just one of a myriad of ways nature shuffles all her building blocks to get the diversity needed in the grand scheme of things.
Got it?
Actually boys raised without fathers are more apt to exhibit hyper male tendencies such as violence and law breaking. Our prisons are full of men raised without fathers who did not have the advantage of a firm male hand to guide them from these tendencies.
little Coy’s parents are indicating that he would be anxious, if made to use the boys rest room, since, he is a transgender girl, i.e., has female gender identity, but has male genitals. If he used the little boys’ restroom, other boys using the restroom could be anxious about his wearing girls clothing, such as a dress, and his identifying as a girl. If he used the girls restroom, it could traumatize the girls and make them anxious. Conclusion: Little Coy’s parents are not, at all, considering causing other childrens’ anxiety; they are selfishly, only focused upon their child. This could become a serious problem, particularly, when Coy advances to middle school.
The school accomodated little Coy. Coy’s school made arrangements for him to have special restrooms to use. Yet, his parents insist that he use the girls
Soooo, what is their complaint? . . . the school making their child feel different? They’ve already done a good job of that themselves.
The LGBT community exist and is accepted in our society. They and their advocates should not press to change or de-sex the minds of our dominate male and female heterosexual society. That is, they shouldn’t push to change heterosexuals, who are satisfied and comfortable with their identity; that is, particularly children, who could be made anxious and uncomfortable in their respective rest rooms.
Darling, you need to get your pronouns straightened out. The correct pronoun to use in refering to Coy is SHE or HER.
The bathroom issue is a red herring.
ou didn’t read the article very carefully. Coy is the one who identified herself as a girl at 18 months. She was diagnosed with gender-identity disorder when she was in kindergarten, by more than one doctor.
The child is not confused, you are. She knows she is a girl. The state of Colorado considers her a girl. Her passport and state ID say she is a girl. Why shouldn’t the other kids continue to accept her? She’s been using the girl’s restroom with no incident for the past two years. She isn’t hurting anyone. Colorado law states quite clearly that she is entitled to continue using the girl’s restroom.
Here’s how to discuss this issue with children: ‘Coy is a girl, and that’s it.’
Wow, that was HARD.
And who are you to decide what is or is not an appropriate issue for other people to discuss with their children?
Why can’t Coy be a boy who likes to do girl things for play. He has a triplet sister. Is she a boy if she plays with her brothers toys.
My son had a child like this and ‘he’ used the staff bathroom. Also grew out of it too. Was happy as a girl.