My Daughter's School Transitioned Her WITHOUT Telling Me - January Littlejohn

First and foremost, it is just an honor and a privilege to be here with all of you. It's so funny to hear people come up to me and say, oh, you're the Twitter girl with the sign. And I'm like, yeah, but there's a story. I can't wait for you to hear it. So maybe this will give you some feedback and background on to why I hold that sign every day. So in the spring of 2020, at the height of COVID, our 13-year-old daughter came to us and told us she no longer felt like a girl. She had no previous signs of confusion in early childhood. So how did we get here? Our daughter, like so many of these other girls, was very vulnerable to this ideology for many reasons. First, she has ADHD and she's gifted. So for many of these girls, that reads like autism until their emotional intelligence catches up to their IQ. Jesse Ministo, who you just saw on the panel from Third Factor, talks about gifted girls feeling like an outlier. They sometimes can be overly sensitive, overfeel emotions, and can be seen as just too much at times. And that perfectly described our daughter. Jesse also uses the analogy dandelions versus orchids. So if you don't know what she's referring to, please look that up because our daughter is definitely a very rare exotic orchid. Our daughter tended to perseverate on issues sometimes for years, and she still does. And at the time, she was a very black and white thinker. She's an artist, musician, and into theater, like so many of these girls, which led her to websites like Scratch and DeviantArt, which is rampant with this ideology. She was also being influenced by book series, especially anime, and even music. Her favorite band at the time was Cavetown, which is a trans-identified singer. Lastly, and most importantly, she was a part of an in-person friend group at her middle school who was obsessed with LGBTQ identities. And for my daughter, who was desperately searching for a place to fit in and belong, having a friend group indoctrinate her into these identities, but also have these makeshift identities ready for you with colorful flags and pronouns, it was very enticing to her because it gave her a sense of belonging and who she was. Everything surrounded around these flags and identities, that was the first question they would ask other peers that they came in contact with. What is your flag? What are your colors? What are your pronouns? Three of her in-person friends by the time our daughter announced her transgender identity had also announced transgender identities. And as you all know, it no longer just means that you're identifying as the opposite sex. It can be non-binary, gender fluid, demigirl, demiboy. If you Google, I think there are now an infinite number of gender identities. So in our initial research, I am a licensed mental health counselor and I was struck by how my training back in the late 90s and early 2000s was not a reflection of what I was seeing in my daughter's friend group. And I predominantly worked with adolescents and college-age students and I did not have one client that was experiencing confusion over their sex. When I was trained in my graduate program, we were not even using the terms non-binary, gender fluid. It was non-existent. And all of the resources pointed to only affirming these identities. I could not find an alternate treatment option, which struck me as very odd because part of my job as a therapist is to do differential diagnosis. And it did not seem like that was happening. The other thing that I observed right away is much of the coping mechanisms my daughter was using mimicked anorexic girls and what they would do. And so just like anorexia and eating disorders, how that is the tip of the iceberg and everything under the surface is really what leads to that diagnosis and that behavior, I really saw gender dysphoria is no different. So I was really confused as to why I was not finding an array of treatment options. And intuitively, we did not feel affirming this false identity that came along so suddenly was the right choice for our daughter. We also realized that she was simply confused. The more we talked to her, the more we realized there was no substance. She did not understand the things that she was asking for, like HRT, puberty blockers, top surgery, which of course they rebranded as a double mastectomy. And she couldn't answer basic questions like, well, what do you mean you don't feel like a girl? What does it mean to feel like a boy or a girl? She couldn't answer any of these with real depth or knowledge of the topic. We went into the summer and things were getting worse, not better. My husband and I were really struggling to figure out how to best help her. So we elicited the help of a mental health counselor. And as school was approaching, I reached out to the school as I had done so many times before. I am a state home mom, and so the vast majority of my time was spent volunteering in my children's schools. I was even volunteer of the year at this middle school. So I had no reason not to trust the school had my daughter's best interest. I was also a substitute teacher, just to give me an indication of how involved I was in my kids' schooling. So I reached out to her homeroom teacher, and I let her know that my daughter may ask to be called by a different name. This is what's going on. We're doing our best to navigate this with a therapist within our home. We are not affirming this identity. In fact, I feel it's directly related to her friend group. And there are details about that communication that I can't go into because we are still in litigation with the school district. But the teacher I confided in was the LGBTQ advocate on campus. So I didn't hear anything further from the teacher. I had assumed as I reached out to her that it would be treated like a nickname. A couple of weeks later, my daughter got into the car and said, Mom, I had a meeting at school today about my name. But it was weird because they asked me which restroom I wanted to use. My daughter was identifying as non-binary at that time. But again, she was confused. Her identity changed four times over two years, just to give me an indication. As she told me this, I was shocked. As I stated previously, my daughter has diagnosed ADHD. So she has a 504 plan. And I know that they cannot implement a 504 plan without me being present and signing forms. So I was very confused and shocked how they had had a meeting with my daughter that I didn't know about. And I wasn't invited to or anything like that. So I immediately emailed the school counselor. And she called me back with the assistant principal. So immediately, I knew something was off. And they said, Mrs. Littlejohn, we cannot give you any information about the meeting we had with your child. They are now protected by a non-discrimination law. Your only recourse is to go to the assistant superintendent, which I did. And phone calls and emails went back and forth for multiple weeks. And we were finally given an in-person meeting with the principal of the middle school. By this time, the first nine weeks had just ended, to give you an indication of how long this took. So at this meeting, we were shown the gender support plan. Sorry. And I know one of the presenters yesterday had one of these plans. This is from Gender Spectrum. I wish I could show you my daughter's support plan. But because we are in litigation, that is part of the evidence. Because it would show you just how childlike her answers were. And how the power differential must have been in that room with three adults consisting of an assistant principal, a school counselor, and a social worker I had never met with my 13-year-old child behind closed doors, filling out a six-page transgender support plan. My daughter, because she has ADHD, was emotionally 11 at that time. So as you see from this intake form, the process was you go to the school counselor. You say, I'm trans. And within 48 hours, they are required to set up a meeting. And I have circled the part where it says parent or guardian. Are they aware? And are they supportive? So this was the only question. Where they asked her, and that ultimately decided whether or not my husband and I would be notified or asked to come to the meeting. So at this meeting that they had with my child, this is the first page of the support plan. And as you see, you see the word supportive again. And this word supportive, like so much of our language, has been hijacked by activism. It no longer means the same thing to everyone. So for instance, supporting a child in the reality of her natal body does not count as support to trans activists. The considerations portion of the plan is where they ask the child, would you like privacy from your parents? Meaning when we speak to your parents, should we refer to you as your birth name and pronouns? Or should we use your preferred name and pronouns? And this is to effectively deceive parents from knowing that these support plans and these social transitions have ever even occurred. So again, you see the plan colludes with the child to reiterate who can and cannot be aware of the child's confusion. This is an enormous amount of power they are giving to young children that are not equipped to handle it. This also really pits the child against her parents. And sends a clear message that the parent authority is no longer wanted or needed. It also sent the message to our daughter that she needed to be protected from us and not by us. This is the page where I almost came out of my chair during the meeting. This is where they asked the children which restrooms and showers they would like to use on campus and which sex they prefer to room with on overnight field trips. And all this is done under the guise of making a child feel safe at school. But if you really cared about the safety of a child, parents would immediately be included in these meetings every single time. Further, there was not one question on this plan about previous history of self-harm or suicidal ideation or potential abuse at home. Yet these are the exact reasons being constantly used to cut parents out of these critical decisions being made. This was never about the safety of these children. This plan created a huge wedge between us and our daughter. And shortly after this, her mental health spiraled. So after the meeting, I was very angry. And we continued throughout this process to ask for legal justification that they had for meeting with our child without our notification or consent. And we were finally mailed this 28-page guide, the Leon County Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Gender Nonconforming and Questioning Support Guide. I've also included an Equality Florida Safe Space sticker that you can see all over Leon County schools, even in the elementary schools. As part of this guide, there was a Q&A. And this is part of the Q&A. So it says, misgendering is considered harassment. So student harassment is a firing offense for teachers and staff. This sent a clear message, comply or lose your job. A student has exhibited behavior in school, leading administrators or teachers to believe the student is LGBTQ+. Should the parents or guardians be notified? No. Outing a student, especially to parents, can be dangerous to the student's health and well-being. Outing students to their parents can literally make them homeless. So parents who love their children more than anyone else, who are ultimately responsible for every part of their care, are being painted as enemies to their own children with no due process. So I started to research these guides. And wondered if other Florida schools had these guides. And all roads led to an organization called Equality Florida. And Equality Florida had launched their Safe Schools Program in 2016. And a part of that program was to do outreach to schools. They had what was called a Safe Schools Equality Index. And it was essentially a checklist that they would give each school going into the school under the guise of anti-bullying and anti-discrimination. And they asked them, how best are you protecting your LGBTQ students? Well, what school doesn't want to protect all of their students? And so this checklist would go through different checklists of, do you have a guide? Do you have an implemented support plan protocol? And do you have a GSA club? Or do you have inclusive materials? Have you done professional training with every staff member on your campus? And so there would be these next steps depending upon the answers to that survey. And as you can see on this graph, the green is deeply embedded LGBTQ support, including professional development. The yellow was LGBTQ professional development. And the red, which equaled bad, no professional development. And so what is that? Four counties out of 67 that they had not infiltrated. So what I realized is all of the major counties in Florida had these LGBTQ guides. Some of them were over 100 pages long, but they all had the same policies. And I say policies, but they were really de facto policies because they were called guides for a specific reason. Guides do not have to go through school board approval. Policy does. So these guides never saw the light of day. So many parents were completely in the dark and unaware that this had been used to train every staff member in Leon County schools, but they never knew. So after a year of trying to resolve this issue with our school district, we made the difficult decision to go public with our story and file a federal lawsuit against the school district. It's not all good news. So in December of 2022, the federal judge dismissed our case because it didn't reach the threshold of shocking the conscience. And we have now appealed his ruling to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. So now I want to switch gears to how we walked our daughter through this confusion. So as I was actually searching for answers with the school policies and what was going on the school level, I was also searching for how best to support my daughter and help her through this. And I did a deep dive into this issue because I wanted to see with my own eyes what was convincing these children that they were born in the wrong body and to reject their body. And like Richie said in Jennifer's documentary coming out, it was all affirming their self-hate. And I couldn't understand why people were celebrating this and clapping our daughter along this path of self-harm. She received so much positive attention from teachers and friends, and it felt like we were the only ones trying to protect her from medical harm. Because when you pull back the curtain from what is gender-affirming care, most people are horrified to learn that they are sterilizing vulnerable children, destroying their body with cross-sex hormones, and disfiguring surgeries. And this is all based on self-ID. That's what struck me to be the most ethical of all. There's no test to determine if a child will persist or desist in their gender dysphoria. And when else do we follow a child's lead into medical harm in the medical profession? We don't. So initially, the only thing that I could find was this very archaic, gender-critical forum that many parents in the room may know what I'm talking about. Because this was before Genspect. This was before Abigail Schreier's book had come out. And so a lot of the parents that I encountered initially, they were very paranoid. And there's really no other way I can describe it. Most of them used a pseudonym. They wouldn't give me their real name. They actually thought my name was a pseudonym, which was kind of funny. I was like, no, that's my real name. Like, are we not all doing that? I don't understand. And so we ultimately came to the realization that our daughter was confused, and she needed us to parent her through this. She didn't have the capacity to understand the things that she was asking for. And I knew that I had time on my side. Unlike so many of these parents whose children fall prey to this when they're in college or 17, and they're working under this critical deadline, my daughter was 13. So in order to help her, I had to put my fear aside and reframe this issue. I had to pretend, instead of her asking for beauty blockers and binders, that she was asking for a new outfit, or that was inappropriate, or a tattoo. Things that I would have no problem setting healthy boundaries with and saying no to. And I knew that she just needed the gift of time, like so many of these other kids do, because as you all know, the vast majority will desist with the pathway of watchful waiting. I also knew I wasn't going to be able to talk her out of this. She needed to be the one to come to her own conclusion and decisions. And in order to do this, we had to repair our relationship with her and restore trust. So one of the first things that we did is, I knew that she was getting this constant bug in her ear, telling her that we did not love her because we did not affirm the trans identity. So we had to immediately combat that. We assured her we loved her unconditionally and that that would never change. And we started to ask questions out of a place of curiosity and compassion instead of judgment. We wanted to get her really thinking about this ideology and get her to see the contradictions in it, because she's a very bright girl and I knew that she could get there with just a little bit of nudging. I avoided her preferred name and used pet names instead, and I never used her preferred name or pronouns. We also knew we needed a new environment. And we initially tried to pull her out of school, but we were turned down by two private schools in the area. So we did let her finish out the school year at that school and then pulled her and put her in a private school. Lastly, I tell parents, and I myself had to practice a lot of patience. There is no straight line out of this and it takes a long time. And so I didn't read into clothing and hair and makeup and jewelry, because if you do that, you yourself are falling back into this gender stereotype trap, because we know that clothing, hair and makeup does not make our female child any less female. But sometimes we're looking for like these signs. Oh, is she desisting? Is this a good thing or a bad thing? It does not make sense. It's not logical, parents. So with a new school came new leadership at that school that respected our parental authority. I tell parents that if the school does not respect that you have the ultimate authority over your child and will not respect your wishes, get them out. This is a radical ideology and it takes radical steps to pull your child out of this. I did not believe that at the time, but I absolutely know it's true now. We did not allow her to rewrite her past with lies. A lot of these kids do this. And so we would gently remind her ways that she was comfortable in her sex growing up. We showed her photos. We also told her that we loved her and showed her concrete ways that we show her that from the time she was born till right now. We cut off the contact with trans influencers. That was one of the most important thing that we did. We conveniently made her unavailable when they asked her to do things. We also took her iPhone. I do not believe any child under the age of 16 should have a smartphone. And we made sure that she didn't see it as punishment. We told her we made a mistake, that you are not emotionally ready. And we use that opportunity is to do a technology reset for the whole family. So she did not feel singled out. We pre-screened every person she came in contact with from hairdressers, youth pastors, art teachers, because we need to ensure that they were not going to have her go backwards. And that's the other thing is it's sometimes you feel like it's two steps up and five steps back, but you have to remember that you are making progress. So I have to hurry now. Signs of desistance, re-engagement and affection. That was one of the first things that we saw with our daughter. She wasn't holed up in her room on her phone because she didn't have a phone. So she came downstairs and her mood was more improved. She started to healthy question friends' trans identities, not her own. That came later. But she was certainly questioning theirs. Like, how could this happen that everybody's trans? I'm the only one that's trans. Reverting back to their given name, she may start wearing clothing from before the trans identity. I also noticed that with a lot of these girls during times of stress or their menstrual cycle, they will revert back to the trans identification and pick fights and it becomes a power struggle. So just be aware of that. So this is a warning to parents. Even if your child desists, you are not out of the woods. This was something I had to learn the hard way. Those root issues that made your child vulnerable to this ideology are still there. And they need to be identified and resolved for as long as it takes. These are the resources we found to be helpful to get our daughter to desist. Please take a photo because I'm going to go quick. This is not an exhaustive list. And if you want a long list, you can look on Do No Harm's website for the page of protecting children from gender ideology. So lastly, I want to leave you with hope. And that's what most of us parents need. I know this ideology is relentless and it does not discriminate. And it is literally tearing families apart. This is a very isolating issue for parents. And I had never felt more alone during this. But you are not alone. I chose this photo for a specific reason. There's a parent that I know with an estranged child, but not by their choice. And they have created a rock garden in their backyard where they pray over the names of trans-identified children from a support group. It started with one rock, and they now have over 350. Laura Beth Perry, now Laura Smaltz said, when you get tired of the lies, you don't go to those who are willing to lie to you. You turn back to the ones willing to tell you the truth, no matter what the consequences were. So parents, even if your child is still caught up in this awful ideology, please rest assured that you've done everything that you could to protect them from medical harm and to hold them in truth from a place of love and compassion. Just like detransitioners, you all are the victims and heroes of this medical scandal. And I thank you.