Seeking the well-being of trans kids

“My child has just come out as transgender. What do I do?” These days, it seems that no matter how you respond, someone will judge you harshly. These questions take on special urgency as the average age of coming out as trans is steadily dropping, and there are increasingly effective treatment options for transforming bodies.

As of the end of 2025, the Alberta government has passed three laws affecting transgender youth. Bill 26 prohibits doctors from providing gender-affirming treatment (like puberty blockers and hormone therapy) to any youth under 16. Bill 27 requires students under 16 to have parental consent to change their names/pronouns and requires school staff to notify parents of students 16-17 who want to change their names/pronouns in school. Finally, Bill 29 prevents transgender athletes from competing in female-only sports.

Options for medical transitions for youth vary according to provincial and territorial legislation, but the path involves careful assessment by professionals to determine whether such a transition is appropriate. As well, all Canadians need to be 18 or older to opt for bottom, gender-affirming surgeries.

Amid the division and confusion around transgender laws are ordinary people and communities – parents, teachers and psychologists; medical professionals; adults and children; schools and churches. Ordinary people who are trying to navigate the messiness and complexity of sex and gender in a world where there are plenty of voices that claim to provide clear answers, and where the voices of those most directly affected – transgender persons – are often ignored.

The recent rapid increase in the number of children and teens presenting with gender dysphoria or coming out as transgender is likely due mainly to the increased visibility and acceptance of gender diversity, as well as the availability of treatment. However, clinicians continue to explore other factors too. For example, it’s interesting that much of the increase is now coming from people assigned female at birth when, in the past, the majority of transgender persons were assigned male at birth.

While there is much we do know, scientists and clinicians still have things to learn about transgender kids and their development. While there is evidence that transgender persons have always existed, transgender identities have only been widely visible in Western culture for a few decades. Good medical options are even more recent and well-designed studies that track transgender persons following different life paths are only just emerging.

How is gender formed?

Scientists don’t even know how gender identities and expressions develop in people who are cisgender (where gender “matches” biology), let alone transgender. What we do know is that gender forms over time and is influenced by both biology and context. There is certainly no one-size-fits-all response when someone experiences conflicts among their bodily sex, gender identity and gender expression.

Some children behave in ways that are not stereotypical for their sex (e.g. boys who like to dress in girls’ clothes) or say that they wish they were, or are, the other sex. For some, this is a phase; for others, a persistent characteristic. Some will become adults whose gender identity is consistent with their bodies; a few are fully transgender; some will also be gay. Scientists do not know enough to predict which outcome is likely for any given child.

Transgender experiences

There is plenty of scientific evidence to show that transgender people are vulnerable. They struggle with anxiety and depression and experience high rates of social rejection, bullying and physical violence. In a 2017 poll of 923 transgender youth in Canada, two out of three 14 to 18-year-old transgender youth surveyed said they had seriously considered suicide in the past year. Between 32-41 percent of transgender adults (as reported by the Centre for Suicide Prevention) say they have attempted suicide at least once in their lives, largely due to the social denial, hostility, rejection and violence they experience.

Reading the Rainbows

Heather Looy hosts the podcast Reading the Rainbows. Its 19 episodes deal with questions like “Why is it so hard to talk about sex?” and “Are sex and gender binaries real?” (Photo credit: Harry Quan / Unsplash).

I spoke to Hannah, a transgender woman now in her late 40s, on my Reading the Rainbows podcast. Hannah reflected on her childhood in a time when transgender experiences were invisible and unacknowledged. “[I was] finding no satisfaction or joy because the one thing I yearned to be [a girl] was impossible beyond impossible,” Hannah said. “I lived a life of hiddenness. That’s a terrifying world to be in. This isn’t a thing you get to choose. This is a core foundation of your very soul. And when you don’t fit those [gender] norms, well, then you just start shutting down. You start creating an alternate identity that is not you. I gave the world what they wanted to see, and doing so created a great deal of trauma that I still have to recover from.”

Well-meaning parents sometimes dismiss gender-related questions and pressure gender-atypical children into conforming better to social expectations to protect those children from becoming targets. But such silence, denial or dismissal can lead to shame, self-loathing and hiding.

The well-being of children

Harm can occur when youth prematurely enter a medical transition, but it is guaranteed to occur when youth are not taken seriously and are refused any form of support or treatment. While children are not equipped to solely dictate how this journey should go, their voices are centrally important. Ideally, the transgender journey is navigated in a loving, supportive context that humbly acknowledges complexity; where there is openness to multiple potential outcomes, and that involves the help of well-trained professionals who can explore the sources of a child’s distress and provide good information about risks and possibilities.

All this is why it is concerning when governments pass laws determining which responses to transgender kids are permitted or forbidden by therapists, health care practitioners and schools. These bills tend to prioritize social pressure over medical best practices, which focus on good diagnosis and socially and medically necessary treatment. Legislation is too blunt a tool to manage the nuanced realities of each individual and their context.

We do not have to have all the answers about transgender kids to move forward lovingly and thoughtfully. Indeed, as the acclaimed Christian writer and social critic Wendell Berry noted, our knowledge is always incomplete. He reminds us that “the real question that is always to be addressed is the one that arises from our state of ignorance: How does one act well – sensitively, compassionately, without irreparable damage – on the basis of partial knowledge?”

It is not easy to walk the transgender journey. It is harder still when we cling fiercely to simple ideas about sex and gender, about how girls and boys are supposed to act and look and be. But the apostle Paul also reminds us in Galatians that gender itself is transcended (though not erased) in God’s kingdom. And we know that to follow Christ is to embrace each person as an image-bearer of God, to take them as they are, to love first and leave judgment to God.

I wish it were possible to offer clear, straightforward answers. If anyone does make you that offer, they are misrepresenting our current state of knowledge about transgender people. The best we can do is take each person as they come, trusting that the Spirit will guide our journey as we walk lovingly together.