A Mom’s Fight to Save Her Daughter from Trans Orthodoxy at School

Theresa remembers the rage in her daughter’s eyes.

The twelve-year-old insisted she was now a boy. Her new name was Leo. Her mother, not ready to accept this, was a “transphobe,” and that is why everybody hated her.

Theresa’s daughter had a history of anxiety and depression, but this was new. It was just weeks earlier, in mid-December 2020, that she first told her mom she no longer felt like a girl. Counselors at the local mental-health facility affirmed her feelings, and they urged Theresa and her husband to identify their daughter by her new name and pronouns.

Theresa insists she was amenable to the idea. But not yet. Not until a professional took time to probe her daughter’s mind. Not until her daughter had done the hard work – therapy to get to a better place in her head, educating herself about what gender transitioning really entails.

“She hated me. Like, she hated me. She looked at me with just pure rage,” said Theresa, who spoke to National Review on the condition that her real name not be used. “If she’s meant to be a boy, that will come out, and we will do it. But we don’t need to do it overnight.”

Theresa worried about the permanent damage a rash decision could cause. There is an intense debate among mental-health professionals about how to best treat children struggling with gender dysphoria, with some arguing it’s best to immediately affirm the child’s new identity, and others warning that doing so can be self-reinforcing and cause long-term harm.

Despite their daughter’s protests, Theresa and her husband decided it would be best that she be identified as a girl and by her real name when she returned to school in mid-January. They assumed their local suburban school district about 30 miles west of Milwaukee would support their rights as parents to make this delicate medical decision for their daughter.

They were wrong.

Leaders of her daughter’s middle school told Theresa that while they couldn’t change her daughter’s name and gender in official records, they would refer to her as a boy and by her new chosen name, Leo, if that’s what her daughter wanted. “We’re an advocate for the child and not the parent,” they told her, Theresa recalled. To Theresa, the school-district leaders were usurping her and her husband’s rights as parents.

“And they said, ‘Too bad, so sad,’ kind of,” Theresa said of the district’s response.

Theresa and her husband sued the school district last year, alleging that district leaders had violated their constitutional rights as parents. A spokesman for the Kettle Moraine School District did not respond to an email from National Review seeking comment on the case.

The lawsuit, filed by the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty and the national Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), is one of a growing number of legal challenges popping up across the country pushing back on school districts with policies that shut parents out from decisions regarding kids’ gender identification at school. Similar lawsuits are being brought in states including California, Florida, Maryland, and Virginia.

The wave of lawsuits calls for a simple fix: state laws that explicitly prohibit public schools from taking major decisions – including a child’s name and gender identity – out of parents’ hands, said Luke Berg, a lawyer with the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty. Berg is mounting a campaign to pressure state lawmakers to pass such laws, setting up what could become a contentious battle in state houses across the country.

The districts argue that allowing young kids to live a double life at school is simply an example of “tolerance.” To progressive trans advocates, not immediately affirming a child’s new gender identity is a form of abuse. Earlier this year, teachers in Eau Claire, Wisc., were instructed by “diversity” staffers from a local college to hide their students’ changing gender identities from their parents on the grounds that “parents are not entitled to know,” and that it is “knowledge that must be earned,” according to leaked training documents.

This month, the Wisconsin Supreme Court is slated to hear arguments in a case regarding a Madison Metropolitan School District policy, adopted in 2018, that commits to affirming “each student’s self-designated gender identity” and prohibits staff from letting parents know that their child is using a new name and pronouns at school. To prevent the parents from finding out, staff are instructed to use “the student’s affirmed name and pronouns in the school setting, and their legal name and pronouns with family,” according to the policy.

That lawsuit also was brought by the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty and ADF. In response, the Madison district’s lawyers disagree with the contention that the desire to present as another gender is a strong indicator of gender dysphoria, and they argue that allowing kids to change their gender identification isn’t really a medical intervention. And if the parents don’t like it, they can just take their kids elsewhere, they argue. As Theresa put it, “too bad, so sad.”

But the district’s lawyers failed to acknowledge that not all parents are privileged enough to afford those option. Parents, they wrote, “may not dictate how MMSD teaches their children.”

School districts like Madison’s that won’t let a student take an aspirin or go on a field trip or participate in extracurricular sports without parent consent, now are allowing students to make a major life decision – changing their name and gender – with zero input from mom or dad, said Berg, the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty lawyer.

“They’ve carved out this one topic,” he said, “where not only do you not need parental consent, we will actively hide from your parents that you are doing it.”

‘I Kind of Don’t Feel Like a Girl’

Growing up in an upper-middle-class suburb in Waukesha County, west of Milwaukee, Theresa said there were few indications that her daughter might one day question her gender. She was a social kid, but not a tomboy who wanted to play football and scrap with the neighborhood boys. “She was a very feminine young girl,” Theresa said of her daughter, who went trick-or-treating as a unicorn when she was in fifth grade, her face in full makeup.

But as her daugher got older and started putting on some weight, she started wearing more boyish clothes to cover her body, Theresa said. Anxiety and depression had been an issue throughout her daughter’s childhood, and that got worse during the Covid-19 lockdowns when she was isolated at home, stuck in her mind, and with access to too much social media.

“She struggles with self-worth, and feeling like she’s pretty enough, is she thin enough,” Theresa said. “She has struggled with that for some time.”

Theresa said that while she believes in God, her family doesn’t attend church, so there were no religious objections to transgenderism. She didn’t shield her children from transgender issues. She couldn’t. The father of one of her daughter’s friends identifies as a transgender woman.

“My kids and I had open discussions about it because I couldn’t avoid it,” she said.

It was at school in mid-December 2020 when Theresa said her daughter confided in a friend that “she didn’t feel like a girl.” That friend confided in a teacher’s aide, who then approached Theresa’s daughter with the offer that she could change her name and pronouns if she wanted. When her daughter said she didn’t feel comfortable making that decision without her mom, the aide suggested she discuss it with her parents.

That night, Theresa’s daughter came into her room to talk. “I kind of don’t feel like a girl. And I’ve been wanting to hurt myself lately,” she said, Theresa recalled. She didn’t know what was making her feel that way, Theresa said, but her daughter thought that maybe she needed to go to Rogers Behavioral Health, a mental-health provider in town. Theresa called first thing in the morning.

Theresa said she tread lightly that first night, so her daughter wouldn’t shut down.

She said her message that night was: “I think we need to work on you starting to like who you are instead of constantly focusing on changing yourself into something you’re not.”

The next morning, Theresa secured a bed for her daughter at Rogers, and told them about her daughter’s gender issue, as well as her anxiety and depression. They packed her things and headed in for an eight-day in-patient stay at the facility. “The experience was horrific,” she said.

The moment they walked in, staff referred to her daughter as Leo, a boy. Theresa was surprised by the approach, but she thought it might just be an effort to build trust with her daughter. Within a day, a therapist recommended putting Theresa’s daughter on medication, a step she wasn’t comfortable with without a more thorough assessment.

During a virtual family-therapy session, a counselor said it would be best for Theresa’s daughter “if you guys would respect her decision and call her Leo and refer to her as a boy,” she said. Theresa questioned whether the therapy staff had deeply explored why her daughter felt like she was a boy, and what had triggered the change. Had they looked into her daughter’s depression and anxiety to see whether that might explain why she was trying to “create a brand new person,” Theresa asked.

“Has any of this been discussed?” she said she asked. “And he was kind of like, essentially, ‘No.’ But he was like, ‘If you don’t do what your daughter wants, if she decides to hurt or kill herself, that’s really going to fall on you guys, because you’re not respecting your child’s choices.’”

Theresa said her husband was willing to call his daughter whatever she wanted if that meant keeping her alive. Theresa put her foot down. Her daughter is a girl, “and until somebody is going to take some time to find out what the hell is going on in her mind, it’s going to stay that way,” she said. “I’m not going to appease her for short-term gain when I feel like there are long-term problems that need to be worked out.”

Her Daughter’s Best Friend or Biggest Adversary?

Theresa said her daughter left the facility just before Christmas. While she was there, Theresa reached out to her daughter’s middle school to sign medical-release paperwork and to make sure school leaders were aware of what was happening.

“I just felt it was my job as a parent to make people that are going to be tending to my child aware of potential issues that could arise,” she said.

Theresa loved her kids’ schools and planned to keep her kids in the district even after the family learned they would have to move out of the home they were renting, she said.

At home, she said, her daughter was continuing with outpatient virtual therapy and growing angrier. Some nights her daughter just vented, said she was a boy, and called Theresa a “transphobe.” But Theresa said she refused to negotiate.

“I told her, ‘I’m not telling you that you can’t be transgender. I’m not telling you that you can’t be a boy. I’m telling you that you can’t change your name and your gender right now,’” she said.  “You have a lot of underlying issues that need to be addressed before you make the decision that you were born in the wrong body. I understand that all these people around you are appeasing you and giving you want you want, and I’m not doing that, and that makes you angry. But I am your best friend. I am looking out for your best interest.”

Her daughter just seemed to grow angrier.

Theresa continued to communicate with the school, but unbeknownst to her, so did her daughter. She wanted to be identified as a boy when she returned to classes. Theresa said she learned that the therapists were telling her daughter that she was “her biggest adversary.”

“I was going to be the biggest problem in her life because I do not accept her for who she is now, nor will I ever,” she said. “They discussed her getting on medication to transition to a man because it’s easier when you’re younger. Her anger was fueled by the therapy I was paying for.”

Theresa’s daughter was scheduled to return to school in mid-January 2021, a couple of days after Martin Luther King Jr. Day. At first, Theresa and her husband weren’t sure how to handle a possible gender transition at school. Early in the ordeal, they initially consented to granting their daughter’s wishes, but they told school officials they would be in touch. Theresa said she started reading peer-reviewed research on gender dysphoria and treatment, and she grew concerned about the affirmation approach.

A couple of days before her daughter was to go back, Theresa called the school counselor; her expectation was that her daughter would be referred to by her birth name, and as a girl. She assured them they were addressing her daughter’s gender issue, she said, and she offered to put them in touch with the new therapist they were going to work with. She said she was clear: “We are not choosing to follow the affirmative-care model.”

The school principal told her that he couldn’t control how the students referred to her daughter. “And he said, ‘Well, there are some teachers who would like to respect your daughter’s wishes.’ And I said, ‘While I appreciate that they want to do that, that’s not my expectation at this point. This is a medical condition. I have control over what sort of medical care my child gets. And she will not be referred to with a different name or gender at school,’” Theresa said.

The principal suggested that Theresa hold her daughter out of school another day. A day later, she said, he called back. School leaders would not abide by Theresa’s expectations. Instead, they would honor her daughter’s wishes to be called Leo and a boy.

Theresa said she was told that if the school district didn’t identify her daughter by the name and pronouns of her choice, they could be accused of discrimination because of new Biden-administration executive orders about gender and sex.

‘Affirmative Care Really Messed Me Up’

Theresa never sent her daughter back to that school. She considered parochial school, but her daughter balked, fearing she would be “damned to hell” because she now identified as a lesbian.

Theresa didn’t send her daughter back to her Rogers therapist after her month of outpatient care ended. She took away her daughter’s access to social media. And after a couple of weeks, she said, her daughter’s demeanor began to revert back to where it was before.

One day, Theresa said, she came home and found her daughter in the kitchen talking with her dad. “She was like, ‘You know, Mom, I’m really sorry. Affirmative care really messed me up. They really made me hate you and Grandma. I know that you love me, and you just want what’s best for me,’” Theresa said. “She’s just a completely different kid.”

Theresa said her daughter now sees a therapist they vetted well. They work well together, and her daughter is doing better. The family bought a new home in another school district, and her daughter is going to school there. She said her daughter no longer identifies as a lesbian or a boy, though she would be free to do so in her new school.

Parents Waking Up to New Gender Orthodoxy

Berg with the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty said trans-affirming policies, such as the written policy in Madison and the unwritten policy in the Kettle Moraine district, are becoming increasingly common in school districts nationwide.

Over the past two years, Berg said he’s received calls from about a half dozen parents in school districts around Wisconsin who learned that school staff were secretly calling their kids by new names and pronouns. “Parents should assume that every district has this policy, whether written down or not,” he said.

Leftist organizations including The Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, the National Education Association, the Human Rights Campaign, and the American Civil Liberties Union are driving the narrative, and they’ve been successful in convincing school-district leaders and their lawyers that trans-affirming policies – even without parental consent – are the best practice, and even required by law, which isn’t true, Berg said. “Then it just spread like a cancer,” he said.

“Now parents are waking up to it,” Berg said. “They’ve just been making this up all along.”

Kate Anderson, senior counsel with ADF and director of its Center for Parental Rights, said she’s receiving calls from parents across the country – and across the political spectrum – who are concerned because they are seeing these policies enacted in their school districts. She said it is “dangerous” for schools to encourage children who are “dealing with very serious mental-health issues” to lie to their parents and to live two lives.

“Their parents want to try to help them get the care they need, but they can’t do that if the school is hiding the information from them,” Anderson said.

Anderson said they are working to establish legal precedents so that school district leaders skeptical of the new gender orthodoxy have case law to fall back on, and so parents in districts where these policies are in practice can more effectively fight back. The school district in Kenosha, Wisc., recently rejected part of a policy that would have allowed students to change their names and pronouns without parental consent, in part because of the lawsuit in Madison.

While Republican legislatures around the country have been passing bills prohibiting males from participating in female sports and banning irreversible gender-reassignment surgeries for children, Berg said there have been few efforts to pass news laws specifically aimed at affirming parental rights regarding gender identity at school. Florida’s Parental Rights in Education bill, which bars “classroom instruction . . . on sexual orientation or gender identity” from kindergarten through third grade, has some language that could be relevant, he said, though it doesn’t explicitly address children’s changing their names and pronouns.

That bill was spurred by a Tallahassee-area school that helped a 13-year-old child transition to a different gender without notifying the child’s parents. Theresa said she supports the Florida law, which opponents deride as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill.

Theresa’s lawsuit against the Kettle Moraine School District is ongoing. The district has filed a motion to have the lawsuit dismissed because Theresa’s daughter no longer attends school there, and because the other plaintiffs’ children, who do go to school there, don’t currently have gender-identity issues.

Looking back, Theresa said, she wonders how her life – and the life of her daughter – would have been different if they’d gone along with the therapists, activists, and school leaders who urged her to just accept her daughter’s new name and pronouns.

“If I would have done exactly what they wanted me to do and potentially hurt my child by following the practices that they wanted, who was going to be there to hold her hand when all of that fell apart?” she asked. “None of those people forcing me to practice this on my child.”