I am in a couple of online groups where parents of ROGD boys meet. We say that we are different as parents but we all have the same son. This boy is typically very intelligent, nerdy, non-athletic, and as a child was interested, no… obsessed with specific “boy” toys and interests. Surveys of ~ 300 parents indicate that almost 92% of our sons fit in this category.

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So, when my son came out to me at 19 and told me that he was a woman trapped in a man’s body, I nearly fainted from shock. What happened since that initial declaration, was that my son, like many of our boys, changed the narrative about his life, his story and the interests he had as a boy and teenager. He started acting differently to try to force himself into fitting into his new “female” identity.

Last week, I decided that it was time to go through the items my son left behind when he moved out of our home and changed his identity as our son. There were containers full of toys, videos and video games, all attesting to the fact that his interests were always those of a typical boy. I found thousands of Legos and K-nex pieces, dozens of Ben Ten and superhero figurines, piles of superhero DVDs, car racing video games (he took all the Mario games!), train, trucks and matchbox car collections, strategy-based board games, etc. I texted my mom friends, “I have receipts!” while sending them photos of the items. We had a funny exchange where we found out that our kids had the exact same toys and many of the same interests when they were growing up. Several of us still have Thomas the Tank train collections, Legos and circuit boards. I am hanging on to those toys. I can’t bear to part with them. Those are receipts that I plan to keep, just in case…