"As a psychiatrist, I’ve been trained not to do that”
Don’t you have continuing education to keep up with the latest findings, trends, discoveries, and treatments?
Shouldn’t you know the basics of transgendered people, and could be expected to at LEAST refer them to the right practice if you encounter one? Minimum, not to totally reject their situation out of hand.
“The laughter wanted to bubble out of me, but I pushed it down and told myself to be still.”
Ah. You seem to be from the ‘as much empathy as a falling brick’ school of psychiatry.
“How might that have changed everything that followed?”
You ever see those old maps where the cartographer had no information, and basically marked the area ‘off limits’ because he didn’t know the dangers there?
In your son’s mind, you’d have ‘Here there be dragons’ stamped on your face. That’s what’d happen.