Free The Answer to Everything by Elyse Friedman Page A

during the day anymore, or even running down to the laundry room. I was too nervous.
    We took Thomas to his pediatrician. I won’t say his name, but everyone in the community loved him and thought he was the best. He was my sister’s kids’ doctor. She adored him. And to be honest, for the first couple of years when everything was run-of-the-mill—vaccinations, colds, ear infections—he was perfectly fine. He told us that Thomas might have a condition called gender identity disorder, and that Paul was right, that we had to convince him he was a boy. He said it would be easier for Thomas in the long run if we could get him to accept the biological fact that he was male. He said that most kids with this condition come to their senses and grow out of it, but that if their parents indulged their delusion, the kids would just be worse off and confused beyond repair. He told us to get rid of anything girly that Thomas could get his hands on, and to only allow him boy toys and clothes, and boy TV shows. He sounded like he knew what he was talking about and I trusted him.
    Do you want to know how to make a child miserable? Take away everything that child loves, including the playmates of his choice. Then, if you’d care to see complete misery lapse into depression, weight loss, sleep disruption and self-mutilation—bitingup and down the arms was how Thomas expressed frustration—tell the child they have to behave in a way that is entirely unnatural to them at all times. This was Thomas’s life in the months after Doctor X’s proclamations. It was horrible. Punishing. I couldn’t bear to see Thomas suffer, and I couldn’t bear the anger and tension and rage that had taken over our home. Paul and I were constantly at each other’s throats. I would hiss at him for being too harsh. He would hiss at me for being too lax—which was any time I wasn’t treating my four-year-old son like a macho construction worker. Every time I snuggled Thomas, I was glared at as if I were doing something illegal and harmful. It was horrible. And I came to the conclusion that it was wrong. It was just plain wrong. Depriving Thomas of everything that he naturally wanted was depriving him of something vital that he needed. Paul didn’t agree. He would say, “You don’t give a kid ice cream for supper just ‘cause they clamour for it. You give them what’s good for them, ‘cause you know better.” It sounded reasonable on the surface, but it wasn’t a proper comparison. It wasn’t like we were depriving Thomas of some bonus thing like candy or treats; it’s like we were depriving him of
all
nourishment. And, anyway, if your child refused to eat what was “good for them” and was starving to death before your eyes, you
would
give them ice cream for dinner. You’d give them anything to keep them alive.
    But I was an idiot. A fool. I was under the thumb of the doctor and my husband and my sister, and I wasn’t thinking clearly. If I had been thinking clearly, I would have been proactive. I would have done research. And I would have left. I would have taken Thomas to Toronto and started a new life. InToronto we would have been OK. But I didn’t do that. Instead, I started sneaking around, sneaking around with my own son. When Paul was out of the house, I would let Thomas be Emily—the name he had chosen for himself when he discovered that “Thomas” was strictly a boy name. He learned this from Thomas the Tank Engine, on TV. Emily was the girl train. So Thomas wanted to be Emily. And because I couldn’t stand to see my child wither away before my eyes, I decided to let Emily be herself for short periods of time when nobody was around. At first it was just an hour a day. I’d let her call herself Emily and allow her to play openly with some of the things we had hidden away. But after I saw what a difference it made to her physical health, I started giving her more and more time. It was like watering a plant that’s been neglected.