Saving Jacob: A Family’s Story of Love, Patience, and Persistence

For many of you, this story sounds very familiar. Jacob was labeled gifted at an early age and developed an early talent for music. A precocious preschooler, Jacob grew into a well-liked student and classmate in elementary school. Around 5th grade, Jacob’s executive function issues became more pronounced and resulted in defiant behaviors. Suddenly, the smart kid who quickly finished books and assignments, stopped turning in work and became bored and disinterested in school. At the same time, the boys around him grew and began puberty, while Jacob remained small and immature. A year of therapy helped Jacob learn the importance of working hard and, just as he was learning to adapt to middle school, COVID shut everything down. All of our constraints on screen time and video games disappeared as we struggled to find a new normal. While I watched my kids attend remote school, I noticed Jacob was having a really hard time focusing on the lessons. But didn’t we all have Zoom fatigue? His grades slipped and despite my attempts to obtain help for him at school, we just couldn’t get Jacob on track.

In January of 2022, Jacob, now in 8th grade, became increasingly withdrawn from our family. The world was just starting to emerge from COVID, but it seemed like Jacob was reluctant to leave the virtual gaming and masks behind. My intuition sensed something was off but I couldn’t figure out what was happening to my child. He spent hours playing Minecraft and chatting with other gamers on Discord. He became moody and sometimes cried for no reason. Once an avid reader, Jacob couldn’t sit down with a book. He experienced panic attacks every Sunday. Talking to other parents and teachers, my concerns were dismissed and blamed on his being a boy and COVID. My husband, Mark, and I were concerned about his increasing anxiety, withdrawal, and depression. Finally, I scheduled an appointment with our pediatrician for an ADHD evaluation - desperate to be able to diagnose what was happening at home and at school.

In the days leading up to the appointment, Jacob insinuated that he didn’t think it was ADHD, but something else and he was looking forward to discussing it with his pediatrician. Not wanting to waste the appointment or be surprised at the office, I begged Jacob to please let us know if he knew what was going on. As I celebrated Mother’s Day 2022 with my immediate and extended family, I couldn’t have known that chaos would descend upon my house the following day. On that Monday, Jacob asked if he could sit down and talk to me and his father that evening. Mark and I braced ourselves for this conversation. Was he suicidal? Did he think he was gay? Was he using drugs? We weren’t at all prepared for the letter that was dropped on our laps as Jacob ran up to his room to wait.

Jacob’s letter, eloquently written and thoroughly researched, described his feelings of being a girl trapped in a boy’s body. He claimed that he’d had these thoughts for several years. He asked us to cancel his plans to go away to sleepaway camp, wanted to talk to a doctor about puberty blockers, and requested that we use she/her pronouns. I’m sure there was more - but I think I’ve blocked it out. With tears in our eyes and in complete shock, we didn’t know what else to do but to go to Jacob’s room and hug him and reassure him that we loved him. Jacob didn't want to talk about it, and that ended up being the case for much of the time while suffering from gender dysphoria.

Nothing about this made sense. Other than growing out his hair (he was in a rock music school), my son never played with dolls, dressed in girls’ clothing, or anything else associated with the lifetime of gender dysphoria as he claimed. At some point that night, I found myself sobbing in my closet while using a paper bag to avoid hyperventilating. While I tried to sleep, my husband began his first online deep dive to learn about the exploding trend of teens identifying as transgender.

In the first of several regrets from those initial days, I should have cancelled the appointment with the pediatrician. Instead, I sent her a quick note to tell her that Jacob had just come out to us as transgender. In her office, wearing a rainbow belt, Dr. N immediately hugged Jacob, used female pronouns, and congratulated him on finding his true self. Despite knowing Jacob for 10 years, Dr. N ignored our concerns about ADHD, depression and anxiety and immediately affirmed. She asked for a few minutes alone with Jacob and when we re-entered the exam room, she spoke about seeing an endocrinologist ASAP so that Jacob could start high school as a girl with the necessary puberty blockers and suggested LGBTQ friendly therapists for us as a family. As insane as it is to instantly affirm a child while ignoring other serious comorbidities, the rapidity of it all raised red flags to me and Mark. Hours later, I called a close friend who happens to be a pediatrician to describe what happened. She agreed with us that Dr. N had acted hastily and inappropriately and was able to provide me with adolescent therapists who were less likely to affirm without question.

As a Type A control freak, I find comfort in planning and organization. I spent the next few days lining up therapists for myself and my husband, and my son - no easy feat. We didn’t tell our families or our friends - eventually only telling a few close and trusted friends. Mark spent a couple of days in bed depressed and hours on the internet researching as well as searching Jacob’s computer for signs of where these ideas had originated. Mark discovered that Jacob had joined a Discord group for teens where kids who felt like they didn’t fit in decided they must be transgender. Jacob had joined this group just around the time I noticed him withdrawing from our family. We also learned that about a week before Jacob came out to us, his school health class had been studying gender and sexuality.

Back in 2022, there wasn’t much online to support parents who didn’t want to affirm kids. Finding the podcast Gender: A Wider Lens became our guide to how to move forward from shock and depression to eventual desistance. The podcast introduced us to the controversial term ROGD (Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria). ROGD exactly described what happened to Jacob. With this in our back pocket, we started to strategize ways to support Jacob with the help of his understanding psychologist. Our goal was to neither condone nor forbid Jacob from exploring his gender and sexuality, but to allow him space as long as he didn’t try to use puberty blockers or seek gender affirming surgery. We came up with and used the following strategies:

● Disabled the wifi in his room. We told him it broke and didn’t fix it for 2 months.

● Doubled down on togetherness. Once Jacob heard that we weren't going to affirm, he withheld affection as our punishment. No more hugs and no more “I Love You”. But we planned as many family activities and trips as possible.

● Didn’t affirm. We avoided using his name and pronouns all together - using pet names and nicknames instead.

● Switched pediatricians. Found a doctor that respected our desire to let Jacob ride this out without affirming him or offering medical options.

● Addressed mental health. Worked with the psychologist to facilitate family discussions and eventually diagnosed and treated the ADHD. ADHD can cause hyperfocus and we needed to divert Jacob’s hyperfocus on gender to anything else. In his case, meds definitely helped him do better in school, which gave him more confidence.

● Fresh air and exercise. As much as possible, we gave Jacob opportunities to be outside in nature and encouraged him to be active by signing him up for group fitness classes.

● Proactive school conversations. I called the guidance counselor before the first day of high school and explained our situation and begged her to respect our wishes and stick with the treatment plan devised by Jacob’s therapist.

While Mark and I tried all of the above, Jacob tested us. During that first year: Jacob tried out a girl’s name; brought a transgender flag to school on Pride Day; played video games with female avatars; asked me to buy “This Book is Gay” at our local bookstore; smiled when a waiter or stranger assumed he was a girl; found a group of cheerleaders and a teacher to affirm him in the classroom and use his female name.

But he respected our boundaries and didn’t become an activist. He accepted wearing gender appropriate clothing to events and to school, willingly shared a room with other boys on a trip and allowed his grandparents and cousins to hug him and use his given name without fussing. While this disconnect confused me, it also gave me hope that Jacob would realize that he was going through a phase - as long as we could keep him from doing anything permanent.

While I had hope, Mark was taking this much harder. His countless hours reading and listening to everything related to gender cost him his job. Without a job, he had even more time to consume news, data, and literature. He read some of the saddest and darkest tales and envisioned scenarios where we moved to conservative states to save our kid. There is also Jacob’s sister, five years younger, who was torn between wanting to support and love her brother and make sense of what he told her. I started to resent Jacob for putting this burden on our family. I dreamt about walking into Jacob’s room and screaming “Stop it already! This isn’t you! Can’t you see what this is doing to us?”

About a year later, Mark and I dropped an excited Jacob off for a two-week backpacking trip in the wilderness (his therapist’s suggestion). I knew a hug was out of the question, but said “I love you honey. Have a great time”. As I turned to leave, Jacob called out “Love you, Mom!” It was the first time in 14 months that he’d said those words - and I started to cry. That exclamation was the beginning of the phase I called purgatory. Starting with that summer and into 10th grade, Jacob didn’t want to discuss gender issues with us or with his therapist. He wouldn’t admit to being over it, but he certainly wasn’t doing anything to become a woman. Puberty was in full force and he grew several inches, started shaving, and his voice dropped. Mark and I were very cautiously optimistic that Jacob was in the process of desisting, and yet still so anxious and suspicious that we were missing something.

As I mentioned, Jacob had been growing his hair long. Regardless, I scheduled a haircut appointment every other month to have it trimmed. Twenty-two months after the letter, with a haircut on the calendar and a school trip to Disney coming up, Jacob started talking about getting a fresh look similar to that of his peers. He googled boy haircuts until he found one he liked. I tried not to make a big deal about it, but as I watched the hair fall to the floor, I felt like our nightmare might be over. Two weeks later, after an amazing school trip to Disney with a large group of guy friends, Jacob went swimming with his cousins without a tee shirt. I hadn’t seen his body in years and it certainly felt like I was looking at a kid who was finally comfortable in his own skin.

When I discussed these changes with Jacob’s therapist, he agreed that he was likely desisting but warned us not to expect a proclamation. Mark and I would have loved to hear Jacob say that he no longer thought of himself as a girl and thank us for saving him from permanently harming himself. However, we had to accept this subtle and gradual desistance. During a room cleanup with Jacob a few months later, I came across “This Book is Gay.” I asked Jacob if it was a keep or dump and he looked horribly embarrassed and said “Dump.”

“Jacob - are you done with this book and all of the transgender stuff?” I said.

“Yes, mom and I don’t want to talk about it anymore” - he said.

A few weeks later, my husband bought us “World’s Best” Mom and Dad mugs. We celebrated surviving the hardest two years of our lives with our marriage and family intact.

In the darkest times, I wished to hear any stories of teens that had desisted, but there was nothing out there. I’m not sure if what we did for Jacob helped or if he just needed to literally grow up and get through puberty. I know that there are now kids and young adults who have shared their stories of desisting. By sharing our story, maybe I can provide hope to another family who is struggling to see an end to their nightmare.