There’s Always Hope - Part 3

Part 1 here and Part 2 here.

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The day after I surrendered everything to God, I came across the idea of classical education. It sparked me because I saw that it had a requirement for all students to learn Latin. My son, now in 10th grade, had asked every high school if they had a Latin program and no one was teaching it. This was an in. I researched more.

Latin. Formal logic. Rhetoric. Moral philosophy. The Trivium. A structured approach to learning that trains students how to think, not just what to think. Clear hierarchy. Clear expectations. Clear moral framework.

Then I googled Classical Education in my area. There it was - a brand new school that just opened this year in the area. A classical Catholic school. I called, and even now a few months into the school year they were still accepting new students.

I’m not Catholic. I’d never even considered religious schools, let alone as the solution. Religious education felt like exactly the kind of structure I’d spent my life avoiding. But in this new climate - all of a sudden it felt so different.

It was everything my autistic son had been craving without having words for it.

My son, who loved rules and structure and clear systems, who got lost in the social chaos of modern schooling, who wanted to understand why things were true - this was built for him.

I showed him information about the school. I didn’t push. I just said, “What do you think about this?”

His eyes lit up. “They teach Latin?”

“Yes. Do you want to check it out? They have openings.”

“Yes.”

I had just pulled him from school. He was bored, but he also knew being home would eventually get boring too.

We toured the school. It was so brand new that there were only 8 total high school students. Teachers who were there because they believed in the mission. A moral framework that didn’t revolve around gender identity - because gender identity wasn’t even on the radar. Biological sex was simply reality, unremarkable, not up for debate.

My son would be surrounded by kids who weren’t talking about pronouns. Who weren’t performing identities. Who were focused on learning, on virtue, on becoming educated people. He would wear a uniform, a tie.

The environment he’d been drowning in - where gender identity was the most important thing, where everyone had to have a position, where not caring about it made you the weird one - would simply... not exist in his daily life anymore.

He was 90% sure he wanted to go before we toured. After spending a shadow day there, watching real students in real classes, he was 200% sure.

I enrolled him.

And here’s what I know now that I didn’t know when I was sitting in that living room staring at a trans flag: My son didn’t believe a world could exist where gender identity wasn’t the main thing. He had never lived in one. Every space he’d ever occupied - online, at school, in his peer groups - treated gender identity as fundamental reality.

He couldn’t imagine opting out because no one around him had ever opted out.

I couldn’t argue him into believing that world existed. I had to put him in it.

It’s now been three weeks. My son is thriving in ways I didn’t know were possible.

He’d already agreed to cut his hair before we even toured the school. It just so happened the haircut appointment was the same day we met the school administrator. The timing felt providential. As soon as he cut it, he stopped talking to all his friends at the old school. He didn’t even want to go back to get his favorite books he’d let one friend borrow. He was terrified of being exposed as a fraud - that’s the hold these schools have on the kids.

He’s now learning Latin. He’s engaged in his classes. He brought home an essay he was excited to work on, asking me for help with structure, and showing off what he completed, using Christian principles to argue his points. He’s told me he thinks the entire Department of Education needs to be revamped because it’s not serving students. He wants more people to have intellectual debates with. He thinks everyone should have access to classical education. This school uses real textbooks - and no computers except at home for typing.

He’s in an environment where the structure makes sense to his autistic brain, where the expectations are clear, where excellence is celebrated.

And the trans identity? It faded into the background. Not because I argued him out of it. Not because I presented the right evidence. But because he’s living in a reality where it’s simply not relevant.

He’s surrounded by people who assume biological sex is real and unchangeable. Who don’t perform gender. Who don’t make identity the center of everything. It’s not that they’re actively arguing against trans ideology - it just doesn’t exist in their world as something that matters.

For an autistic kid who takes his cues from his environment, who believes what the people around him believe, this changed everything.

He’s not “fixed.” He’s not a completely different kid. But he’s here. He’s present. He talks to me. He’s engaged with his actual life instead of disappearing into an online identity.

This wasn’t just about my oldest. My middle son watched everything his brother went through. He eventually chose homeschooling himself - tired of people telling him he “sounds like a gay boy” and should be a trans girl. He saw how absurd it all was and wanted no part of it. My youngest is still in elementary school, but I know I won’t send him to public middle or high school in Oregon. Their needs are different, but they’re all growing up in this same culture. The environment I create for one affects them all.

And I didn’t do this alone. I couldn’t have. When I finally surrendered - really surrendered, after doing everything in my power - God met me there. He said, “Come hang out in my house.” And He provided exactly what my son needed.

The classical school, the structure, the masculine moral framework, the community - it was all there, waiting, once I stopped trying to control every outcome and trusted that there was something bigger at work.

So if you’re reading this from the thick of it, here’s what I need you to hear:

Lesson 1: You cannot talk your way out of a trans identification.

Stop trying. I know you think if you just find the right article, the right argument, the right evidence, your kid will see reason. They won’t. Especially if your kid is autistic, especially if they think in black and white, especially if their entire social world is reinforcing this identity.

Every argument you make pushes them further away. Every piece of evidence makes you more “unsafe.” You’re not losing because your arguments aren’t good enough. You’re losing because this isn’t a debate.

Stop talking. Start connecting.

Lesson 2: Connection before anything else.

This is the hardest lesson because it requires you to completely put down your agenda. You have to get back on the same team before you can steer the ship anywhere.

For me, that meant sitting silently next to my son while he played video games. Taking him to breakfast when he still wouldn’t talk to me. Focusing on what mattered to him right then, not what I was terrified about for his future.

It took months. It was excruciating. But you cannot have influence without a relationship, and you cannot have a relationship while you’re trying to control the outcome.

Rebuild trust first. Everything else comes after.

Lesson 3: Audit your sphere of influence and be willing to use it.

Once you have connection back, look clearly at what you actually control:

• Home environment

• School environment

• Access to devices and online spaces

• Friend groups

• Even the state you live in

Everything is on the table.

I took away all online access. No internet browser on his phone. As a family we did a full tech detox and the video games still haven’t come back out.

I pulled my son from schools where everyone said he was thriving. I evaluated moving states. I changed our entire lives because the environment wasn’t serving him - it was actively harming him.

I knew that you cannot win by being one voice against an entire culture. You have to change the environment itself.

And here’s the thing no one tells you: You have more choices than you think you do.

The culture tells you that you’re powerless. That you have to affirm or you’ll lose your kid. That pulling them out of school will ruin their future. That you’re stuck with the systems around you.

You’re not.

You have choices. Hard ones. Expensive ones. Scary ones. But real ones.

The final lesson - the one that holds all the others together:

Do everything in your power. Rebuild connection. Change environments. Use every bit of influence you have. Face your own fears and wounds. Make the hard calls.

And then, when you’ve done everything you can do, surrender what you can’t control.

Not as passivity. Not as giving up. But as the spiritually mature recognition that some things are beyond your power, and that’s okay.

I couldn’t change my son’s heart. I couldn’t force him to see reality differently. I couldn’t control the culture around us.

But I could do everything in my sphere of influence. And then I could trust God with the rest.

When I finally did that - when I said, “I need You to do what I can’t. I surrender, God” - that’s when the door opened. That’s when the impossible solution appeared.

You are not a victim of the systems around you. You are not powerless. You have agency, you have choices, and you have a God who sees you in this impossible situation.

Do everything you can. Then trust Him with what you can’t.

There’s still hope. Even now. Even in the worst of it.

I promise you: there’s always hope.