Nicholas Bowman
Bursting through the front door, Leo Waddell says a quick hello to his mum before racing up to his bedroom.
Home from school, his mind is buzzing with the important things that occupy a 12-year-old lad’s thoughts… football, music, playing on his Xbox.
Except that Leo isn’t a typical boy. In fact, physically, he’s still exactly what he was the day he was born. A girl.
Back then, he was christened Lily by doting mum Hayley.
But at just 18 months, she reveals it was obvious her toddler daughter Lily wanted to be her little son Leo instead.
And now, after living as a boy since the age of five, Leo is about to become one of the youngest children in Britain to take hormone blockers to put puberty on hold so he has time to ensure he makes the right choice about his future gender before taking male hormones at 16.
Hayley has no doubt this is the right thing to do. “Leo is 100% a boy,” she says.
“The hormone blockers will give him a chance to know what he’s doing is what he wants. As soon as we heard about them he wanted to take them.”
Leo says it is the right move for him. Asked what it would be like to develop as a girl he simply says: “Horrible.”
He is one of a growing number of UK children being treated for gender dysphoria (GD), defined by the NHS as “a condition in which a person feels there is a mis-match between their biological sex and their gender identity”.
For the last eight months he has made regular visits to the the Gender Identity Service at the NHS Tavistock and Portman clinic, the only service of its kind for under-18s in the country.
The west London clinic has seen its referral numbers TRIPLE in the last four years, with children as young as three treated for GD.
It is also the only place in Britain allowed to give children as young as 12 monthly hormone-blocking injections.
The minimum age for the drug was lowered from 16 in 2011 in a move that divided opinion with some arguing 12 was too young to know someone wants to change their gender.
But Leo is sure. “I’ve always felt like a boy,” he says.
“When I was five I had all my hair cut off and started dressing like a boy and on my 11th birthday I had my name changed by deed poll.
"I almost cried when I saw the certificate, I was so happy.”
At the family home in Lowestoft, Suffolk, that Leo shares with mum Hayley and his younger sister Daisy, 11, his obvious closeness to his mum is a testament to the long, traumatic journey they have faced together.
Hairdresser Hayley, 48, says: “Even as a toddler his behaviour was totally different to other girls and to Daisy.
“When he was 18 months old he potty trained himself and we went shopping for underwear.
"But he ignored all the girls’ stuff and chose Bob the Builder pants instead.
“He’d plead with me to cut his hair short, but I thought this little girl with long curly hair was wonderful.
"In the end he cut it himself when he was five. I was devastated but his short hair was more... him. And I accepted it.”
Gradually, Hayley started to realise how serious Leo was.
“It was obvious he was a boy, but I didn’t know anything about what being transgender meant. I just had this little girl who was in fact a boy.”
Her decision to let him dress in boys’ clothing and keep his hair short alienated some friends.
“They’d say, ‘Why don’t you dress him how you want to and make him grow his hair?’,” says Hayley.
“Leo would look so uncomfortable if he was ever put in anything pink and girly. It just seemed wrong.”
Others accused Leo of attention seeking or “going through a phase”, says Hayley, while some people questioned how he could make such a “big decision” so young.
“I’d tell them he’s not ‘making a decision’,” says Hayley, “It’s who he is.” But not everyone was unsupportive.
“My dad accepted it straight away. When my mum, who had Alzheimer’s, was alive she’d just turn round to Leo and say, ‘Who’s this little boy then?’”
Yet Leo’s primary school was another matter.
"“I went along to explain how Leo felt. He was crying next to me and the headmistress said, ‘Oh don’t be silly.
"You’re not a boy or you wouldn’t be cuddling up to mum like that’.”
Hayley says Leo would come home in tears through bullying. “Once some kids pulled his pants down to ‘check’ what was there.”
Eventually Leo’s school called Social Services, accusing Hayley of “forcing” him to be a boy because she was desperate for a son.
She says: “Social services were brilliant. When they came to our house they said they didn’t know why they were there.”
In March 2011 Leo was referred to the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services, and then to the Tavistock clinic.
Leo says: “They were brilliant. It was so nice being able to talk to people who understood how I felt.”
Hayley adds: “People had made me feel I was mad for letting Leo be the way he was so it was such a relief to find out gender dysphoria was real.”
Leo feared secondary school would bring more torment.
But after watching the 2011 Channel 4 series My Transsexual Summer that followed the lives of six transgender men and women, he decided to be open about it.
He says: “I started slowly telling people I’m trans and now more and more people know. My friends are fine about it.
"They ask questions, like if my body is still female, but I don’t mind answering.”
Now Leo hopes to become a gender specialist when he’s older, and is taking part in a ground-breaking online documentary series, My Genderation, to share his story to help others.
And gradually, says Hayley, those who doubted her son have all come round.
“Once people realised it wasn’t ‘a phase’, they’ve all been great. Things were so bad for Leo, but now I’m so proud of him.
"He’s full of confidence and has this smile on his face we’ve never seen before.”
For more information on My Genderation go to www.youtube.com/mygenderation
In a busy waiting room, parents listen for their children’s names to be called as a boy of four emerges from the scrum at the toybox triumphantly clutching... a Barbie doll.
This is the home of the UK’s only Gender Identity Service for under-18s.
Here children as young as three are treated for Gender Dysphoria – defined by the NHS as “a condition in which a person feels there is a mismatch between their biological sex and their gender identity”.
As well as seeing very young children, the service at the NHS Tavistock and Portman clinic in Belsize Park, London, prescribes 12-year-olds like Leo with hormone treatment to deal with the condition.
The Sunday Mirror was given unprecedented access to the controversial service which is treating children younger than ever before.
Director Dr Polly Carmichael, told us: “People criticise what we do because they don’t fully understand how complex the issues can be.
“We deal with young people and parents who are often scared and confused about what they are going through. The number of children referred to us each year is growing all the time.
"They often know instinctively from a very young age that they don’t identify with the gender they have. We are here to help them.
“It’s not about forcing them back into their natal gender or helping them to change. We help young people manage difficulties they experience.”
The service is entirely funded by the NHS and has 10 clinicians at the London HQ and a further two in a satellite clinic in Leeds.
When the service was started by Dr Domenico Di Ceglie in 1989, it had just one patient... a teenage boy who felt he had been born into the wrong body.
Now the number of children on the clinic’s books has tripled since 2009 – and patients are getting younger.
Dr Carmichael says: “People think just because children are young they don’t have an awareness of their own gender identity but we find some children have strong feelings about it from very early on. One four-year old girl kept asking her mum when she was going to grow a willy.
“Another parent told me about a young son who would wrap a towel around his head and pretend he had long hair like a girl. These things don’t always mean a child has gender dysphoria but when the behaviour is persistent it can be a worry for parents. That is where we step in to help.”
The team encourages families to come to the clinic for counselling but they also go into local communities to help them find ways of fitting in.
“We meet teachers, social workers and other adults involved in the child’s day-to-day care,” says Dr Carmichael. “We discuss things like which toilet the child is to use and concessions about school uniforms.”
In the last year alone, 314 new patients have been seen by the service but the total caseload is closer to 500. Of 733 children referred since 2009, 130 have been aged just 10 or under.
Dr Carmichael and her team are currently helping 14 five-year- olds, eight four-year- olds and one patient who is just three.
Like Leo some patients go on to have hormone treatment when they turn 12 to stop them developing into their assigned sex so they don’t have to deal with the distress of becoming even more obviously the “wrong” gender.
“Imagine a child who is biologically female but identifies as a male.
"To grow breasts and start to menstruate could be very distressing for them,” says Dr Carmichael.
“The hormone blockers stop that from happening.”
The controversial treatment can be stopped at any time, and patients will start producing sex hormones normally again.
But for many children at the Tavistock, the psychotherapy and hormone blockers are the first steps towards more definite changes.
At age 16, some are given the option of taking hormones of the opposite sex to ready them for joining the adult gender identity service which allows sex-change surgery.
Records show 20 per cent of the children who come to them before puberty go on to live as the opposite gender in adult life. After puberty, 80 per cent take the plunge into a new gender... and a new life.
Home from school, his mind is buzzing with the important things that occupy a 12-year-old lad’s thoughts… football, music, playing on his Xbox.
Except that Leo isn’t a typical boy. In fact, physically, he’s still exactly what he was the day he was born. A girl.
Back then, he was christened Lily by doting mum Hayley.
But at just 18 months, she reveals it was obvious her toddler daughter Lily wanted to be her little son Leo instead.
And now, after living as a boy since the age of five, Leo is about to become one of the youngest children in Britain to take hormone blockers to put puberty on hold so he has time to ensure he makes the right choice about his future gender before taking male hormones at 16.
Hayley has no doubt this is the right thing to do. “Leo is 100% a boy,” she says.
“The hormone blockers will give him a chance to know what he’s doing is what he wants. As soon as we heard about them he wanted to take them.”
Leo says it is the right move for him. Asked what it would be like to develop as a girl he simply says: “Horrible.”
He is one of a growing number of UK children being treated for gender dysphoria (GD), defined by the NHS as “a condition in which a person feels there is a mis-match between their biological sex and their gender identity”.
For the last eight months he has made regular visits to the the Gender Identity Service at the NHS Tavistock and Portman clinic, the only service of its kind for under-18s in the country.
The west London clinic has seen its referral numbers TRIPLE in the last four years, with children as young as three treated for GD.
It is also the only place in Britain allowed to give children as young as 12 monthly hormone-blocking injections.
The minimum age for the drug was lowered from 16 in 2011 in a move that divided opinion with some arguing 12 was too young to know someone wants to change their gender.
But Leo is sure. “I’ve always felt like a boy,” he says.
“When I was five I had all my hair cut off and started dressing like a boy and on my 11th birthday I had my name changed by deed poll.
"I almost cried when I saw the certificate, I was so happy.”
At the family home in Lowestoft, Suffolk, that Leo shares with mum Hayley and his younger sister Daisy, 11, his obvious closeness to his mum is a testament to the long, traumatic journey they have faced together.
Hairdresser Hayley, 48, says: “Even as a toddler his behaviour was totally different to other girls and to Daisy.
“When he was 18 months old he potty trained himself and we went shopping for underwear.
"But he ignored all the girls’ stuff and chose Bob the Builder pants instead.
“He’d plead with me to cut his hair short, but I thought this little girl with long curly hair was wonderful.
"In the end he cut it himself when he was five. I was devastated but his short hair was more... him. And I accepted it.”
Gradually, Hayley started to realise how serious Leo was.
“It was obvious he was a boy, but I didn’t know anything about what being transgender meant. I just had this little girl who was in fact a boy.”
Her decision to let him dress in boys’ clothing and keep his hair short alienated some friends.
“They’d say, ‘Why don’t you dress him how you want to and make him grow his hair?’,” says Hayley.
“Leo would look so uncomfortable if he was ever put in anything pink and girly. It just seemed wrong.”
Others accused Leo of attention seeking or “going through a phase”, says Hayley, while some people questioned how he could make such a “big decision” so young.
“I’d tell them he’s not ‘making a decision’,” says Hayley, “It’s who he is.” But not everyone was unsupportive.
“My dad accepted it straight away. When my mum, who had Alzheimer’s, was alive she’d just turn round to Leo and say, ‘Who’s this little boy then?’”
Yet Leo’s primary school was another matter.
"“I went along to explain how Leo felt. He was crying next to me and the headmistress said, ‘Oh don’t be silly.
"You’re not a boy or you wouldn’t be cuddling up to mum like that’.”
Hayley says Leo would come home in tears through bullying. “Once some kids pulled his pants down to ‘check’ what was there.”
Eventually Leo’s school called Social Services, accusing Hayley of “forcing” him to be a boy because she was desperate for a son.
She says: “Social services were brilliant. When they came to our house they said they didn’t know why they were there.”
In March 2011 Leo was referred to the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services, and then to the Tavistock clinic.
Leo says: “They were brilliant. It was so nice being able to talk to people who understood how I felt.”
Hayley adds: “People had made me feel I was mad for letting Leo be the way he was so it was such a relief to find out gender dysphoria was real.”
Leo feared secondary school would bring more torment.
But after watching the 2011 Channel 4 series My Transsexual Summer that followed the lives of six transgender men and women, he decided to be open about it.
He says: “I started slowly telling people I’m trans and now more and more people know. My friends are fine about it.
"They ask questions, like if my body is still female, but I don’t mind answering.”
Now Leo hopes to become a gender specialist when he’s older, and is taking part in a ground-breaking online documentary series, My Genderation, to share his story to help others.
And gradually, says Hayley, those who doubted her son have all come round.
“Once people realised it wasn’t ‘a phase’, they’ve all been great. Things were so bad for Leo, but now I’m so proud of him.
"He’s full of confidence and has this smile on his face we’ve never seen before.”
For more information on My Genderation go to www.youtube.com/mygenderation
Clinic treats kids as young as three
In a busy waiting room, parents listen for their children’s names to be called as a boy of four emerges from the scrum at the toybox triumphantly clutching... a Barbie doll.
This is the home of the UK’s only Gender Identity Service for under-18s.
Here children as young as three are treated for Gender Dysphoria – defined by the NHS as “a condition in which a person feels there is a mismatch between their biological sex and their gender identity”.
As well as seeing very young children, the service at the NHS Tavistock and Portman clinic in Belsize Park, London, prescribes 12-year-olds like Leo with hormone treatment to deal with the condition.
The Sunday Mirror was given unprecedented access to the controversial service which is treating children younger than ever before.
Director Dr Polly Carmichael, told us: “People criticise what we do because they don’t fully understand how complex the issues can be.
“We deal with young people and parents who are often scared and confused about what they are going through. The number of children referred to us each year is growing all the time.
"They often know instinctively from a very young age that they don’t identify with the gender they have. We are here to help them.
“It’s not about forcing them back into their natal gender or helping them to change. We help young people manage difficulties they experience.”
The service is entirely funded by the NHS and has 10 clinicians at the London HQ and a further two in a satellite clinic in Leeds.
When the service was started by Dr Domenico Di Ceglie in 1989, it had just one patient... a teenage boy who felt he had been born into the wrong body.
Now the number of children on the clinic’s books has tripled since 2009 – and patients are getting younger.
Dr Carmichael says: “People think just because children are young they don’t have an awareness of their own gender identity but we find some children have strong feelings about it from very early on. One four-year old girl kept asking her mum when she was going to grow a willy.
“Another parent told me about a young son who would wrap a towel around his head and pretend he had long hair like a girl. These things don’t always mean a child has gender dysphoria but when the behaviour is persistent it can be a worry for parents. That is where we step in to help.”
The team encourages families to come to the clinic for counselling but they also go into local communities to help them find ways of fitting in.
“We meet teachers, social workers and other adults involved in the child’s day-to-day care,” says Dr Carmichael. “We discuss things like which toilet the child is to use and concessions about school uniforms.”
In the last year alone, 314 new patients have been seen by the service but the total caseload is closer to 500. Of 733 children referred since 2009, 130 have been aged just 10 or under.
Dr Carmichael and her team are currently helping 14 five-year- olds, eight four-year- olds and one patient who is just three.
Like Leo some patients go on to have hormone treatment when they turn 12 to stop them developing into their assigned sex so they don’t have to deal with the distress of becoming even more obviously the “wrong” gender.
“Imagine a child who is biologically female but identifies as a male.
"To grow breasts and start to menstruate could be very distressing for them,” says Dr Carmichael.
“The hormone blockers stop that from happening.”
The controversial treatment can be stopped at any time, and patients will start producing sex hormones normally again.
But for many children at the Tavistock, the psychotherapy and hormone blockers are the first steps towards more definite changes.
At age 16, some are given the option of taking hormones of the opposite sex to ready them for joining the adult gender identity service which allows sex-change surgery.
Records show 20 per cent of the children who come to them before puberty go on to live as the opposite gender in adult life. After puberty, 80 per cent take the plunge into a new gender... and a new life.
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