It’s a miracle! We are on our way to the gender clinic, or rather the Gender Identity Development Service, with Jo for one of her three-monthly appointments, to be followed by a mentoring session with a male-to-female transgender volunteer from the wonderful organisation Gendered Intelligence (see the Links page for details). The clinic at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust in London, affectionately known as ‘the Tavi’ is where all transgender children and young people in the south of England and Wales are referred. The miracle is getting Jo out of bed and ready. We usually go by coach or train, or on one occasion her housemaster drove Jo and me from school to north London in order to demonstrate his support for her, which was great, and useful for him as well I think.

Jo has strong avoidance instincts when it comes to appointments, or life in general. She weekly boards at her current school (if only there were state schools like it) as even when we moved to be within commuting distance of the school we still couldn’t get her there. Any transition can be difficult. We have spent years trying to get Jo, now 14, to school, often failing and usually late. When combined with trying to do a full-time job it was unbelievably stressful. Getting her back to school on Sunday nights is still difficult or impossible now and again, but at least it’s only once a week. She has been at her current school since Year 6, and weekly boarding since Year 7, aged eleven. We didn’t think that she would cope, but being quite a social animal there were lots of benefits to boarding. She finds it tiring and stressful at times (and has a long history of self-harming), but seems much happier than she was at her lovely Catholic primary school. Classes of 28 were way too big and however skilled one teacher and a teaching-assistant were, they could not provide her with the tailored education she needed. Added to this, being transgendered, by the time she reached Year 5 (nine or ten) most of Jo’s girl friends had deserted her and she didn’t relate to the boys, so was miserable and isolated. I would drive past and see her standing alone at the edge of the playground which was pretty heart-wrenching. At boarding school you are thrown together, and although she is in a much more male environment than ever before, with boys outnumbering girls about three-to-one, there are compensations in having close company. Jo’s boarding school are also able to get her to do things we’d totally failed at as parents, such as getting her out of bed in the morning, and into it at night, getting her to shower and change clothes, brush her teeth occasionally, do homework, attend dental and doctor’s appointments, or get her hair cut. The relief of sharing the parenting in this way is considerable, if financially challenging (the school do give us a small bursary, it’s always worth asking – see the financial help page as well). As well as changing her name and gender, officially, earlier this year, Jo also changed from having girl-friends to boy-friends – an interesting and complicated situation, especially in a mixed-boarding school. I’ll save for another post.

And now we are speeding up the motorway to London. We have given up on advance booking of trains, coaches and hotels as we end up having to cancel at the last minute. I only texted a dog-walker an hour before we left, having cancelled at the last minute when Jo refused to budge too often to risk doing it again. Luckily the dog-walker is able to come, so the dogs will at least get an afternoon walk and food before we get home this evening. I left them each with a marrow-bone treat which should occupy them for a couple of hours at least. And Jo’s looking great! I think we’ve had several changes of clothes before finally coming downstairs. I saw her in a new, pretty red dress and black boots, before reappearing in flowery skinny jeans with a new top and tight black three quarter-length jacket. She washes her hair then wears a beanie hat (with IMPERFECT written across the forehead) to try to make it dry straight, although I like the natural wave – which due to some Jamaican paternity is unlikely to be beaten into submission. The aim is to produce a Japanese anime look, with which the hair won’t readily cooperate. Its interesting how asexual many anime characters look, I can see why she identifies with this style.