In , Amy Fabrikant鈥檚 tale for 鈥渃hildren of all ages,鈥� 10-year-old Kyle won鈥檛 go to school. His classmates know he plays with dolls. They won鈥檛 sit with him at lunch, and no one came to his birth颅day.
鈥淚鈥檓 a mistake!鈥� Kyle screamed. 鈥淚 only look like a boy, but I鈥檓 not like other boys. Everyone hates me. I want to live in heaven.鈥�
Amy Fabrikant
That exchange captures Fabrikant鈥檚 realization that she and her spouse must fully acknowledge and accept the reality of their own transgender child or risk losing that child. Ultimately, they affirmed Kayla, who found friends and became a confident young woman. But initially therapists ad颅vised telling her that 鈥�he could be any kind of boy he chose.鈥� When Fabrikant sought library books about transgender kids, she was handed one about gay penguins. A publisher said to change her own characters to ducks.
School districts and the Anti- Defamation League endorsed her book, and now she鈥檚 published another: , about a young girl鈥檚 struggle with anxiety and depression. Fabrikant also provides schools and organizations with important information 鈥� for example, scientific evidence that gender identity is a feeling of maleness or fe颅maleness, fluid along a spectrum 鈥� and shares strategies and tools to talk without criticism, listen without judgment and connect beyond differences: 鈥淭o help young people in our care, we need self-awareness to grapple with our own implicit biases.鈥�