“Just Let Him Be:” The Mother of a Neuroqueer Teen Shares His Story
Grayson’s journey as a trans boy didn’t come out of the clear blue sky.Though he liked to wear skirts and play with makeup, he also cut his hair short and kept it that way — even when other kids teased him and said he “looked like a boy.” When Grayson, who was assigned female at birth, was about 7 or 8, we were talking about puberty when he made a horrified face and said, “I don’t want to go through puberty.”During one of these conversations, I remember him saying, “I don’t want to live on this planet anymore.”At the end of fifth grade, when he brought all his schoolwork home, I looked through the papers and saw that he’d been signing his work with the name “Michael.” I asked him about it, and he said he wanted to use they/them pronouns.
A couple of months later, he requested that we start using he/him pronouns, and took on a different name. Then, when he was 13, he changed his name to Grayson, which has stuck.
I love the name — it suits him so well.At about the same time, Grayson was diagnosed with inattentive type ADHD. That too, was not exactly a surprise.
While he was never very fidgety or busy, he often had to be redirected. There were a lot of school struggles: not following directions, not getting things done, forgetting to hand in homework, and losing things.[Read: 5 Overlooked Signs of ADHD – the Inattentive Type]It’s interesting — I know so many people who are both neurodiverse and genderqueer or part of the LGBTQIA+ community.
United States
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Cases: 46 252 513
Deaths: 750 423
Recovered: 0
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India
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Cases: 34 321 025
Deaths: 459 652
Recovered: 0
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Brazil
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Cases: 21 835 785
Deaths: 608 235
Recovered: 0
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United Kingdom
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Cases: 9 215 683
Deaths: 141 607
Recovered: 0
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Russia
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Cases: 8 494 589
Deaths: 237 619
Recovered: 0
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