This comprehensive first of its kind guidebook explores the unique challenges that thousands of families face every day raising their children in every city and state. Through extensive research and interviews, as well as years of experience working in the field, the authors cover gender variance from birth through college. What do you do when your toddler daughter's first sentence is that she's a boy? What will happen when your preschool son insists on wearing a dress to school? Is this ever just a phase? How can you explain this to your neighbors and family? How can parents advocate for their children in elementary schools? What are the current laws on the rights of transgender children? What do doctors specializing in gender variant children recommend? What do the therapists say? What advice do other families who have trans kids have? What about hormone blockers and surgery? What issues should your college-bound trans child be thinking about when selecting a school? How can I best raise my gender variant or transgender child with love and compassion, even when I barely understand the issues ahead of us? And what is gender, anyway? These questions and more are answered in this book offering a deeper understanding of gender variant and transgender children and teens.

What do you do when your son announces he is transgender and asks that you call her by a new name? Or what if your child uses a term you've never heard of to describe themselves (neutrois, agender, non-binary, genderqueer, androgyne...) and when you didn't know what they meant, they left the room and now won't speak to you about it? Perhaps your daughter recently asked you not to use gendered pronouns when referring to 'her' anymore, preferring that you use "they"; you're left wondering if this is just a phase, or if there's something more that you need to understand about your child. There is a generational divide in our understandings of gender. This comprehensive guidebook helps to bridge that divide by exploring the unique challenges that thousands of families face every day raising a teenager who may be transgender, non-binary, gender-fluid or otherwise gender-expansive. Combining years of experience working in the field with extensive research and personal interviews, the authors cover pressing concerns relating to physical and emotional development, social and school pressures, medical considerations, and family communications. Learn how parents can more deeply understand their children, and raise their non-binary or transgender adolescent with love and compassion.