Stories - Q Daily, New York City, New York.

Q Daily, nine years old, pictured in the center. NPR.org

This story comes from NPR and the full story can be read here. I really enjoy this particular story because it shows that if kids are prompted well that there doesn't have to be major drama over a social gender transition. There are questions and kids tend to keep things very simple.

Meet 9-year-old Q Daily, who recently finished third grade at the Brooklyn New School in New York City. Q, who was born a girl, just spent his first full school year as a boy.

And to him, that's liberating. Really, he explains, it's everything: "It feels like — instead of a dead flower — a growing flower."

It might be a feeling his peers don't totally understand, but it seems like they really don't care, either.

Billy Griffith is one of Q's closest buddies. They were friends when Q was a girl, too, and they have a lot in common. "We both like Michael Jackson a lot," Billy says. "We're both obsessed with him a lot."

They love to dance, and performed in the school extravaganza two years in a row. They talk. They get along, and Q's transition doesn't affect how they play.

Billy says he probably asked Q at one point why he wanted to be a boy instead of a girl: "I think I forgot what the answer was. I don't know." Billy adds that it doesn't really matter, anyway.

Q transitioned from girl to boy gradually during second grade. That's when he started to dress in boy clothes, dropped his given name, Qwanaia, and wanted to go by "he."
Q's teacher, Katherine Sorel, says the third-grade students have adapted. "Occasionally, there are still kids that will say 'Qwanaia,' " Sorel says. "And still occasionally, they'll say, 'She ... I mean he.' " But it's rare.

 And of course. In keeping with the theme of this blog here's the piece about restrooms:

The big question at school, though, was the bathroom. Q started using the boys' room on his own in second grade, and says he was told by at least one adult not to. 

So Principal Anna Allanbrook did her homework. "And in fact, it is not the place of the school to tell the child which bathroom to use," she says. 

Allanbrook learned students should be allowed to use the bathroom of their gender identity. That's backed up by guidelines on transgender students that New York City issued last year. Not all schools in the city follow them; this one does.

The link above to New York City Schools guidelines on transgender students has a specific reference to Restrooms and Locker Room Accessibility:

Restroom and Locker Room Accessibility

The DOE aims to support transgender students while also ensuring the safety and comfort of all students. The use of restrooms and locker rooms by transgender students requires schools to consider numerous factors, including, but not limited to: the transgender student’s preference; protecting student privacy; maximizing social integration of the transgender student; minimizing stigmatization of the student; ensuring equal opportunity to participate; the student’s age; and protecting the safety of the students involved.

A transgender student who expresses a need or desire for increased privacy should be provided with reasonable alternative arrangements. Reasonable alternative arrangements may include the use of a private area, or a separate changing schedule, or use of a single stall restroom. Any alternative arrangement should be provided in a way that protects the student’s ability to keep his or her transgender status confidential.

A transgender student should not be required to use a locker room or restroom that conflicts with the student’s gender identity.

The rest of the the guidelines are well written and I'll be adding it to the resources page.