Becoming Nicole: The Transformation of an American Family by Amy Ellis Nutt Page B

grade!”
    Jonas: “I don’t really know. I guess I’m looking forward to everything really. But if I really had to choose one thing I have to say it would probably be the rockets. I mean, I’ve wanted to do it since 3rd grade. And I cannot wait for the history fair. I’ve decided to do my project on president Teddy Roosevelt.”
    Q: “What can you do to help yourself achieve your goals?”
    Wyatt: “I will learn more about Abbie Burgess. I will be nicer, I will wear sweet clothes, and again BE MYSELF!”
    Jonas: “I can always study hard, it’s like the #1 way to ace school. I think working is great for the mind. And it’s really going to come in handy when it’s time for the history fair. But I just don’t know where to find clothes that look like Teddy’s!”
    Q: “If you wrote a book, what kind would it be (mystery, comedy, etc.)? What would the main character be like?”
    Wyatt: “My book would be a mystery, comedy and fantasy. Comedy because I’m a little funny, mystery to expand the comedy and fantasy to open up more doors literally. My main character would be sassy and never afraid. But the co-star would be the exact opposite—except 10 times the sassy.”
    Late in April 2007, Wayne and Kelly sat down with Wyatt one night to watch a Barbara Walters 20
/
20 special on transgender children. Jonas was in the playroom, occupied with his action figures. Walters profiled a child named “Jazz,” about the same age as Wyatt and Jonas, who was male at birth, but identified as female from a very early age. The Walters special documented all the struggles Jazz’s family was going through, much like the Maineses. Jazz, like Wyatt, wanted to be open and “out” as a girl, but was being held back by his parents’ fears. Jazz’s parents, just like Wayne and Kelly, encouraged a gender-neutral look, especially in preschool: He was allowed to wear a feminine top, but only with pants. And just like Wyatt, this was an arrangement that only frustrated and angered Jazz.
    According to the parents, who were not identified by their real names, their turning point came with a dance recital. They didn’t allow Jazz to wear a tutu, like the rest of the girls in the ballet class. Afterward, it was acutely clear how devastated and out of place Jazz had felt.
    “She just kind of stood there and snapped her fingers and did the tapping thing with the toe, and just looked so sad,” Jazz’s mother recalled. “It was heartbreaking to watch. Really heartbreaking.”
    So on Jazz’s fifth birthday, there was a kind of public coming out at a pool party for friends and family. Jazz wore a girl’s one-piece bathing suit, and “he” was now “she.”
    Wyatt was flooded with relief, knowing there was someone out there just like him. Wayne couldn’t believe it. Wyatt, he realized, had all the same anger issues, and he and Kelly all the same anxieties, but Jazz’s parents were openly discussing them on national TV. Wayne fought back tears for the rest of the hour.
    “It’s like looking in a mirror,” he said to Kelly.
    —
    W YATT HAD BEEN SEEING his therapist, Dr. Holmes, for a little more than a year when he reported to her that he was feeling like sticking his fingers down his throat. Not to throw up, he said. He didn’t really know why, and he said he didn’t know if this idea of his was physical or just in his head. He admitted to Holmes that he’d gotten really angry at his parents about something the week before and that he’d slammed his bedroom door so hard his parents took it off its hinges so he couldn’t do it again.
    “I need to get my anger out,” he told Holmes.
    “It doesn’t always work to slam things, though,” she said gently.
    Wyatt didn’t seem to agree. Later in the session Holmes engaged him in play therapy. Wyatt identified several dolls as girlfriends of his at school, but they said mostly mean, backbiting things about him. One by one he walked each girl doll up to the grandmother-type