It’s safe to say that Q Daily, 11, is savoring childhood. He is an avid climber of trees, a dancer and lover of Michael Jackson. He treasures play. Adults, he laments, are boring — particularly at parties.
“All that I think they do,” said Q, “is sit around, talk and drink wine.”
Q said he’d prefer not to grow up. Yet, he is on the cusp of middle school, a difficult time for any child. For a transgender child, it is particularly complex.
Q was born a girl, and began questioning gender around age 3. WNYC met Q two years ago when he was finishing third grade at The Brooklyn New School. He had socially transitioned to identifying as a boy, dropped his given name in favor of his first initial, wore boy clothes and cut his hair short. He used male pronouns.
Over the last two years, he’s only grown more confident in himself. “I’m sure that I’m a boy,” he said.
With support from his family, classmates and school, he said he can handle people asking if he is a boy or a girl or why he’s transgender.
“I’m used to getting comments like that,” he said. “Some people don’t agree. But I can’t do anything about that. I can’t change their thinking.”
At a time nationally when you hear stories of transgender kids feeling isolated or bullied, Q’s comfort in his own skin, and his happy-go-lucky nature, draw people in. Q’s mother, Francisca Montaña, called it his superpower.
“People like him because he’s good with people,” she said. “He’s good to people. And he is not ashamed of asking people to be good to him either.”
Both of Q’s parents said there is an effort to buffer a bit of the outside world. For instance, Montaña did not directly discuss with Q the Trump administration’s decision to rescind federal guidelines protecting transgender children in schools.
She decided not to raise the issue in part because New York City has its own guidelines protecting transgender students. Also, because — with Q being a half-Latino, half-black, transgender kid — she wanted him to protect that uncanny sense of self.
“I’m sure when he gets older, there are going to be things that he’s going to have to deal with on his own,” said Avery Daily, Q’s father, in a separate interview from Montaña (Q’s parents are separated). “We’re trying to instill these values in him so that he’s capable of going out on his own and defending himself and standing up for what is right.”
Daily said he wanted his son to be a “strong thinker,” particularly now that Q is entering a new phase as a transgender child: puberty. It’s an awkward and confusing time for all kids, but it comes with higher stakes for a child like Q.
“The age of cuteness has passed,” said Montaña. “He’s at a different stage where people start having different standards for what it means to be transgender.”
Meaning, people ask: What’s going on with his hormones, his body? What’s Q’s plan?
These are questions that Q, Montaña and Daily, have been working through for the past year. At Q’s request, they are poised to allow Q to take puberty blockers, medication that basically puts puberty on hold.
“I feel that the blockers are a good, safe next step,” said Montaña, adding, “It seems that it will give us more time to think about the big decisions.”
Transgender adolescents might consider taking hormones, such as testosterone or estrogen, to affirm their gender identity or, perhaps down the road, undergoing surgery.
Blockers, by comparison, are not as invasive. They are considered safe, reversible and an important option for transgender children in a guide co-authored by the Human Rights Campaign Foundation, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Osteopathic Pediatricians.
A recent statement by a working group of the Pediatric Endocrine Society also recommended medical intervention for transgender adolescents, including puberty blockers.
Q said he knew of kids on blockers, because he goes to a camp for transgender children each summer.
“Everybody in camp — that’s the only people that I want to talk about the blocker thing with,” said Q. “[With] everybody else in school, I keep my mouth shut.”
Q is spending two weeks at camp this summer. Even though he has lots of friends in Brooklyn, he said it’s not the same as being with other people like him.
It’s the two weeks of the year, he said, where he is the same as everyone else, no questions asked.