When your young daughter says 'I'm a boy'

Story highlights

• “Raising Ryland” is an intimate look at parenting a transgender child with no strings attached


• The short film is presented by CNN Films exclusively on CNN.com


• Ryland’s family first shared their story on a YouTube video that has been seen more than 7 million times

There was the pink and white nursery to finish, dresses and bows to buy.

Like most first-time parents, they thought they had prepared for just about everything. Then, only months after Ryland was born, Hillary and Jeff realized something wasn’t quite right.

When they called out, Ryland didn’t respond. Ryland was deaf.

Cochlear implants restored young Ryland’s ability to hear, and the Whittingtons thought they had overcome their toughest challenge.

But Ryland had more to share with them, according to the family’s incredibly powerful YouTube video, which has been seen more than 7 million times. Their story is also the subject of an equally moving short film “Raising Ryland,” which is exclusively being showcased on CNN.com.

Ryland, they learned, is transgender.

Hillary Whittingon and her son, Ryland, who is now 7.

The transgender life: What to know, say and understand

“Transgender” essentially means having the body of one gender and the brain or the mind or the spirit of the opposite gender, saidDarlene Tando, a licensed clinical social worker and gender therapist who also appears in “Raising Ryland.”

“So being transgender means you have something other than what everyone assumed you were based on how you were born, what body you were born in,” said Tando, who also writes a blog about gender issues.

The Whittingtons no longer have a daughter. They have a son.

Ryland: ‘When the family dies, I will cut off my hair’

When I asked Hillary when she knew Ryland was transgender, she said there were a lot of signs.

Ryland would scream “I’m a boy” as soon as he started speaking, and showed an aversion to anything feminine, said Hillary, who is working on a book about her family’s journey, which will be published by HarperCollins.

Ryland’s just a tomboy, thought the Whittingtons, something Hillary could relate to as a former tomboy herself.

“But the difference was Ryland was shameful about it and knew that he kind of had to hide it,” said Hillary during a lengthy phone interview from her home in San Diego.

Why transgender teen Jazz Jennings is everywhere

“He just picked up really quickly that it wasn’t OK for him to really want to be a boy. It was OK for him to do boy things and stuff but he just learned really quickly that there was a limit to it.”

Everything changed the day Ryland announced, “When the family dies, I will cut off my hair so I can be a boy.”

Ryland may have only been 5, but Hillary and Jeff determined it was time to start listening.

Hillary and Jeff Whittington and their children Ryland, left, and Brynley.

“A lot of times, kids don’t say anything or they keep it hidden or they modify their behavior based on the wishes of those around them,” said Tando, the gender therapist.

But when they start getting feedback from others about how they should dress, which line they should stand in or what activities they should be involved in, they may start speaking up, she said.

“And that’s when they may start asserting themselves, ‘I am a boy, I am a girl, God made a mistake,’ that sort of thing, and then the parents will know there is some distress going on here because the brain gender identify is not matching the birth sex.”

The Whittingtons sought help from professionals and experts, and researched everything they could.

Ryland’s mom: ‘Do I want a living son or a dead daughter?’

One statistic stayed with them more than any other: 41% of transgender people have attempted suicide, according to the National Transgender Discrimination Survey, conducted by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and National Center for Transgender Equality. The national average for attempted suicide is 4.6%.

“Do I want a living son or a dead daughter?” Hillary asks so powerfully in the film. “We were not willing to take that risk,” she wrote in her YouTube video.

An Ohio transgender teen’s suicide, a mother’s anguish

Family and social acceptance are key factors in the health and well-being of someone who is transgender, explained Tando.

“I think the scary stats we see about transgender people are those who have probably not been affirmed by their families for a very long time or have kept it to themselves for a very long time,” she said. “And then the coming out process is more difficult the older they are.”

Those “scary stats” don’t usually apply to children, like Ryland, who can live as the gender they identify with at an earlier age, according to Tando.

“They’ve shown over time that kids who have family support like the early intervention, they have a very similar statistic of suicidality and suicidal ideation as the general population,” she said. “So the family support is so important.”

A gender-affirming approach in which the parents listen to the child is “by far the one that’s most likely to have a positive mental health outcome,” said Dr. Stephen Rosenthal, a pediatric endocrinologist and medical director of the Child and Adolescent Gender Center at the University of California, San Francisco.

Rosenthal pointed to a 2014 Dutch study, which found that transgender young adults who were given medicine to delay the onset of puberty and were then given hormones corresponding to their gender identity were found to be just as happy and satisfied with their lives, if not happier, than the young adults who didn’t identify themselves as transgender.

“That’s what this family needs to know,” said Rosenthal, referring to the Whittingtons, “what the world needs to know.”

‘Coming out’ to family and friends

After consulting with counselors and experts on transgender issues, Hillary and Jeff were advised to allow Ryland to transition as soon as possible. So they let him cut his hair, change his room, and they sent out a letter to family and friends telling them that Ryland is a boy and their amazing son.

Ryland credits his parents with letting him be who he wanted to be.

“That was our initial ‘coming out’ letter,” said Hillary. They wanted to answer questions from family and friends before they asked.

“It’s really hard to explain the facts to someone in person especially when you have your child standing there,” she added. (Ryland has a sister, Brynley, who turns 3 in a couple of weeks.)

Obama makes historic ‘transgender’ reference in SOTU

They lost a few friends, but learned that the people who stuck with them are the ones who really matter.

Facing judgments, questions and criticisms

When I ask about the judgments, questions and criticisms that Hillary and her family have faced, she said she didn’t want to “go there” because “it brings out a lot of pain.”

A few minutes later in our conversation, as she talked about the support they received from Ryland’s kindergarten teacher and the rest of the school district, she couldn’t really hold back the tears.

“I think for all these parents, the reason why it’s so hard,” she said, as she apologized for getting emotional, “is because you worry about their safety. It’s a safety concern. I think that’s why I struggle still. I just hope that we’re doing the right thing.”

What drives her, she said, is first and foremost protecting Ryland, making his childhood as typical as possible and loving him unconditionally.

After that, she hopes by being public and vocal about Ryland’s story she can help educate people and provide hope to other families.

“As difficult as this is, the more people will talk about it and share their stories and be willing to risk their privacy … I think the more we’re going to help people understand that this isn’t some weird thing,” said Hillary.

What not to say to a transgender person

“It’s a lot more common than you even think. It’s just that people are afraid to talk about it,” she added.

“I just feel the need to talk to these parents and help them get on board with this because the longer you wait, if you let these kids go through the wrong puberty, you are really putting their lives in jeopardy and that’s really why I’m doing this, because I’m trying to really save these kids.”

A new calling

Two years into their journey, Hillary said they are still in the “thick of things.” They still haven’t officially changed the gender on Ryland’s birth certificate and the middle name he was given when he was born, she said.

Thankfully, his birth name, Ryland, does not need to be changed. “It’s so awesome that it’s a gender neutral name.”

Moving forward, there will be more challenges, she concedes, including working with doctors on what to do to block puberty and deciding at which age to start administering cross-hormones.

Beyond that, it really is an individual choice regarding whether a transgender person will change their anatomy. “Some transgender people are very accepting of their bodies that they were born with and it’s really not a source of distress for them so they don’t feel the need to undergo surgical intervention,” said Tando.

“Others have a really strong sense of gender dysphoria and so they feel like they really need to undergo some medical intervention to feel more comfortable in their own skin.”

Hillary said they will cross that bridge when they get to it.

“At this point, we don’t have any worries other than just to keep his world as happy and normal as we can.”

From what you see in the film and the family’s YouTube video, Ryland, now a 7-year-old first grader, seems like a happy and healthy boy. Last year at a diversity breakfast in honor of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay politician to be elected to public office in California, Ryland thanked his mom and dad for “letting me be who I want to be.”

“I’m the happiest I’ve ever been in my whole life.”

Hillary said she now knows what her calling is: fighting for Ryland and kids like him.

“I made a promise to Ryland that I would help and I would do something and obviously now that’s my new journey,” she said.

“I’m not afraid of what people can say because I know that the worst has already been said and really, at the end of the day, I know that … eventually the naysayers will see that this really is OK and that we are doing the right thing.”

What can be done to increase support of transgender children such as Ryland? Share your thoughts with Kelly Wallace (@kellywallacetv) on Twitter or CNN Living on Facebook.

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When your young daughter says "I"m a boy"

Couple eats way through 20 countries

Traveling by land for 306 days, from Brussels to Hong Kong, the adventurous and constantly hungry duo chronicled their delicious encounters on their popular travel blog, The Funnelogy Channel, which features enticing food porn and recipes given to them by the professional chefs/street vendors/proud grandmas they met on their journey.

It all started in Brussels in April 2014, when Zanzanaini and Petit left their nonprofit sector jobs and never looked back.

Heading toward Hong Kong, Zanzanaini’s maternal hometown, the couple passed through countries such as Greece, Iran, Turkey, Tajikistan, Myanmar and Laos, and ate unbelievable meals of exotic foods that most of us have never even heard of.

Their manifesto wasn’t about marking off a bucket list of famous dishes, but finding the surprising, little known, often humble food that travelers discover only after being invited to the table of a loving home cook.

Gabriella Zanzanaini says she wants to inspire people to find their own adventure.

We spoke to Zanzanaini and Petit about slow travel, their most memorable meals and how best to see Iran.

CNN: Sounds like the classic contemporary bildungsroman: quit your hateful desk job, travel world to find yourself. What kick-started it?

Zanzanaini: We didn’t hate our jobs!

We both really cared about our jobs so we gave six months’ notice to find suitable replacements for us.

A lot of people were asking why don’t you just take a sabbatical, go for a year and then come back, but we knew we wanted to have the future completely open.

If you knew you were coming back to the same life at the end of the journey then it’s just like a big holiday. You’re not going out to the open with no clue of where you’ll end up.

Petit: We didn’t want an official end date to our trip because then we would be completely free.

At the beginning of traveling, you are still thinking about what you were doing a few months ago.

But once you let go of the time frame, everything becomes completely open, with no past, no future — we can do whatever we want.

Traveling for a year, it’s all about the unexpected.

Arriving in a strange place, you don’t know what you’re going to see, you don’t know the pleasure you’re going to get and then suddenly something opens up — and there’s always something opening up.

CNN: How did the trip change you?

Petit: We can never be bored again.

It has opened a completely new creative way of looking at the world. [Zanzanaini] focused on the writing and I focused on the photography so we learned to look at the world through those media.

We are mostly interested in people, more than landscapes or monuments, so you can never be bored, you sit there looking at the people passing by … there’s so much to talk about.

It was very liberating to know that there is always something to do and it’s not related to money or job or whatever, it’s for you, you have a constant interest in the world you live in.

Zanzanaini: You could dump us in a tiny town, it’s not a picturesque village, it’s not a fancy town, but we will look at it in detail.

All these little things your mind finally has time to process.

“We still dream about the noodles and dumplings of northwest China,” says the traveling duo. “Unlike their southern counterparts, these noodles are the closest thing to reinforce the argument that pasta comes from China.”

CNN: What was the hardest thing about the trip?

Zanzanaini: At the beginning learning to trust was a really big thing.

On this trip people were inviting us to dinner, people we don’t know. In the beginning I felt so guilty.

I was uncomfortable accepting all this free stuff or kind gestures. I felt that I owed them.

Over time, people were constantly so nice, we became relaxed and trusting.

One of the saddest things a guy said to me was in Eastern Turkey. There was a student who was watching the hotel at night and we started chatting to him and he said, you have to come to my mom’s house for dinner, so at 11:30 p.m. we went to his house because his shift was over and when we were walking there he said, “Thank you so much for trusting me, most foreigners wouldn’t come with me, they would be scared.”

That’s so crazy, we should be thanking you and he was so happy to find people who were willing to accept his offer that showed me people are always so scared, we’ve built a fear inside ourselves.

Petit: Maybe we were very lucky, but nothing bad happened to us and it’s been 11 months now on the road.

We were very happy we decided to trust people.

“The more tourists you have in a place, the less connection you have with the people,” says Funnelogy co-founder Nicolas Petit.

CNN: So why the foodie theme for your trip?

Zanzanaini: I am obsessed with food, but the key was the idea of meeting people, even if we don’t speak the language, everybody eats, everybody cooks and most people are proud of their food, and it’s something that opens so many doors.

The second you show interest, especially in these regions where the politics and religion are sensitive issues, food was a safe choice.

It was a good way of getting into more serious stuff through the very innocent breaking of bread.

Petit: Every time you ask people if we can cook with them, people said yes. We never got a no.

It’s not like you come, you cook a recipe and you go.

It’s about engaging.

We recently went as tourists to the Philippines for a week.

There was a town with a fish market and as soon as we asked about cooking we suddenly knew all the people in the fish market and vegetable market and everybody comes and checks what you’re doing.

You have this snowball effect with cooking that is completely a door opener.

Zanzanaini wore a full chador when she toured the ancient corridors of Shiraz, Iran.

CNN: One place stand out as your favorite?

Petit: The thing is, you can be in a [bad] place and meet the most amazing family.

The place doesn’t matter that much.

We can both agree that we would like to go back to Iran.

It was so different than what we thought it would be.

Also eastern Turkey in the Kurdish parts.

Myanmar was so inspiring as it was the most aesthetically beautiful, photogenic place.

Tourism spoils tourism. The more tourists you have in a place, the less connection you have with the people.

If Iran was a very touristy country they wouldn’t come to you on the street and ask you to go to their home and eat with their family.

But because there is no one visiting, the people are so open and friendly.

Also Iran has such a bad reputation, so they want to show the real Iran.

All the places that are touristy in the world were never the highlight of our journey. It’s more difficult to make connections in those places.

Phuket is beautiful and amazing but it was difficult to really engage with Thai people there.

One thing we did — not for the money but for meeting people — is couch surfing in Iran. .

Many people in Iran are doing it as it is their way to meet foreigners but technically it is illegal — we had to go into this guy’s house from the car park.

Zanzanaini: One of my favorite memories was trekking in Central Asia during the end of Ramadan.

We reached the top of a mountain in the middle of nowhere with a lot of nomads.

This family welcomed us into their yurts and served us a meal. I remember thinking, please don’t give me yogurt, as I had been receiving this sour and gamey yogurt throughout the region.

But this yogurt was incredible, it was so creamy and had a spoon of beige cream, almost toffee colored.

We took a chance and couldn’t believe what we received.

Petit: I really enjoyed the street food in Vietnam.

Every little corner, every five minutes, we found some new street food that we just had to try. There was so much diversity.

Western China was also a highlight for me. I really got into the noodles in China.

I didn’t know you could have such diversity in the noodles.

Women in Myanmar sell everything from steamed buns to fried noodles and boiled eggs from a platter balanced on their heads.

CNN: How can we follow in your footsteps?

Zanzanaini: Travel blogs out there focus on guides — 10 best of this city, where to go eat, where to go shop …

People love that and that’s fine. But for me the best part is finding it yourself.

We want to tell stories to inspire people to find their own adventure, we want to tell stories that make them interested to learn cultures different from their own and then realize how similar it all really is.

Petit: The best moment in traveling is the surprise.

You go into this gorge and there this gorgeous scene, this mountain, and you didn’t read that in any guidebook, it is like you won a prize.

CNN: So where do you go from here?

Petit: The trip changed completely the way we see the future.

We will continue to travel, but now it is about slow travel.

We will move to a place and stay maybe six months, a year, and really get to explore.

Hong Kong-based freelancer Zoe Li writes regularly on Chinese art, culture, food and travel.

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Couple eats way through 20 countries

Your favorite comic characters look very different

Story highlights

• Superman, Wonder Woman and Archie all debuted new looks Thursday


• Three of the most well-known comic book characters of all time look radically different

Three major characters — Superman, Wonder Woman (both of DC Comics, a Time Warner company, like CNN) and Archie Andrews — came out with new looks (and costumes in two cases) Thursday.

Superman and Wonder Woman are no stranger to change over time, but these are pretty different from what we’re used to.

Superman and Wonder Woman got makeovers this week.

Wonder Woman is back to wearing pants (similar to her style circa 2010, not to mention a brief time in the 1970s) along with something of a turtleneck and body armor.

Superman looks the most casual that we’ve ever seen him, simply in a t-shirt and jeans, and decidedly shorter hair. He also looks like someone you might not want to come across in a dark alley.

As for Archie (who never really died, by the way), he’s getting ready for his promised TV show by debuting a modern look — one that makes it much easier to see why Betty and Veronica have been fighting for his affections all of these years.

It’s been a whirlwind time for comic book fans, and there will be a lot to get used to.

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Your favorite comic characters look very different

Save yourself a trip to the ER

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Save yourself a trip to the ER

Why mustard is better for you than ketchup

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Why mustard is better for you than ketchup

Gun rights group fights armor-piercing bullet ban

The Second Amendment Foundation, which typically focuses on legal efforts to protect gun rights, is taking aim at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ proposal to ban popular “green tip” steel core bullets with a $700,000 nationwide radio and TV ad campaign. The group’s one-minute ad will air on conservative outlets like Fox News and The Blaze urging Americans to petition President Barack Obama to kill the proposal just one week before the comment period ends.

Gun rights groups are painting the ATF’s suggested ban as another executive overstep by Obama, this time aimed at stripping gun owners of ammunition typically used in the AR-15 assault rifle.

The new ban was proposed by the ATF and there’s no evidence it was initiated by the White House or the president in the same way Obama used his executive power to shield millions of undocumented immigrants from deportation.

The ammunition was exempted from the 1986 Law Enforcement Officers Protection Act, which banned armor-piercing bullets that could be used in handguns but not those used in rifles, which were seen as intended for sporting purposes. New handguns, though, can accommodate those same armor-piercing bullets exempted in the 1986 law and the ATF is concerned the bullets now put police officers at risk.

But the Second Amendment Foundation charged that the ATF is tackling a nonexistent problem.

“This appears to be a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist,” said David Workman, the group’s communications director. “I can’t find — nor can anybody else find — any evidence that any of these bullets has ever been fired from a handgun that’s harmed a police officer.”

Instead, gun rights groups are taking the ammo ban as a “backdoor attempt” to clamp down on assault rifles, after gun control advocates failed to ban assault rifles.

Other types of ammunition that can’t pierce body armor would still be available for the AR-15 assault rifle under the new regulation.

“It’s not the need for the ammunition,” Workman said. “Why does anybody need to ban it? That’s the real question.”

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Gun rights group fights armor-piercing bullet ban

Disarray at NBC News: What's next?

Here’s a metaphor for the disarray inside NBC News: Last weekend, workers at NBC’s Rockefeller Center headquarters briefly wiped away promotional photos of Brian Williams.

They removed the photos from a wall and painted over the words under them: “He’s been there, he’ll be there” — a tagline for a celebration of Williams’ 10th anniversary on the “NBC Nightly News.”

The next day the workers returned and put the pictures back up. But NBC employees were already buzzing with gossip.

The official word was that the temporary exhibit had been accidentally taken down two weeks early, and that’s why it was restored. The unofficial response was … more sarcastic.

No one knows what’s next for NBC News, and that’s why even the walls are being studied for clues.

Related: Brian Williams once eyed David Letterman’s job

Friday’s big shakeup — Andy Lack replacing Pat Fili-Krushel as the chairman of NBC News — is a clear sign of corporate dissatisfaction with the news division.

Lack’s challenges start at “Nightly News” but don’t end there. He has to restore confidence in the news division, improve morale among the rank-and-file, and regain ratings momentum at the network’s most important news asset, the “Today” show.

Lack, now 67, led the news division to greatness as its president in the 1990s. But the news industry has been flipped on its head since then, thanks to the Internet and smart phones.

After being introduced as the new chairman at an NBC staff meeting on Friday morning, he made a throwback joke: “How many hours is ‘Dateline’ on now?”

Expanding the newsmagazine franchise was a top achievement two decades ago, but it’s not the answer now.

On Sunday, New York magazine published a much-anticipated story about what it called “chaos” within the news division.

“The trouble didn’t start with Brian Williams,” the tagline to the story said.

“Over the past year,” reporter Gabriel Sherman wrote, “all of the NBC News marquee franchises — ‘Today,’ ‘Meet the Press,’ ‘Nightly News’ — have been badly damaged by bungled talent decisions and control-room shakeups. Taken together, the upheavals portray a news division that has allowed talent to take over.”

The magazine quoted a senior NBC executive as saying “there’s no adult supervision,” despite the fact that NBCUniversal CEO Steve Burke put Fili-Krushel in charge back in 2012 to be “adult supervision.”

Separately, a lengthy Business Insider story listed a number of insider complaints about Fili-Krushel earlier this week.

Fili-Krushel has not said anything publicly about Williams or herself. On Friday, Burke said Fili-Krushel “will move into a new role on my executive team” once Lack takes over in April.

NBC News president Deborah Turness remains in place, but her role will be “substantially diminished” with Lack in charge, Sherman wrote.

Related: 52% say Brian Williams should be allowed back on

In the coming months, Lack and Burke will have to make what will likely be their most high-profile decision: whether to let Williams return to “Nightly News.”

At the moment, Williams remains determined to mount a comeback. Sherman quotes a close friend as saying, “He can’t wait until he can speak. He’s just anxious to get back to work. And he can’t wait to respond.”

Lack and Williams have been friendly for decades, and Sherman reports that when NBC was deciding how to handle the controversy about Williams’ embellishments, “Lack called Burke and asked him to spare Williams with a short suspension.”

Some executives in the TV industry believe Lack will stand by Williams and seek to rehabilitate the anchor when the six-month suspension period is up in August. Others, however, are not so sure. They cite internal anger at Williams and the inherent risk in bringing him back.

And they speculate that Lack’s ability to talk frankly with Williams — friend-to-friend — could ease the transition from Williams to another anchor, like Lester Holt, who is currently filling in.

On CNN’s “Reliable Sources,” former CBS News president Andrew Heyward said much the same thing a senior NBC source said to me earlier on Sunday morning: that Williams’ fate is ultimately a business calculation, and ultimately up to Burke.

“It’s going to be a decision that has the interest of NBC News and, not to sound too corny, the American public at heart,” Heyward said. “It’s not going to be based on friendship or anything like that. It’s going to be a business-like decision based on whatever facts are on the ground at the time, including the review that NBC is still doing.”

CNNMoney (New York) March 8, 2015: 1:27 PM ET

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Disarray at NBC News: What"s next?