Five-year-old "H" spins as she launches her dad's glider toward her younger sister in the living room of her family's home in St. Paul on Wednesday, May 25, 2016. H, who was identified as male at birth, began asserting her femininity and preferences for typically female things as soon as she could talk. (Pioneer Press: John Autey)

H. plays with a doll house in her bedroom of her family's home in St. Paul in June 2016. The girl and her parents, Dave and Hannah Edwards, made the news earlier in 2016 when they filed a complaint alleging that Nova Classical Academy failed to protect the kindergartner from persistent gender-based bullying and hostility. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

A question board on H's bedroom door reflects a young girl's dreams. H draws pictures of princesses and pop singers. She wears dresses and rides a pink bike. She loves being a big sister. She's also transgender. (Pioneer Press: John Autey)

Dave Edwards holds H as she hugs her sister, who in turn is being held by mom, Hannah Edwards. (Pioneer Press: John Autey)

Hannah Edwards puts H's hair into pigtails. The length of H's curly blond hair was a battle, Hannah said. "She would cry every time we took her to get her hair cut," she said. "We didn't know if she was nervous or scared or what. When she was 3 and she was able to speak out loud, she said: 'Why did you cut off all of my beautiful hair?'" She told her parents she was never getting her hair cut again. (Pioneer Press: John Autey)



H did this drawing and dictated the story written with it. H, who was identified as male at birth, began asserting her femininity and preferences for typically female things as soon as she could talk. "I'm a girl," she would say. "In my heart, I'm a girl." (Pioneer Press: John Autey)

H rests her head on Dave Edwards' chest as he plays the piano. H loves to sing and knows all the words to all the songs in the musical "Matilda." (Pioneer Press: John Autey)

H points out some of the favorite stickers she has collected on a mirror in her bedroom. (Pioneer Press: John Autey)

H looks over a Lego magazine. (Pioneer Press: John Autey)

H watches videos on a smartphone as her sister tries to watch with her. (Pioneer Press: John Autey)



H stands on the back of the couch before launching herself off as she plays at home. She's often a blur in family photos because she's always singing, dancing, twirling, jumping. (Pioneer Press: John Autey)

The 5-year-old never stops moving. She’s often a blur in family photos, because she’s always singing, dancing, twirling, jumping. She belts out Beyonce’s “Halo” on request. She draws pictures of princesses and pop singers. She wears dresses and rides a pink bike. She loves being a big sister.

She’s also transgender.

The girl and her parents, Dave and Hannah Edwards, made the news earlier this year when they filed a complaint alleging that Nova Classical Academy, a charter school in St. Paul, failed to protect her from persistent gender-based bullying and hostility. In their complaint, filed with the St. Paul Department of Human Rights, the St. Paul couple charged that Nova denied their child, a kindergartner, “the ability to undergo a gender transition at Nova in a safe and timely way.”

On Feb. 29, the Edwards withdrew their child — identified using her first initial, “H,” to protect her privacy — from Nova and enrolled her in a St. Paul elementary school. Related Articles As memories of George Floyd fade, activists make sure his legacy does not

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H, who was identified as male at birth, began asserting her femininity and preferences for typically female things as soon as she could talk.

“I’m a girl,” she would say. “In my heart, I’m a girl.”

Self-portraits featured her with long hair and wearing dresses. At night, she would dream she was Ariel, the Disney mermaid character. She loved to have her mother wrap a baby blanket around her head, so she could pretend she had long flowing hair.

“Or she would ask me to wrap the blanket around her like a dress,” Hannah Edwards said. “Because at that point, early on, she didn’t own any typically female clothing”

“We bought male dress-up clothes, and she wouldn’t touch them,” Dave Edwards said. “She didn’t want to be Captain America.”

When it came time for her first dance recital, H, then 2½, was upset that the girls got to wear frilly tutus and fancy headbands and the boys had to wear T-shirts, vests, pants and a baseball cap.

“She hated that outfit,” Hannah Edwards said. “She cried the whole performance and didn’t dance. We had our whole extended family there, and we kind of laughed and giggled about it — you know, ‘How silly, how stubborn’ — but now, knowing more about who she is, it makes complete sense.”

The length of H’s curly blond hair was a battle, Hannah Edwards said.

“She would cry every time we took her to get her hair cut,” she said. “We didn’t know if she was nervous or scared or what. When she was three and she was able to speak out loud, she said: ‘Why did you cut off all of my beautiful hair?’ ” She told her parents she was never getting her hair cut again.

“It was upsetting for her, so we’re like, ‘You can have long hair. That’s fine,’ ” Hannah Edwards said. “Dave had a ponytail for a while a long time ago, and we said ‘Daddy’s had long hair. Anybody can have long hair.’ ”

When she was four, her parents bought her two Halloween costumes — a Rapunzel costume to wear at home and a Cowardly Lion costume to wear to day care.

“We wanted to protect her, but we wanted her to feel supported and comfortable, too,” Hannah Edwards said.

Added Dave Edwards: “We wanted her to be herself, but we weren’t sure that she was able to defend herself yet, or to have a conversation and stand up for herself if somebody was telling her that she couldn’t do it, so we were trying to save her from that.”

A NEW NAME

Earlier this year, H began routinely switching pronouns and asked for a new first name.

Medical professionals and gender experts say to look for “consistent, persistent and insistent” behavior, said Dave Edwards, who is a teaching specialist in emotional behavior disorders at the University of Minnesota. “We waited for that before we made any changes.”

H adopted a girl’s name after a visit to the school in St. Paul where Hannah Edwards teaches art.

“I hadn’t called her ‘my daughter’ before,” Hannah Edwards said. “She came again to my school, and all of my students — they all knew I had a son — and they said ‘Is this your son?’ And I said ‘Yes, this is my son’ without thinking about it.”

When they got into the car to drive home, H was “the angriest I’ve ever seen her,” Hannah Edwards said. “‘I told you to call me a girl. I’m a girl! Call me daughter!’ So then when I had calmed her down she was like, ‘Well, maybe it’s because I need a better name. I need a girl name.’”

The Edwards came up with a list of acceptable names, and H picked the one she liked best.

Dave Edwards said the transition took time.

“It wasn’t like my kid came home and said this, and now we’re changing our lives,” he said. “It was a very drawn-out process. There were 3½ years of this behavior leading up to this, so I think that’s important to highlight and remember.

“Young children know who they are,” he said. “They just don’t have the language yet to express it. I think the conviction that (H) has shown over the years has kind of reflected what has always been going on, but now she knows how to say it.”

Even after the incident at Hannah Edwards’ school, the couple waited a few weeks before allowing H to transition at home.

“We wanted to make sure that this was not just what other people would call a fad,” Dave Edwards said. “But she was very vocal and insistent in those weeks and corrected us and said, ‘Nope, that’s wrong’ if we didn’t use female pronouns. She really was able to vocalize and communicate with us about who she was.

“We know who our kid is, and we’ve watched and woken up and listened to her say ‘I dreamt I was Ariel,’ and we’ve watched her play over hours and hours, over years of time, and when she was expressing discomfort or pain by being referred to as male, that’s when it was time to take that pain away,” he said.

A GIRL’S LIFE

Hannah Edwards said people sometimes ask: “Wasn’t this a big thing for such a little person to take on?”

“It was harder for her to every day wake up and say, ‘Wait, what? Why are they calling me a boy?’” she said. “Now she doesn’t ever have to worry about that.”

Switching to a new school helped. When H started at the school, she was introduced as a girl.

“She gets to just be a girl,” Hannah Edwards said. “She doesn’t have to say she was ever anything else.”

But Hannah Edwards hasn’t accepted a play date yet for H from one of her new classmates because she said she doesn’t know how people will react.

“Will they be supportive if I tell them?” she said. “Or do I not tell them, and then do they feel like they’ve been lied to? It’s hard on so many levels.”

Dave Edwards said H likes to play with boys and girls.

“She’s most interested in whoever wants to pretend and act out scenes from ‘Kung Fu Panda 3,’ and that’s who she’s going to pick,” he said. “She’s always had a big personality. She’s very expressive. She loves more than anything to pretend.”

During a tour of her bedroom a few weeks ago, H showed off her dollhouse and her collection of drawings taped to the wall.

“This one is Beyonce,” she said, pointing to one near the door. “This one is Taylor Swift. This one is Lorde. This one is Meghan Trainer. This one is Rihanna.”

Her favorite book is “BFG” by Roald Dahl. Her favorite TV show character is from “Yo Gabba Gabba,” a pink female flower bubble named Foofa. She knows all the words to all the songs in the musical “Matilda.” She has her own microphone.

“Hey everybody! Hey everybody! Hey everybody!” she said, tapping the mouthpiece. “It’s singing time!”

Two new dresses hang in her closet. She’ll wear the pink one with a bow to a family friend’s wedding in August; the moss-green one with the flower she’ll wear for an upcoming photo shoot with her parents and 1½-year-old sister.

The Edwardses plan to use the portrait to introduce H to family and friends.

“We want to celebrate it because it’s happy news for us,” Hannah Edwards said. “We’ve already told her that we’re going to send it to everybody, so she doesn’t have to keep telling everyone ‘I’m (H). Call me (H).’ ”

H won’t decide whether to change her body until she is older. But some people have asked if H has had surgery.

“I’m, like, what planet are you from that you think I’m going to go take my child in for a permanently altering surgery at 5?” Hannah Edwards said. “We are so fixated on bodies and functions, and what they’re doing, and it’s not what it’s about.”

“Nothing is happening,” Dave Edwards said. “They’re kids. Anything that would happen in the future would be a pause — a hormone blocker — first. I think that in people’s minds, they’re thinking all these things like surgery. With kids in school, really nothing is happening for a majority of their school experience.”

GETTING SUPPORT

For the past year, the Edwardses have been attending family meetings hosted by Transforming Families, a support group in Minneapolis. They will march with the group in the Twin Cities Pride parade on Sunday.

“It’s really helpful to say, ‘Well, what did you do when this happened?’ ” Dave Edwards said. “We would have struggled with things that we didn’t need to because they had already figured it out.”

An increase in awareness about transgender issues is leading people to come out as transgender earlier than they used to, said Alison Yocom, a spokeswoman for Transforming Families, which has about 25 children in its youngest age group, those 4 to 8.

The St. Paul Public Schools district, which adopted a gender-inclusion policy last year, has received 28 name/gender change request forms since August 2015; the students range in age from kindergartners to 12th-graders. Students who complete a gender-change form can use their preferred restrooms and locker rooms and participate on sports teams of the gender with which they identify.

The Edwardses, both 31, have been married 10 years. They met as freshmen at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa. Hannah Edwards, who grew up in Ripon, Wis., transferred to St. Catherine University, graduating in 2008. Dave Edwards, who went to Eagan High School, transferred to Hamline University. He has a master’s degree from National Louis University in Chicago and is pursuing a doctorate in special education at the University of Minnesota.

They said they have agreed to media interviews in part to help other families.

“Whenever I see or read something about another family like ours, it makes me feel good, and it helps me feel like we’re holding up the community in a positive light,” Hannah Edwards said.

THE COMMUNITY

Dave Edwards said he hopes people will be empathetic and think about what they would do if their child were transgender.

“Would people really go against what all the experts are saying — the American Psychiatric Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, school psychologists?” he said. “Everyone agrees that you don’t try and change someone’s gender identity. It is what it is.”

But the publicity can be difficult, especially negative comments on social media.

“It’s stressful to think that there are people out there who feel like they wish you — or your child — ill,” Hannah Edwards said.

Dave Edwards said negative responses are intended to keep transgender people “marginalized and shut off in the corner.

“We aren’t ashamed of anything to do with our family, and I am really proud of who our daughter is,” he said. “She’s wonderful. She’s amazing. We have a great kid, and I shouldn’t feel any less comfortable talking about her than any other parent talks about their kid.

“I think people expect us to be quiet or private about our situation, and I think that’s part of that mind-set of discrimination — you’re other, you’re less than, you’re not as important or her identity isn’t as valid as every other little kid,” he said.

Hannah Edwards said she hopes people will approach her daughter from a “place of love” even if they don’t understand what it is to be transgender.

“I was always taught that you care about humanity no matter who they are, and you figure it out,” she said. “If you don’t know, you ask from a respectful, loving place why this is this way or that way, and you work towards something that is hopeful and better.”

THE BATHROOM BILLS

Republican lawmakers in Minnesota and elsewhere have sought to bar students from using gender-specific restrooms and locker rooms that don’t match their sex at birth. The effort failed in Minnesota — Dave Edwards testified against the bill — but succeeded in North Carolina. South Dakota’s governor vetoed a similar bill.

The Obama administration has supported transgender students’ right to use their preferred restrooms, and judges have agreed in most cases.

Dave Edwards said anyone who doesn’t support the right of transgender students to be treated as the gender they identify with should “go and look in someone’s face who’s in that group and ask them what they want and what they need to feel safe, what they need to feel welcomed and part of the group.

“If you’re not willing to do that, I don’t know that you can have a say in determining what should be going on,” he said.

After a Target run the other day, H began counting the members of her family from the back seat of the car — three girls and one boy

“It was, like, ‘Isn’t that funny?’ ” Hannah Edwards said. “I think that’s how she sees the world. We’ve been able, at least in our family and in our house, to be supportive, which, when you’re 5, that’s a lot of your life.”

H writes and draws incessantly. She wrote a story earlier this year about a grandmother who turned a little boy named Lou into a girl named Laura.

In “The Magical Story of Kate,” H wrote about a dog named Tiny Tune, an evil mermaid and a hobbit.

“It’s not a happy story,” Dave Edwards said. “Tiny Tune is struck by lightning.”

But it includes a joyous note:

“Your pure heart desires what you should be.”