The parents of an 8-year-old Texas boy pulled their son out of school after his “hateful” third grade classmates wouldn’t treat him like a girl.

Marilyn Morrison began the school year at Cannon Elementary School in Grapevine, Texas identifying himself as a transgender girl for the first time, a local Fox affiliate reported.

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Marilyn said his classmates were bullying him and not accepting of his new identity, which made him feel uncomfortable. “It makes me feel like I’m my old self when I was a boy,” he explained.

“It’s hard to have to speak up and out my daughter, but I don’t have a choice,” said the boy’s mom, Chelsea Morrison. “I feel like it’s the only way that I can protect her. It kills me to know the kids could be so hateful.”

Chelsea said she was unhappy with how the school handled her son’s “transition” to female.

“In the end, it was getting to the point that she had already lost faith,” Chelsea said. “Every time she would try to go to a teacher and follow proper protocol, it always ended up in ‘it is a misunderstanding.’ You send it to the point that she didn’t want to talk to them anymore.”

“It came to a point when the teachers would ask her when she asked to go to the restroom which one are you going to in front of a whole classroom full of people.”

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