When Justine first told her wife that she was trans, she was terrified that she’d lose everything – her marriage, her children and her job. Living in a small Scottish town, where everyone knows everyone, and working in a traditionally male-dominated industry made the risk of rejection even higher. “I’d seen on the internet other people having the courage to transition,” she says. “I suspected that my wife would leave me, but I had to do it. We sat up all night, crying and talking.”

These conversations continued for months, until they were ready to tell their three children. “We told them they could come to us with any questions, but they were very matter-of-fact about it. In time, they even decided to call me ‘Mummy’.”

I first spoke to Justine, and other families with trans parents, back in 2015, while researching a non-fiction book about the experiences of lesbian, gay, bi and trans (LGBT) parents. Their stories inspired me to write Nothing Ever Happens Here, one of the first children’s novels to include a family with an out trans parent.

Justine’s daughter Samantha is now in her 20s, but still remembers that first conversation. “I was in my early teens when I noticed little things changing – pink slippers under the bed, the hair, the nails. But it's the modern world; who doesn't like pink? One day our parents sat us down and explained everything – dad was born to be a girl and they both loved us very much.” How did she feel? “I was upset because I thought I was losing my dad. But it's brought us closer, before we were drifting apart, I think because of the secrets. I'm happier in myself because my family are honest with me.”

Susie, like Justine, started transitioning while her children were in primary school. She says, “I've involved the children as much as I can. I've said I won't talk about it unless they want to, but nothing is off limits if they do. I've tried to take my lead from the children.” Most important for her is emphasising to her children that “I'm the same on the inside”.

However, some things did change for Susie and her family, in ways that she didn’t expect: “Most people think about the physical changes of transitioning, but these are nothing compared to what goes on in the mind. I've found more inner calm. It was like having a buzz in my head all the time and now someone's switched it off. My children have said, we prefer you like this, you're not angry, stressed, shouty dad anymore.”

Every family is different. Some people, like Jim who has two teenage sons, transition before they have children. This prompts a different kind of conversation. Jim’s wife Katie told me that, “We decided that, although Jim is not public about being trans, we would talk to the children about his identity from an early age, so that it was something they would never remember not knowing. More tricky was helping them understand that this information wasn’t something we shared with everyone. We’ve taken the approach that ‘It’s not a secret, but it is private.’”

Different families make different decisions about how open to be. Justine and her wife decided to start by talking to their children’s school in order to try and forestall any problems: “Sometimes a child would repeat something their parents said and use it as a way of hurting my son. The school were brilliant though, despite the fact they hadn’t come across anyone trans before.”