This is Fresh Air. I'm Tanya Mosley.

About a decade ago, transgender educator Aiden Key started to get what felt like an influx of

inquiries from parents and educators desperate for help. On the surface, it felt like a new phenomenon,

with more children than ever before identifying as transgender. But as Aiden Key writes in a new book,

transgender people have always existed. Part of what we're witnessing, he believes, is a new ability

for children to put language to their identities. Key's book, Trans Children in Today's Schools,

asks us to move beyond the polarizing debates over bathroom stalls and locker rooms,

by offering us a guide to support trans children and deepen our own understanding of what it

means to be transgender. Aiden Key is an educator who has developed gender inclusive policies for

school districts throughout the country. Key himself transitioned from female to male in 1999.

He is the founder of the organization, Gender Diversity, which offers support to educators in schools,

and the nonprofit transfamilies.org, which is a national organization that offers support for

transgender children and their families. His latest book is Trans Children in Today's Schools.

Aiden Key, welcome back to Fresh Air. Thank you. It's fantastic to be here.

You know Aiden, I'm sure you've had many opportunities to write a book about transgender

identity, both in the context of your own personal experience and your work. Why was it important

for your first book to be about children? Excellent question. There's a lot of, not as much as

there could be or should be, but there's a lot of information. There's a lot of books and resources

addressing the lives of adult transgender and non-binary people, but the resources addressing

the lives of children, especially young children, all the way through their teens. Very sparse.

The journey that I've been on, I discovered that my experience as a trans person is mildly helpful

in terms of understanding theirs, the journeys of children and of families, but only mildly.

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