Kentish Gazette Canterbury & District
Mother’s pride in ‘inspirational’ daughter who was born a boy
Little Ash Lammin splashes around in the bath wearing a sparkly mermaid’s costume. She’s the image of your average three-year-old girl: obsessed with pink and in her element when wearing a princess dress, the only thing to be seen in at a birthday party.
But Ash – or Ashton as she was then – is biologically a boy. And tragically, the only reason she is wearing a swimming costume in the bath is to hide the body that confuses and upsets her so much. Looking back, her mum Terri, 43, admits it was heartbreaking to see.
“Although she was born male, from the moment she could speak Ash insisted she was a girl. By the age of five, she was asking, ‘When is someone going to chop my winky off ?’ and questioning why she had it at all.”
It was a confusing time for the family, who live in Pegwell, near Ramsgate.
Ash simply insisted she was a girl and her mum says she is the perfect example of a child born in the wrong body. Now almost 13, Ashley, whose name was changed by deed poll aged eight, is under the NHSrun gender clinic Tavistock and Portman.
She is about to start her transitioning journey with hormone blockers to halt puberty
and will be one of the youngest children in the country to go through the process. When she is 18 she will have reassignment surgery. The bright youngster has researched the process incessantly and eventually wants a womb transplant so that she can be a mum when she’s older. “I never thought it was a phase,” explains Terri. “Ash was just Ash. She’d ask, ‘Why do you call me a boy? Why do you put me in boys’ clothes? “When she was three she said to me ‘I’m a boy because you gave me a boy’s name, it’s your fault’. I remember feeling horrible; she blamed me. “I personally thought maybe this was what an extremely camp gay man is like as a child. “I’d never come across it before and I just went along with it. I just thought, ‘If he’s happy, well that’s the main thing’.”
But Terri, who has seven other children, says when Ash reached school age and started at Chilton Primary in Ramsgate
life became harder.
“I sent her to school in a boy’s uniform,” she said.
“I felt awful. She didn’t want to wear it and I was making her. “The school were great. The headmaster at the time said, ‘If you think it’s going to make life easier, then bring Ash in in a girl’s uniform’, so I did.
“I was in a right state. I thought, ‘Everybody is going to think I’m weird’ – but Ash loved it, she found it easy. “Before, when I was taking her into school, she was biting me and kicking me, she didn’t want to go in. As soon as she put the girl’s uniform on, she wanted to go every day.” Terri admits while the children and school were brilliant, some of the other parents were difficult, leaving her out of social events and complaining that Ash was using the girls’ toilets.
“When Ash was Ashton, she was invited to all the kids’ parties, even though she used to turn up in a princess dress,” Terri explains.
“The parents didn’t mind then. But as soon as I let her be Ashley all the time, for a whole year she didn’t get invited to one party.
“The kids were fine; it’s not the children, kids play with anybody.
“It’s not until an adult comes in and says you shouldn’t do that then it changes.” Terri says Chilton were brilliant, but when Ash reached 11 and moved to Sandwich Technology School she became a target for bullies, who would throw things at her on the bus and shout ‘tranny’.
She claims a Whatsapp group was even set up, with abusive things written about her daughter.
Terri believes the school failed to deal with it sufficiently, and after just one term removed Ash, who is now being homeschooled.
She is now calling for better education within schools to teach children about transgender people.
“Chilton were great, I could not fault them,” Terri says. “They let her use the girls’ toilets and get changed for swimming separately. But this isn’t the same in all schools. “I’d like to see the subject of transgender people included in some lessons, like there are about same-sex families. “There needs to be more about liking people for who they are, not what they are.” Terri also wants to set up a support group for other parents with transgender children, believing there to be many more living in the district, and says it would provide an opportunity for people to speak to others going through the same thing.
It’s difficult, she admits, seeing your child dealing with something so huge.
For Ashley, who is under CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services) for her anxiety, life is often hard. Her mum says she baths in her underwear so she doesn’t have to see her body and has openly said she wants to die.
“Some days she says ‘I’m so glad I’m me’ but other days she feels terrible; she asks why it has to happen to her and she hates herself,” says Terri. “I say, ‘Well, some people are born with one leg and they have to deal with it’.
“I question whether it was a chromosome disorder that led to this. I want to know why it happened.”
In February, Ash has an appointment with doctors at University College Hospital to see if she is ready for puberty blockers, which prevent the release of chemical signals stimulating the production of estrogen and testosterone, halting the changes of puberty caused by sex hormones. This will stop her growing facial hair and developing physical male traits.
“She is so inspirational,” says Terri. “She could easily have said, ‘I’ll just be a boy’ but she feels so strongly about who she is she accepts the difficulties. “But it’s a lot for a child to deal with.”