``I think a family's reaction varies considerably among parents from acceptance of child's difficulties and some realization that everyone is different and has his or her own developmental pathway, to less accepting,'' said Shaw. ``But often these children are very conflicted and they are often traumatized and bullied by other children at school.''

BULLY PROBLEMS

Equality Florida claims its primary priority is to address and eradicate bullying.

``There isn't an acceptable level of bullying that kids just have to deal with in school just like acceptable level of sex harassment that women have to deal with at work,'' Smith said.

``We need very much to be up to speed on gender identity and expression in general. Our schools are definitely behind the curve on it,'' said De Palazzo, a former Broward County teacher who now is a consultant on gay-student safety issues. ``There's been an explosion of the fluidity of gender, being more explored by young people and society.''

Educators in Broward and Miami-Dade schools have undergone training in regards to transgender children.

``Their safety is the No. 1 priority,'' said Suzy Berrios, director of Mental Health and Crisis Management Services for Miami-Dade Schools. ``We have staff from around the district trained in all our secondary schools. They receive training throughout the year. Each school has someone trained.''

This school year, Berrios hopes to officially incorporate sexual orientation and gender identity in Miami-Dade Schools' state-mandated anti-bullying policy. The School Board must approve the policy addition. ``It's only going to formalize what we already do,'' Berrios said.

Broward schools have already enumerated anti-bullying policies in terms of sexual and gender identity.

Parents often wonder if their gender-variant kids will grow up to be transgender adults. Statistically speaking, the answer is no.

``Between 85 percent and 90 percent of the (young) kids that we've seen don't grow up and want to become the opposite sex. They grow up and are pretty happy in their own skin. It's only a small minority that we're seeing that are persisting into adolescence,'' says Ken Zucker, a psychologist and head of the Gender Identity Service at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto.

BECOME GAY?

Studies suggest that the majority of gender-variant boys will grow up to be gay, with experts putting the figure at anywhere from 70 percent to 95 percent. (About a third of the gender-variant girls in a small study cited by Zucker later identified as lesbian or bisexual.)

Perrin says she has seen some gender-variant children whose parents tried to change their behavior without success, and others who had dropped their nonconforming behaviors by age 8 or 10 and seemingly just moved on.

``The ones I'm thinking of right offhand are boys,'' she says. ``Now they're saying they no longer want to wear blond wigs and they no longer want to play with Barbies.''

This report was supplemented by Nara Schoenberg of The Chicago Tribune and Miami Herald staff writer Steve Rothaus.