Josie Romero loves the color pink, braiding her hair and having her fingernails painted.
But life has not always been easy for this sweet and charming eight-year-old, who was born in the body of a boy.
The trans-gender youngster, then called Joseph, knew at the age of four that she was the wrong sex and even told her parents: ‘I am really a girl.’
At five, she was refusing to have her hair cut and only wore colors like orange which were nearest to girly
By the time she reached six, Josie had been diagnosed as trans-gender and was beginning her transition to becoming a female.
Mother Venessia, 42, said: ‘When she was a toddler, she was always trying to turn her boy toys into girl toys.
‘She used to take her army figures, wrap them up and rock them like a baby.
‘As she grew older and started to talk, she always said: “I’m a girl”.
‘We used to correct her and say: “No you’re a boy”.
‘But by the time she was four, she was insisting: “No I really am a girl”.
‘We started to realize she wasn’t just playing. She would always correct anyone who called her a boy.
‘She’d wrap one of my scarves around her waist to make a skirt. It was her favorite game.’
Venessia and her husband Joseph, 42, an air-force engineer, from Vail, Arizona, made the brave decision to tell their daughter’s story to help other parents of transsexual youngsters.
Venessia said: ‘When Josie was four we adopted a two-year-old girl, Jade, from China because we lived in Japan at the time and wanted to help a child in need.
‘We were a worried Josie would jealous of a new sibling, but she was so excited to have a sister. They loved playing together and there were even more girls toys around.
‘We’d accepted Josie was a bit different and after about six months something clicked and I thought: ‘Oh, we have a gay boy’.
‘We were totally fine with having a gay boy. We thought: “As long as our child is happy” everything will be fine.’
‘She looked kind of androgynous by the time she was five and people would always ask if we had a girl or a boy,’ said Venessia.
It was Josie’s pediatrician who finally brought the situation into the open.
‘I think he worked it out because of various things Josie had said over a couple of years,’ said Venessia.
‘He just said to me: ‘Look up the word trans-gender’.
‘I went home and started looking up trans-gender on the internet.
‘At first the only sites I found were medical ones and websites talking about adults.
‘But eventually we did find out that there were other children who thought they were born as the wrong sex.
‘We discovered a site called Trans-gender Youth Family Allies where there were 100 children who were all going through the same thing as Josie.’ Venessia started giving Josie options about how she wanted to live.
‘I bought some girls clothes and put them in one side of her wardrobe,’ she said.
‘All her boys clothes were in the other half.
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