Kimberly Shappley is as conservative and Christian as they come.

It was her child who, at just three years of age, would challenge her faith and rock her to the core.
For Shappley and her family, it all began with a hair bow.

“I want a bow like Daisy,” her then-three-year-old son Joseph Paul begged of her. Shappley knew the big red bow, ponytails and princess dresses were things almost every little girl wished for. However, these weren’t for a daughter — Shappley reminded herself these were the requests of her son.

“Please mommy,” Joseph Paul would plead with her.

His desire to dress in little girl’s clothes is a secret Shappley has kept from the outside world since Joseph was just a toddler. As an infant, she put him in blue clothes. As a toddler, she made him do what shes says is ‘typical boy stuff,’ like fishing, playing football with his siblings and throwing little boy’s birthday parties.

“We tried to make this kid be a boy,” said Shappley. Still, Joseph kept seeking out what the girls had and, by the age of three, he was telling everyone he was a girl.

A devout Christian, Shappley prayed while Joseph made shirts into skirts and begged to wear girls underwear — and asked his family to call him by the name of “Kai.”

“This hasn’t happened overnight for us. I am a Christian and I love the Lord,” Shappley said as she struggled with her son’s requests.

The gravity of her son’s pleas became almost too much to bear when she heard Kai praying to die.

“I overheard Kai praying and asking the Lord to please take Joseph home to be with Jesus and I realized Kai’s begging the Lord to let her die,” Shappley said through tears.

As a first step down the path to understanding Kai’s situation, Shappley bought girls underwear for Kai, though it took her three trips to the store to finally purchase them.

“When Kai came home that day and opened the drawer and saw princess panties, she fell down on the floor with the panties, crying and thanking me that this was the best day ever,” Shappley said.

Shappley sought out more help, turning to pastors and her faith. Her hope was that her young boy would act like one.

“So Christians are not gay, OK, that’s the mindset that I had.”

Shappley said faith leaders reassured her God doesn’t make mistakes.

“Christians are not going to have a transgender child, because as a Christian, that goes against everything that we read in scripture,” she said.

Finding Support for Parents of a Transgender Child

Feeling alone and isolated, Shappley dug into social media for help, finding a secret underground Facebook network of more than 2,000 other Christian mothers with transgender children. Shappley says she found support in the stories of other mothers who had faced criticism, some who had even been threatened by those who had vowed to take their children away or kidnap them.

“We knew that, at some point, if someone found out that our child was transgender, that you could put our safety at risk,” Shappley said.

Despite all the risks, acceptance has helped Shappley and Kai. She says her daughter is now thriving.

As for Shappley herself, the Facebook group for Christian parents of transgender youth was just the beginning of her journey to understanding and accepting Kai. Now five years old, Kai will soon enter the public school system in Pearland at the same time schools throughout the country work to meet the demands of an Obama administration directive that says transgender students are to be treated no differently than any other students.

In part two of this report, find out how Kimberly Shappley found herself in the middle of the controversial bathroom debate. Stay tuned to Eyewitness News and abc13.com for the rest of the story.

(Copyright ©2016 KTRK-TV. All Rights Reserved.)

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“Becoming Nicole”, from Random House, was written by Amy Ellis Nutt who is a Pulitzer prize-winning scientific reporter for the Washington Post. I am not familiar with her work there, but given her approach to this topic, I have no doubt she is a very talented scientific reporter. However, she stumbles very badly when trying to do justice to a narrative story.

First of all, I need to disclose that my experience was here was with the audio book, via Audible and read by the author, so that does add another element; and an element that does affect the overall rating. I have to say this because, and I mean no disrespect personally, but Ms Nutt should never be allowed to narrate a book again. Her monotone, emotionless, and mumble-mouthed reading of her own work is distracting and a huge mark against the book right out of the gate. Imagine, if you will, Droopy Dog- if Droopy were a middle-aged woman. You pretty much have her voice down. The biggest problem is that she is utterly emotionless throughout the book, treating clinically and never really driving home any of the emotion of this story.

With that out of the way, let’s talk a little about the focus of “Becoming Nicole”- the Maines. Kelly and Wayne Maines were a young couple that found themselves adopting twin boys from her teenage cousin when she found herself lacking options. In short order Wyatt began to show traits very different from his brother Jonas, and a childhood filled with gender dysphoria began.

Wyatt was certain at a very young age that he was a girl, and simply wanted to know when he would turn into a girl. With the strong support of her mother and brother, and a father that would eventually become her biggest supporter; Wyatt would realize her inner self as Nicole and live the life she knew she deserved.

It would not be easy though. Their journey would take them through bullies, hate groups, activism, antiquated ideals, school systems without answers, courtrooms, and even find themselves separated across the state from each other.

Truly, this family went through hell but came out on the other side even stronger than before, and filled with love and determination.

However Nutt does a poor job of stringing together this story on a narrative level, much less an emotional level. She finds herself mired in data, details, and minutia that do not add to the story and makes it very hard for her to build momentum as a story teller. One of the few times she manages to build real emotion is during a portion of the book that focuses on Nicole’s bullying by a young boy at the insistence of his bigoted grandfather. It is an emotional segment that underscores Nicole’s experience in grade school. That, however, gets railroaded by Nutt’s inexplicable delving into the grandfather’s military career without relating it to the story in any way whatsoever.

Where the book really falls down is in the uneven focus given to the subject. Chapters of narrative abut themselves against chapters that focus on the science, research, and medicine around transsexualism as well as chapters that focus on details of history that don’t relate to this particular story at all. It is as though Nutt tried to make this a catch-all book about transsexualism via the Maines’ story.

Had she written two books, one focusing on the facts and science of gender dysphoria and one that focused on the story of the Maines family, I would have probably given both of those books higher ratings. But together they only do a disservice to each other by doing justice to neither the science or the narrative.

Then, towards the end of the book, she begins to inexplicably gloss over topics and barely discuss them at all- giving us zero detail.

On the positives, a few occasions in “Becoming Nicole” do build some very real emotion- such as the bully incidents from above or Wayne’s growing acceptance of his daughter and their sharing a dance at a father/daughter event. And I found myself interested in the family and wanting to know more about Nicole as a person. However, I got to know more about Nicole as a collection of facts and details.