By Suzanne Bowdey

The most dangerous thing parents do every day shouldn’t be sending their kids to school. But as far too many moms and dads will tell you, something as simple as putting your son or daughter on the bus in the morning can change your lives forever.

Like a lot of parents with middle school children, January Littlejohn and her husband, Jeff, worried that their daughter was having trouble fitting in. She had anxiety, ADHD, and was unusually gifted, so when she finally found a friend group who accepted her, the Littlejohns were thrilled. But that joy quickly turned to shock and concern when their 13-year-old “out of the blue” decided that she didn’t feel like a girl anymore. Turns out, their teenager, who was desperately searching for a place to belong, had fallen under the influence of three classmates who decided to identify as transgender.

By the summer, things had gotten dramatically worse. “My husband and I were really struggling to figure out how to best help her,” January remembers. “We also realized that she was confused. The more we talked to her, the more we realized there was no substance. She didn’t understand the things that she was asking for — like [hormone replacement therapy], puberty blockers, top surgery, which of course they rebranded as a double mastectomy. And she couldn’t answer basic questions like, ‘Well, what do you mean you don’t feel like a girl? What does it mean to feel like a boy or a girl?’”

January, who’s a licensed mental health counselor, decided to find a therapist who could help them redirect her thinking. Like any parents who’ve gone through this, they were scared. “This was happening very quickly. It was escalating very quickly,” she recalls. Their daughter was becoming “emotionally unstable.” When they told school officials that they wouldn’t be affirming this new identity at home, they were shocked to find out that teachers and guidance counselors were secretly nudging her on this path every single day at school.

At one point, her daughter got in the car one afternoon and announced that she’d had a meeting with school officials to decide which restroom she wanted to use. January’s jaw dropped. “I was irate,” she said. “… I’m a very involved parent. I was a volunteer of the year at this middle school, so I wasn’t a stranger parent. … There was no reason for them to have not contacted me, notified me, and included me in this meeting.” The Littlejohns only recourse, they were told, was trying to sit down with the assistant superintendent of their Tallahassee district.

When that finally happened, months later, “we were shown the gender non-conforming support plan that they had completed with our 13-year-old daughter behind closed doors without our notification and consent.” Three adults, including one social worker January and Jeff had never met, were helping her make all of the important decisions — which restroom she would use, what her pronouns where, her new name. The most egregious thing the school did was ask the teenager, “How should we refer to you when we speak to your parents? Should we use your birth name and pronouns to effectively deceive them?” In other words, January fumed, “Everybody at the school — staff, teachers, students, counselors — they knew [that] this child has assumed a different identity, may be using opposite sex facilities, putting that child’s safety at risk and the safety of others. And the parents would be the only ones not in the know.”

Sitting down with school officials was like beating their heads against a brick wall. After a year, the Littlejohns made the decision to go public with the story and sue the district. Meanwhile, they had a broken, hurting daughter at home who learned from her Florida school that they were the enemy.

“We had to repair our relationship with her and restore trust. … I knew that she was getting this constant bug in her ear, telling her that we did not love her because we did not affirm the trans identity. So we had to immediately combat that. We assured her we loved her unconditionally and that that would never change. And we started to ask questions out of a place of curiosity and compassion instead of judgment. We wanted to get her really thinking about this ideology and get her to see the contradictions in it, because she’s a very bright girl, and I knew that she could get there with just a little bit of nudging,” January explained.

After their daughter finished the school year, the Littlejohns wasted no time pulling her out of that toxic environment and enrolling her in private school. January struggles with the time they lost. “There is no straight line out of this,” she cautions parents, “and it takes a long time.” And while some of the scars are starting to heal, she knows, “This is a radical ideology, and it takes radical steps to pull your child out of this. I didn’t believe that at the time, but I absolutely know it’s true now,” she explains. “We did not allow her to rewrite her past with lies.”

They took away her iPhone, prescreened every person she came in contact with “from hairdressers, youth pastors, art teachers” — anyone who might trigger her back to a life of anxiety and confusion — and took great pains to show her they loved her just as she was. “Sometimes you feel like it’s two steps up and five steps back, but you have to remember that you are making progress.”

The same, unfortunately, is true of their court case. After a federal judge dismissed their suit in late 2022, the Littlejohns appealed. In the meantime, she travels the country warning people, “This ideology is relentless, and it does not discriminate.”

Her crusade hasn’t just helped thousands of struggling parents, it’s also caught the attention of the White House, who invited January as a special guest to the president’s joint speech to Congress on Tuesday. After sharing a bit of her story, Donald Trump pointed to the mom in the galley. “January [is] here tonight and is now a courageous advocate against this form of child abuse,” he said to thunderous applause. “January, thank you.”

In an interview after the speech with guest host Jody Hice on “Washington Watch,” she described the whole experience as “surreal.” “I was humbled to be there among so many Americans with really diverse stories, some of them very tragic. So there were times where we would be interacting with one another, and it could be heavy at times. We each have our own cross to bear. But I feel that in all of our stories, God found purpose in our pain and is using each of us to help others go through similar circumstances.”

She said she woke up to over 200 text messages of support on Wednesday. The outpouring, Littlejohn shook her head in amazement, “has been incredible.” January thought back to 2020. “There were so many parents that wanted to speak out [but] felt like they couldn’t. They were scared. They were silenced. And so, you have to remember how much progress we have made since 2020. It’s pretty phenomenal. And it’s from grassroots efforts.”

That said, Family Research Council’s Meg Kilgannon stresses that “what happened to the Littlejohn family happened in Florida — with a governor and legislature strongly opposed to gender ideology. It’s important for parents everywhere to understand,” she emphasized to The Washington Stand, “every school district is a blue district, unless they prove otherwise. The teacher education system is packed with subversive ideologies that surface in school systems. It just takes one teacher running a gay-straight alliance to have an outsized impact on children in that school. Parents need to be engaged and aware of what’s happening in their local schools,” she insisted. “It’s not the same educational system that the parents themselves experienced.”

To those families who are caught in the grip of this nightmare, January wants them to know: “You’re not alone. There are a lot of parents like myself that are finding success parenting and walking their children through this confusion. It is not easy,” she admits. “It takes the willingness to be in conflict with your child, to set healthy and appropriate boundaries, and, oftentimes, removing your child from any affirming environment, including schools.”

But the most important piece of advice she repeats forcefully to every mom and dad she meets is this: “If the school does not respect that you have the ultimate authority over your child and will not respect your wishes, get them out.”

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.