This Mom Sharing What It Was Like Discovering Her Child Is Transgender Will Warm Your Heart

Jodie Patterson, a mother of five raising her children in Brooklyn, NY, might seem like a typical busy mom. But she's not — she's incredible.

For the first two years of Penelope's life, Patterson assumed that she was raising a daughter. Penelope was anatomically a perfect girl, but Patterson noticed signs from very early on that things were different. "Something was weighing very heavy," Patterson said. "Every time we tried to put clothing on him, to dress him, or bathe him, there was an intense reaction to his body from himself."

Once Penelope started to talk, he began saying no to everything from hair brushing to clothing. When Patterson sat him down and asked what was really bothering him, she wasn't prepared for Penelope's response. Penelope shared that he was upset because everyone thinks he's a girl, and Patterson reassured him that he could be whoever he wanted to be. "I said, 'Oh baby, it's fine! However you feel on the inside is great.' And he said, 'No, I don't feel like a boy, mama — I am a boy.'"

At first, Patterson felt ill-equipped to deal with the news but knew that her child was talking about his personal identity. "My sisters and my mom raised me to really be proud of being a woman," said Patterson. "And my child was like, 'I don't want to be a woman, I'm not a woman. I love you mama, but I don't want to look like you, I want to look like dad.'"

Watch the Cosmopolitan video to hear more from Patterson, including how she coped in the beginning and how she deals with people who question how Penelope could know that he's a boy at such a young age.