Calling somebody by their deadname is even more disrespectful than saying that the capital of Brazil is Rio de Janeiro.

To give an analogy, though. When my maternal grandfather retired, he was given his company car as part of his retirement package. Four years later, he rang my father and told him he had something to show him, and Dad drove up to his house to find the garage door open and a different car in the driveway. My grandmother, who was not consulted, was angry with him, and wanted to know why, and my grandfather said that he wanted his car. My grandmother said, "Why? That car cost you nothing, there was nothing wrong with it, and you just traded it in." Every year after his retirement, until he passed away, his old employer gave him a Christmas present. I doubt that the company representative would have asked him anything about the car other than, "How's it running?", and they would not have been grief-stricken or angry if he'd said, "Oh, I sold it." He was 41.5 when my mother was born and she was his only child, but if he's been 29, like my paternal grandfather when she was born, and I had been 17, when he was 75, and the representative had asked about the car, and he'd said, "I had to surrender my licence, so I gave the car to my grandchild," they might have said, "Oh, it's nice that it's still going well."

With a child, it's different, but what some parents need to remember is, you don't get a choice as to the sex or gender of the child you get. I can understand parents needing time to process their child's gender transition but not to refuse point blank to recognise it.

I am a bit frightened of how I'm going to tell my own mother, especially as she used to say, before I was born, that she wanted to have six boys (my father even said, "Hang on," to her) and had it figured out that I was going to be a boy before I was born (same with my brother). She wasn't happy when she found that unlike my brother, I had no interest in football or cricket, or other typical boys things. I had girl playmates and played with girls' things at kindergarten.