Fate challenged Wade and his family to show who they are, and what they showed was love, unequivocal love. What they showed was the potential to influence thinking, soften prejudices and foment understanding — to remind us how much bigger than basketball the real world is.   Wade had a baby boy he named Zion. Today that baby boy is a 12-year-old who identifies as she/her and is called Zaya.    The family went public with the transgender news last week as Dwayne appeared on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” and “Good Morning America.” (Zaya is not “becoming” a girl, by the way. She has chosen to reveal what she was born to be).    Excerpt from Greg Cote in The Miami Herald 2/21/2020

Greg Cote has for a long time been a must read for me, not only because I love sports, but also he is able to use these news to also place a human touch.    This ability is displayed in his latest writing about one of our most beloved athletes Dwayne Wade, and his handling of an extremely difficult problem, not only scientifically but one that involves discrimination, misunderstanding and unfortunately politics.    His child, born as male, told them he identified as a female.    As a retired Professor of Psychiatry I experienced the first wave of persons suffering of this disorder, called transsexuality before political correctness made the APA change it to Gender Dysphoria.    At that time none other than John Hopkins University was pioneering the research, diagnosis, and treatment before having to suspend their program because of the many “false positives”.   And there lays the Wade’s dilemma.    We can all agree that the main key is the child.    It is obvious that he/she is receiving the love, comprehension, and I would guess the professional support and expertise that these children require.    The first thing misunderstood by many is that the term transgender is an umbrella term that not only includes biological determined feelings and behaviors like Homosexuality and Gender Dysphoria it also includes behaviors caused by psychological/psychiatric disorders but also voluntary acts that can be labeled antisocial.    This mix of conducts if taken as one can, and is being used, politically in my opinion as a detriment of the involuntary (biological) ones that should not be an object of misunderstanding, discrimination.    The diagnosis of the Wade’s child as a Gender biological problem is premature.    This condition does at times start in early childhood, but in the majority of the cases stop at adolescence.    The only requirement before is observation, psychotherapy, and love and support from family.    Also important that the condition is extremely rare but does require hormonal and sometimes surgical sex realignment.    A current study (2019) confirmed what John Hopkins found.    To wit, a summary; 

Kenneth J. Zucker, Department of Psychiatry, University of Toronto

Epidemiology of gender dysphoria and transgender identity.

It is estimated that about 0.005% to 0.014% of people assigned male at birth and 0.002% to 0.003% of people assigned female at birth would be diagnosed with gender dysphoria, based on 2013 diagnostic criteria, though this is considered a modest underestimate.

According to prospective studies, the majority of children diagnosed with gender dysphoria cease to desire to be the other sex by puberty, with most growing up to identify as gay, lesbian, or bisexual, with or without therapeutic intervention. If the dysphoria persists into puberty, it is very likely permanent.

 This review provides an update on the epidemiology of gender dysphoria and transgender identity in children,adolescents and adults. Although the prevalence of gender dysphoria, as it is operationalised in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), remains a relatively ‘rare’or ‘uncommon’diagnosis,there is evidence that it has increased in the past couple of decades, perhaps reflected in the large increase in referral rates to s,there has been a recent inversion in the sex ratio from one favouring birth-assigned males to one favouring birth-assigned females. In both adolescents and adults, patterns of sexual orientation vary as a function of birth-assigned sex. Recent studies suggest that the prevalence of a self-reported transgender identity in children, adolescents and adults ranges from  transgender identity or a gender identity that departs from the traditional male–female binary among non-clinic-based populations remains unknown and requires further study.