Sex-Change Therapy For Children Becoming More Common

Boys just want to be girls. Or is it the other way around?

Physicians Struggle To Define Condition

Children are fickle creatures. One minute they want to be astronauts and the next they want to be tadpoles. But recent reports show that some little girls and boys genuinely feel they were born in the wrong sex, and more and more doctors are helping them make it right.

Read: Prince William's Groomsman Has Sex Change

According to reports published in the medical journal Pediatrics, a growing number of children are being diagnosed with "gender identity disorder" -- a term that some doctors think is incorrect -- and more parents and physicians are helping them receive sex-change treatement.

Doctors must be aware that this disorder is real and that there are children who genuinely need help, said Dr. Norman Spack, director of one of the first gender identity clinics in America at Children's Hospital Boston.

"If you open the doors, these are the kids who come. They're out there. They're in your practices," Spack said in an interview.

Spack, who authored one of the recent papers in Pediatrics, believes the term "gender identity disorder" to be incorrect, as the condition he sees on a daily basis is not a disorder. Rather, they actually have brain patterns similar to the opposite sex.

Read: Cher Offers To Buy Chaz Bono A Penis

Spack's report reveals that the number of patients being treated at his gender identity clinic has quadrupled over the last 12 years, and gives detailed accounts of how sex change treatment is administered.

97 boys and girls were treated between 1998 and 2010, with the youngest patient at 4 years old. Both the patient and the patient's family undergo psychological counseling, and then once signs of puberty emerge, hormone shots that block puberty are given.

Spack says it is important that these drugs only delay puberty and don't entirely prevent it. Patients are given a lengthy chance to decide if the procedure is what they truly want before going forward.

Only 1 of the 97 children decided not to proceed with the permanent treatment.

Photos: 10 Beautiful Women Who Were Born Men