Natalie Kitroeff

I don't... It's just sometimes you think about your kids and you're like, oh, I know what this woman would want.

Like, silly things like birthday gifts or like, I know what they would think about this show or I know... I wonder what they would say if I asked them, you know, what they wanted to do with their life.

And...

She was just a little out of grasp of being able to nail down who she was.

And not in a bad way, but just a yearning as a parent.

I just mentally remember thinking, I need to get to know her more.

From early on, Allie seemed to her parents an effeminate boy.

She loved all things purple and used to dress up in her sister's ballet outfits.

Once, when her dad kicked her a soccer ball, she performed a plie.

But she was still a little kid, and her parents didn't really know what to make of it all, if anything.

I mean, I don't think we were equipped to know what we were experiencing.

So I think very early on,

We thought, oh, this one might be gay.

Was there a moment that you remember kind of starting to realize, huh, this might not be a sexuality thing?

We might be looking at something that's more connected to gender?

Not me.

I was really slow on the uptake.

Yeah, me too.

As Allie got older, though, this difference became harder to ignore.

Particularly, they both say, during this one family trip they took in 2022.