His name Is Aurora

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Some child psychologists, on the other hand, believe that children who express discomfort with their birth gender probably have larger problems. "There's a lot of pain in many of these families, and part of the way the child has dealt with the pain is to have this fantasy solution," says Ken Zucker, a psychologist who runs the Child and Adolescent Gender Identity Clinic in Toronto. Zucker also encourages children and parents to recognize that boys and girls don't have to maintain rigid gender roles to remain boys and girls. Zucker says that widening his young patients' conception of gender may save them the difficulty of pursuing sex-reassignment surgery later in life.

Other rogue therapists mistreat gender-variant children by trying to force them to conform to gender rules. They use blunt behavior-modification techniques such as rewarding tomboys for wearing frilly dresses or punishing effeminate boys for playing with a Barbie. "Many of those kids become runaways, and they are damaged for life," says Gender PAC's Riki Anne Wilchins.

Amid all the problems, the Lipscomb child apparently has loving parents. But whether Aurora remains Aurora, or returns to Zachary--or decides on another identity--the kid is destined to conduct this search with armies of lawyers battling nearby.