Dwyane Wade recently opened up about how his daughter, Zaya Wade, physically hid from him when she came out as transgender. During a talk with Chris Paul and Lisa Metelus at the Creative Artists Agency Amplify event, he talked about how that made him reflect on how he is as a father. He noted that he had to reevaluate his parenting and his relationship to masculinity.
Zaya publicly came out as transgender in 2020. According to her father, she had known she was trans since she was 3 years old.
Dwyane also revealed that on a school project at the age of 8, Zaya had labeled herself as "gay." He shared that he awaited the moment of her coming out for years.
More from LittleThings: Dwyane Wade Shares What He Said To Daughter Zaya After She Came Out As Transgender To Her Family
Dwyane continued on to describe the moment Zaya came out to their family. "So I came home and I just remember my child being scared to talk to me, like hiding in my wife's arm in a chair," he said. "I think I'm this dad that's like, 'Hey, come and tell me anything! I'm a cool dad.'"
He recounted Zaya's body language at the time. "And it was fear in my child's face to tell me and so I had to check myself," he shared.
It was in that moment that he knew he needed to reevaluate how he was as a father. "I had to go look myself in the mirror and ask myself: 'Why was my child scared? Scared to tell me something about herself?'"
Not only did he start listening to his daughter, but to experts as well. He also had to do a lot of self-reflecting in order to understand how to support Zaya at home and out in the world.
"In a lot of work as parents — and as people — what we do is we put our fears and everything on our kids. And I guess I was doing that," he shared. "So I had to go look myself in the mirror and ask myself … What is it about my masculinity that has my child afraid?"
Since then, Dwyane and Gabrielle Union have been doing a lot to support Zaya and be advocates. He mentioned having to turn off the comments on Zaya's social media posts to protect her from outside hatred. "I think the hardest part about it is shutting out the world and shutting out the people that really are not in [our] circle," he said, adding, "But they have opinions and we are public-facing family."
