Dwyane Wade Opens Up About Raising a Trans Child

Dwyane Wade continues to display the unconditional love and support all parents should give their LGBTQ children.

The former NBA star stopped by The Ellen DeGeneres Show this week to talk about a variety of things, including a topic near and dear to his heart — his family.

Wade and his wife, actress Gabrielle Union, have previously been praised for supporting their 12-year-old (Wade’s child from a previous marriage) at Pride and allowing and encouraging non-traditional gender expression. Now, he’s opening up about that same kid, Zaya, coming out to them as trans.

“Once Zaya, our 12-year-old, came home…and said ‘hey, so I want to talk to you guys,’” Wade told Ellen. “‘I think, going forward, I’m ready to live my truth. And I want to be referenced as ‘she’ and ‘her.’ I would love for you guys to call me Zaya.’”

Wade explained that he and Union knew it was then their responsibility to go seek out further information on how they could best support Zaya through this time, which included Union reaching out to the cast of Pose for advice.

“We just trying to figure out as much information as we can to make sure that we give our child the best opportunity to be her best self,” he said.

It’s unclear when Zaya had this conversation with her parents, but Wade had seemingly toyed with publicly switching up her pronouns in a previous interview in which he discusses being the parent of an LGBTQ child.

“We want [our kids] to be whoever they feel that they can be in this world,” he said at the time.

And his tune hasn’t changed. When Zaya came out, he said, “I looked at her and said, ‘You are a leader. You are a leader, and this is our opportunity to allow you to be a voice.’ Right now, it’s through us, because she’s 12 years old, but eventually, it’ll be through her.”

You can watch the full conversation between Wade and Ellen below.