ORLANDO, Fla. — Editor's Note: The video in the player above is from 2019 when Sparrow's family spoke to 10 Tampa Bay reporter Liz Crawford.
A Florida family recently appeared on an episode of "Dr. Phil" which focused on gender identity and pronouns.
The Jan. 19 episode called "The Gender Pronoun Debate" featured several guests including one you may have seen before — a local family who is raising a gender-neutral "theyby."
Sparrow's story is one 10 Tampa Bay first told you about in 2019 when reporter Liz Crawford spoke with their parents.
Instead of "boy" or "girl," Sparrow is being raised as a gender-neutral baby, also known as a "theyby" which refers to babies without a known sex.
This parenting philosophy means only the parents and trusted caregivers know the baby's anatomy. They believe the gender part comes later and is left up to the child. Ari Dennis is one of those parents.
"We did not assign a sex at birth which means when they were born, they had genitals, we know what they are, we just chose to acknowledge that those genitals don't indicate anything about gender," Dennis said at the time.
Sparrow's parents decided to raise their baby "gender-neutral," meaning Sparrow will decide gender when older. Even Sparrow's birth certificate says sex-unknown.
The family said they were inspired to raise Sparrow without a known gender after their older child, Hazel, discovered gender around the age of four.
"We are in no way prohibiting Sparrow from having a gender, and we're not forcing them to be one gender or another," Dennis said at the time.