As a mother, I do as much as I can to smooth my children’s paths.

I want them to know what it feels like to succeed.

I want them to be comfortable with themselves.

I want them to be willing to take risks because they know there’s a safety net to catch them if they fall.

What kind of parent doesn’t want her child to be happy?

As I listened to a story on National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered,” though, I wondered how far I’d go.

Alix Spiegel’s story about a family’s decision to give their child treatment to delay puberty was one of the more compelling parenting dilemmas I’ve come across.

What do you do if you have a son who has believed since the age of 2 he was meant to be a girl?

The parents of this particular child accepted that he had a gender identity disorder and let their son become their daughter.

That’s not the interesting part.

According to Spiegel’s story, sometime over the next year, the child will begin a treatment to ward off puberty.

To put off puberty, children –- usually between 10 and 13 — are injected with hormone blockers once a month. Spack explains that the blockers only affect the gonads, the organs responsible for turning boys into men and girls into women.

“If you can block the gonads, that is the ovary [in women] or the testis [in men], from making its sex steroids, that being estrogen or testosterone, then you can literally prevent … almost all the physical differences between the genders,” Spack explains.

Without testosterone, boys will not grow facial or body hair. Their voices will not deepen. There will be no Adams apple, and height growth will slow. Without estrogen, girls will not develop breasts, fat at the hip, or menstrual periods. And since most growth happens before puberty, if you block estrogen — and therefore puberty — girls will grow taller, closer to a typical male height.

– Alix Spiegel, “Parents Consider Treatment to Delay Son’s Puberty,” National Public Radio

Having avoided puberty, the children will have an easier time if they decide to take hormones and mature into the opposite gender. According to researchers, they could be almost indistinguishable from someone born that gender.

On the other hand, the treatment could buy a family time to let the child grow old enough to decide what course of action to take.

It’s an interesting issue. I’m one of those people who believes that you just love whatever child you’re blessed with and don’t try to pump ‘em with hormones to make them bigger, better or smarter.

But what if they’d be happier?

What if they’d feel whole?

How far do you take it?