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GILDA GEIST/ENTERPRISE Falmouth resident Samantha Bauer started the Cape’s first playgroup for elementary school-age nonbinary and trans children this summer. Ms. Bauer runs her own nonprofit on Spring Bars Road called Inspiration Is Everywhere. Inspiration Is Everywhere is dedicated to fulfilling community needs that are not being met currently. The idea for the playgroup began when Ms. Bauer started fostering two young children, one 4 years old and one 8. She noticed a disconnect between her foster children and other children in the community. “There’s a lot of stuff they’ve been through that makes it hard for them to relate to other kids sometimes while they’re playing or at school,” Ms. Bauer said. Though Ms. Bauer knew of resources for foster children on Cape Cod, she explained that most of them are farther down-Cape because the nearest Department of Children and Families office is in Hyannis. “So I started a group every other week after they got out of school for them to be able to play with other kids who have DCF workers or who are in foster care, just so they can have more relatable playtime,” she said. At her foster children’s kung fu class in Mashpee, Ms. Bauer said, some parents approached her asking if she knew of any resources similar to her foster children’s playgroup, but for nonbinary and trans children. “I looked around everywhere and a lot of the groups are for people who are 18 and up,” Ms. Bauer said. “I said, ‘Well, if nobody else is doing it, and I guess that’s our cue.’” Ms. Bauer hosted the first playgroup session in June. The group met every other Thursday afternoon at the Inspiration Is Everywhere office, alternating weekly with the foster children playgroup. The office is full of paint, canvases, clay, toys and other activities, Ms. Bauer said. It also has a yard where children can play outside. The group met just twice at Inspiration Is Everywhere before Ms. Bauer had to close the office temporarily, she said, and she hopes it will be able to reopen this month, so that the playgroup can resume when school starts up again. Prior to the office’s closure, the group had about three children, Ms. Bauer said. Without much money for paid ads, she was advertising the group through word of mouth, Facebook and other online platforms, she said. Ms. Bauer said she thought this type of resource did not previously exist in Falmouth because of a wider problem—the town’s tendency to overlook young people. “It’s easy to get distracted by the fact that we’re a tourist economy,” she said. Growing up in Falmouth, Ms. Bauer felt like “there was nothing for kids to do.” Though she said she had the teen center at her disposal, “nobody really went there,” she said, and added that it was next to a police station. Between the culture of drinking and partying that exists in any vacation town and the desolate nature of the off-season slump, summer vacation destinations can be hotbeds for underage substance use. In recent years, Massachusetts has ranked the highest of all US states in the percentage of youths, ages 12 to 20, who participate in underage drinking, per a 2019 Boston Herald article. The National Center for Drug Abuse Statistics also reports that “teenagers in Massachusetts are 33.37 percent more likely to have used drugs in the last month than the average American teen.” “When I was growing up, everyone just did drugs in each other’s basements because there was nowhere to go, and now everyone’s dead,” Ms. Bauer said. “I have enough funeral cards to play Go Fish.” Ms. Bauer explained that she does not want the same future for her foster children. “I don’t want them to feel like they just live in a stupid tourist town where nobody cares about what kids do,” she said. She said she wants them and other local children to be able to participate in open mic nights that are not at bars, or attend art nights that are not “paint and sip.” “I love drinking wine and making art, but not when you’re 12, which is kind of what my friends and I started doing,” Ms. Bauer recalled. “If we had a space where we were just allowed to exist without expectations, I feel like we wouldn’t have gotten into that so early.” Trans youth especially are at greater risk of underage substance use than other kids. A study published in the Journal of Adolescent Health found that “the prevalence of substance use was 2.5 to four times higher for transgender youth compared with their non-transgender peers (depending on the substance).” Ms. Bauer explained why nonbinary and trans children in particular need support. “If there’s a kid who’s starting to think about their gender identity and how they want to be identified and how they feel about themselves and if they’re comfortable in their body, they’re having all of those feelings of uncertainty and anxiety,” she said. Ms. Bauer explained that only in recent years have parents and guardians had the knowledge and understanding to ask for help in supporting their nonbinary and trans children. “People have been a lot more open to understanding the nuances of gender identity and understanding that it’s not something you just realize when you turn into an adult,” she explained. “Now it’s easier for people to reach out with that need, instead of saying, ‘I don’t know what’s going on with my kid.’” But Ms. Bauer also noted that not everyone is quite there yet when it comes to understanding trans and nonbinary identities. “People are like, ‘Well. we didn’t have people like that when I was growing up.’ It’s like, well you did, but they were afraid to say it because they’d get assaulted or stigmatized,” she said. “It’s not that more of it exists, it’s just that people now feel safer to be themselves. And that’s what I really want for kids growing up in this town.”