Here’s my dilemma
Presentation isn’t the same as identity and I’m perfectly comfortable raising a boy who prefers doing things that are stereotypically female. To give an extreme example, I will gladly spend the rest of my life correcting people who refer to him as “she” because he wears dresses, has long hair, etc. If he’s a boy he’s a boy.
However, I don’t get a choice in whether or not he learns what society expects of the different genders. I don’t want to go on for too long telling him “it’s okay for boys to do this” when the issue is fundamentally about the gender rather than the behavior.
My wife and I are both cis and lean a little androgynous in our presentation, but are still pretty binary. So when it came time for my older daughter to do some gender experimentation, I showed her a bunch of trans transition timelines, taught her about non-binary people (“you know how we call Uncle ____ they instead of he? They’re non-binary”). It was simplified but she was young. And she ultimately became significantly more girly than either of us were experienced with. Her biggest hangup was wanting short hair even though it was “boy hair”.
So now my son is only playing pretend as girl characters. He’s correcting us if we use his name while he’s pretending, too. He’s wanting hairbands and leggings and he’s also seemingly mixing up the pronouns. Like he put a crown on my head and said “she’s a queen” and then put it on my wife’s head and said “he’s a king”. Every morning we ask him what his name is today and he always says a girl character from a show that he watches.
In my brain this is screaming he’s a girl, but I also don’t want to push my gender brainworms on him. And I don’t know how much of this experimentation is common in cis children. Hell, I don’t know if I would believe the research if I could find it just with how suppressed trans identities are. As much as the whole “it’s just a phase” thing is usually transphobic cope, I don’t want to entirely dismiss the idea that it’s a phase. I guess what I mean by that is I’d like to facilitate him experimenting more before drawing any conclusions. If his gender ends up as a collection of caveats, even better. I’ll do my job of explaining that to people as needed.
So wat do? I think we’re going to take him clothes shopping and see what he likes. Maybe start helping him pick his own clothes in the morning. I have no idea how to approach pronouns or if I should wait. Right now he’s exclusively wearing dinosaur pajamas and a cat ear headband.
What common mistakes should I avoid? If you’re trans, what would you have preferred your parents to do? Is there anything your parents did right that you think more parents should do?
Edit: also if this is some cis fragility stuff in some way I’m not seeing and I’m overthinking the whole “let him pick out his clothes and pronouns” thing, feel free to let me know
I think that the best thing you can do is allow your child to lead the way and support them in this process. It's honestly really refreshing to see parents such as yourself ask questions like these, I wish my parents growing up cared to do so. As a trans person myself, I can say in my experience that gender can be confusing and in some cases take a while to figure out. I experimented with multiple gender identities as I transitioned and I wouldn't change that journey for anything, experimentation/phases should be celebrated! As a kid figuring out my gender, the support I wanted from my parents would be verbal reassurance (Being told that I would be loved, cared for, supported no matter what). Just hearing that from my parents would have changed a lot for me.
If you're worried about pushing labels/brainworms as you've mentioned above, you just have to approach this from a standpoint of open support. Having a conversation with your child and expressing that experimenting with different pronouns/names is ok and something you would support them in, allows them to feel safe in that experimentation without assigning them a label yourself (there were times where I tried going by they pronouns for a week just to see if they fit! I decided they weren't for me but trying them out helped me understand myself more). It takes time to figure things out, as long as you are creating a safe space for your child to express their needs without fear or worry, and if they hear that they will be loved and supported through whatever they discover about themselves, that is the best thing you can do for a questioning/experimenting child (even if your child is cis and just enjoys expressing themselves in feminine ways, knowing that gender experimentation wouldn't be an issue is key).
It's a great idea to take your child shopping to let them choose what they like, just support and encourage them to wear and express themselves in the ways that make them happy. I hope this makes sense and is helpful. If you have any more questions feel free to ask me and I can try and help more, take care _
We can definitely do support, love, and encouragement. That’s very in our wheelhouse. I do worry about how to navigate experimentation while in school in a couple years, but I also am prepared to be an aggressive advocate and be the squeaky wheel if that’s what my kids need.
This is a good mantra as well. Weird that phases are downplayed as “less real” in some way
Y'all are honestly doing a great job from my perspective! There needs to be more parents like you guys ;W; I'm a little unsure of how to navigate this for a child in early education as well due to how tricky the school environment can get, I began my transition in my late highschool years so my experience was very different.