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'm assuming they're quite young off of these details and honestly at this age just let them do what they want. For the most part as long as you're clearly accepting and give them some basic info, whether or not they're trans or gay or anything else is likely something they will tell you once they have the means to.
Like puberty blockers some people are mentioning that, as long as your child (once they reach around that age ofc) has like a basic understanding that they exist they will tell you if they want it. No need to make any guesses.
I know it sounds kind of weird to think of this but the silly little child that can barely express themselves right now will be a fully formed preteen and then a teen and then an adult and they will advocate for themselves. By the time anything major around this topic pops up, they should be able to make their own choices to begin with. No need to worry too much about it.
I just want to make sure that the “basic info” is age appropriate, which obviously I have no model for. But a lot of it does seem to come naturally. Kids ask a ton of questions and play a bunch of social games so the info seems to get out eventually.
What you’re getting at is indeed reassuring. It’s a major relief whenever a kid is finally able to advocate for themselves about something because it’s one less thing to worry about managing for them. But I think what’s more a concern is not that his means of expression are silly or crude, but rather exactly how serious and complex they already are. Gender is so complicated and watching a kid pick it all up implicitly is both incredible and intimidating.
Especially nowadays there's so much information out there that any child is pretty likely to figure things out to a decent degree by the time they're a teenager.
And yeah I agree is pretty awe inducing just how quickly kids can pick up social customs and ideas. Luckily nowadays we're generally more open about things as a society so people are able to express themselves. I think a lot of the time we just didn't really notice this too much in the past because society wasn't really as open about exploring social boundaries.