Washington Post article, published May 19, 2012
Summary: Jean and Stephen's little girl, Kathryn, told them over and over, from the time she was 2, that she was a boy. It's more than just being a tomboy- she might be transgender. They finally made the decision to let him (okay I'm switching the pronouns to male at this point in the story) live as a boy, sign up for kindergarten as male, etc.
But seriously, read the whole article. My summary doesn't get the whole feel of the article.
So this is definitely an unusual situation and I don't know what to make of it. It's real though, and it's good to learn about other people's experiences so we can understand each other more and have compassion etc.
Questions/musings I have (with the disclaimer that maybe we don't have answers, and they really don't need parenting advice from people on the internet):
What does a 5-year-old kid know about what it means to be a boy or girl? The article uses a lot of caricatures like "the parents who ban baby dolls or toy guns see their little girl swaddle and cradle a stuffed animal or watch in awe as their boy makes guttural, spitting Mack truck sounds while four-wheeling his toast over his eggs, then uses his string cheese as a sword." And references to Barbie dolls. Too many mentions of Barbies. Geez. As if that's what it means to be a girl.
Dude, when I was little, my sisters and I had tons of Barbies (oh btw I am a girl) and we played that some of them had been kidnapped and enslaved by the bad guys and the rest of the Barbies had to come up with a secret-agent-style scheme to break in and get their friends out- because they were totally not going to get tricked into paying a ransom. My Barbies had a strict policy of never negotiating with terrorists. Sorry if I'm not feminine enough. O_o
No but seriously, what does it even mean to a 5-year-old kid to be "a boy" or "a girl"?
At that age, boys and girls are more or less physically/psychologically the same, right? Oh, except that boys have cooties. Lol. But seriously, I'm having trouble understanding the idea that a little kid can be transgender. Like really, what is the difference between boys and girls at that age? (All the times the article mentions pink and glitter and dresses and playing with dolls... dude, shut up.)
Does it matter if their daughter wants to say she's a boy? Kids say silly things all the time. Maybe she/he really is transgender, or maybe it's just a weird idea she got from somewhere and "it's just a phase". Who knows.
It's not the same thing as being a "tomboy" though- the article says it's much more extreme than that. When discussing how his (pronouns? I'm trying my best here, people) body is anatomically female, he asks his mom "why did you change me?" For some reason, the kid thinks he is supposed to be a boy. Is it just because little kids get weird ideas, or is he right? No one can answer that except him.
But if the kid is transgender, and lives his whole life as a male- well that's hard. People aren't going to understand, people are going to mock him, there's discrimination, etc etc. A little kid doesn't know about how hard life is as a transgender person.
So yep. Tell me in the comments if you have any musings/ questions/ awesome insights.