When my son got here out as trans, I had to determine what to say to the opposite kids in our life. Here’s what I realized.
When my son instructed me he was transgender at 11 years previous, I wasn’t positive what he meant. It’s not as a result of I’ve lived underneath a rock—I’m an informed lady, a former registered nurse, and this was my third of 4 kids. I wasn’t even new to parenting. But I used to be frozen in place by what being transgender implied for his social life, well being and future.
You see, I routinely equated transgender with surgical procedures. And, I’m ashamed to say, it additionally introduced to thoughts late 80s tabloid discuss reveals on cross-dressing. None of that appeared to match what my fifth grader was telling me. I wanted to hear. I additionally wanted to determine what transgender meant earlier than I defined it to my youngest child, niece and nephew, and different kids in our life.
Because being transgender is taken into account an exception, it may be simple to brush the subject underneath the carpet for when our youngsters are older. But we aren’t speaking about simply a handful of individuals. According to the 2021 Census, roughly 1 in 150 individuals aged 15 to 34 in Canada had been transgender or non-binary. If your child’s cousin, babysitter, or classmate had been to share that they’re trans or non-binary, you’ll need to be ready to reply the massive questions kids might have.
Since my son got here out, I’ve not solely had to explain why the child I as soon as introduced to the dentist as a lady is now to be addressed as a boy, however I’ve additionally had to educate kids and adults of all ages what precisely transgender means. Here are some tips on how to have that dialog with your personal kids.
Start with what gender means
Gender isn’t about physique elements. Yes, we assign a gender to our kids at start as soon as we affirm the physique elements between their legs, however gender is extra about our roles in society. Gender can be not about sexuality. At all. So, there is no such thing as a cause to postpone speaking about gender together with your kids till highschool as a result of there might be no ‘birds and bees’ discuss to embody within the dialog. You can speak about gender with kids as younger as three years previous.
Gender is an id, and it’s also an expression. Our gender id is what we all know to be true about ourselves deep down inside. For most of us, this aligns with what the physician or midwife introduced at our start. But for some individuals, it doesn’t. Essentially, transgender persons are difficult conventional gender guidelines. If you’ve ever instructed your child, “girls can play with trucks and boys can wear nail polish,” you had been instructing them about gender range.
Transgender individuals battle with having to placed on the act of the gender they got after they had been born as a result of it doesn’t align with what they learn about themselves deep down. Some kids are adamant as toddlers that we bought all of it unsuitable. Some trans and non-binary teenagers get exhausted by placing on that efficiency and infrequently show psychological misery due to it. That misery can vary from social isolation and anxiousness round physique modifications to self-harm and a sense of hopelessness.
Gender expression, alternatively, is all about how we select to showcase our id—how we costume, model our hair, stroll and discuss. This will be fluid and alter or keep comparatively fixed. I’m a cisgender lady, which means that my feminine id suits with my start label. I occur to like to costume femininely more often than not, however you’ll generally catch me carrying clothes usually reserved for males, resembling denims, boots, and a flannel shirt. That doesn’t imply I’m confused about my id; it simply implies that’s what I felt like carrying. The similar applies to trans and non-binary kids. They would possibly put on garments from the boy’s and lady’s sections, and so they would possibly combine them up and mix them whereas breaking gender norms. It’s vital to know that transgender kids, and infrequently non-binary teenagers, usually solely change their gender expression, title, and pronouns and never their bodily our bodies.
Know that kids perceive gender by kindergarten
Children perceive the distinction between women and men in accordance to their gender expression by the ages of two or three, and so they can determine themselves as a boy or a lady at that time. Sometimes their idea of gender will fluctuate, however by the age of 5, kids usually have a constant gender and begin taking up the gender roles used of their neighborhood. They will see toys and garments as gendered. For instance, they’ll say a race automotive is a boy’s toy and a tutu is a lady’s garments. As kids age, their sense of id solidifies. If that id will not be what they had been assigned at start, kids can turn out to be anxious or distressed; that’s the reason affirming a transgender child is so vital.
Since gender id is shaped as early as between three and 7 years previous, ready till after grade 5, or worse, highschool well being class, to focus on gender id is just too late.
Ignoring that transgender individuals exist doesn’t make issues higher for anybody. Kids are good, and in case you purposefully keep away from discussing one thing, they are going to assume the subject is unhealthy or off limits. We danger instructing them there’s one thing inherently unhealthy about gender range by omission. Making transgender a taboo topic can destroy the vanity of a child who feels otherwise from female and male stereotypes
It creates “othering” as a substitute of belonging and a ripe scenario for bullying.
How I explain transgender to kids
In our household, we usually say, “We got things wrong when Mitchell was born and automatically assumed that he was a girl, but once he was old enough to understand himself and explain it to us, he told us he’s a boy. He now dresses in a way that makes him feel comfortable so that people see him as a boy. We use a boy’s name and say he and him when we talk about him.”
We additionally add: “Some kids also figure out that neither boy nor girl fits them properly, and they like to use both or neither label. You might hear those kids ask you to use they and them pronouns when you talk about them. They sometimes say their gender is non-binary, and that means it doesn’t fit into only boy or only girl boxes.”
That’s it. You don’t want to explain something about a trans particular person’s physique as a result of not all transgender individuals have issues modified on their our bodies. Also, once we meet individuals on the road, within the grocery retailer, or on the library, we don’t ask about their physique elements; we handle them in accordance to how they introduce themselves.
Talking about gender with school-aged kids will be a simple means to assist the transgender neighborhood as a result of the earlier kids perceive that trans persons are similar to them, the extra inclusive and safer our world might be.
Tammy Plunkett is a mom of 4 queer kids, writer, and speaker on the subject of parenting transgender kids.
