When Your Girl Is a Boy (Or Vice Versa)

We've all known (or been) boys obsessed with princesses and makeup or tomboys who would rather wipe an axle with a dress than wear it. Most of us who were raised with Free to Be You and Me and feminist mums (and even a bunch of us who weren't) go out of our way to let our non-gender-stereotype conforming kids explore whatever interests they want and express themselves as they see fit.

This is hard enough, given other parents' need to constantly harp on about what boys and girls do and like in front of our kids (something I've ranted about here). But what about when it's not enough? What if you have a kid who feels wrong in their body, insists on the other pronoun, and is generally miserable unless actually acknowledged as the other gender? By many accounts there are some kids for whom general freedom from prescribed gender roles doesn't cut it.

The authors of the newly  released The Transgender Child, which deals with with "gender variance from birth through college," argue that a child's gender identity is generally a "permanent part of who they are," whether it matches biology or not. They wrote the book to help parents and professional find their way through the mine field of implications of that. 

I know one family going through this, and even for the most liberal parents, it's hard. Changing your notion of who your child is midstream is no piece of cake. A transgendered child may need, ironically, to conform more tightly to stereotypes about their preferred gender in order to get a diagnosis of gender identity disorder. (But you can't really feel you're a girl if you like cars!

Even harder, if a diagnosis is given, then there are some big decisions to be made. The best time to medically transition to the other gender is pre-puberty: it works much better and allows you to pass as your preferred gender as an adult much better. No pesky unwanted facial hair or breasts to get rid of. But the prospect of letting a child so young make such a big decision is extremely uncomfortable. (Though apparently some folks are experimenting with puberty delaying drugs that could allow the decision to be put off. Puberty at 25 anyone?)

What do you think? Have you gone through this? What would you do if it were your kid?