Little boy wanting to be a girl

My daughter used to claim to be a boy at 4. I didn't make a big deal and she grew out of it.

I would keep a close eye though. There are many cases of schools socially transitioning children without parents knowledge.

While this is completely normal and lots of children go through a phase of wanting to be the opposite sex before growing out of it, I completely understand your concerns re school.
I know of several situations where staff in schools have encouraged children to embrace these feelings and driven a wedge between them and their parents. And the more parents have objected, the more the school reinforces this as abusive behaviour. It's still a very real concern sadly.
Transgender Trend have some excellent resources and can offer support and advice on how to navigate this very tricky situation.

I agree with others who have advised that you ask him what it is about girls that means he wants to be one.

At that age I can almost guarantee that it’ll be about clothes and toys and if that’s the case let him pick out clothes and toys that he likes so that he can express himself in a way that feels comfortable to him.

My daughter wanted to be a boy at 5 and wore boys clothes from then on (and still does at 16) she had all of her hair cut off at 8 (and still has a more masculine style). We had many conversations over the years as she got older about becoming a boy/being male, gender, pronouns and sexuality and it became simply about her not wanting to conform to societal gender stereotypes regarding what she wears and how she looks. She’s actually comfortable being female she just doesn’t want to look like what society says a woman should look like.

I should add that she is also autistic/ADHD. She did tell me at 3 that she wanted to marry a woman and this never changed. She is gay and had a girlfriend last year. She’s also an incredibly strong, resilient, beautiful human and I couldn’t be prouder of her.

My advice - just love him for who he is and for whoever he wants to be. Parent the child you have, not the idea of the child you have in your head. Be happy that he can express himself comfortably with you and engage in the conversations he wants to have about his identity as he grows and changes.

If you read the op you’ll see she is concerned about how this will be reacted to at school by teachers and what they may say and do

Gen X here so I’m prepared for the backlash to my opinion, but it’s bloody ridiculous.

When I was about 7, me and my friend used to use old toilet paper rolls as a willy and try to wee standing up, as we wanted to be boys.

Prior to that I used to pretend I was a boy, only wearing tracksuits and trainers as all my older cousins were boys.

I also had a phase of thinking I was a fairy, a vampire ( I was about 10 for that one!) and an X-Man. I’m now happily married for 20 years with 2 teenagers and can look back on great memories without having any associated trauma or anxiety…it was just childhood!

Moral of the story is that kids have wonderful imaginations, and any normal parent would treat it as such and not make it into something that it really isn’t and emotionally damage your kids.

Watch out because there are people out there that will try to convince them they can be cats.

My daughter is a therian currently and I’m trying my hardest to keep her away from all that crap.

It definitely could be just a phase. My AuDHD daughter is a therian right now but we have to keep reminding her that it’s not real. We also home educate for many reasons but one is that we don’t want people telling her that it’s possible that she can actually identify as a cat.

My MIL wanted to be a boy growing up. She wore boys’ clothes, played football etc the lot. If she did it now, she’d have been made to think she was a boy. The reality was, she just wanted her dad to like her. He wanted a boy, he got a girl.

Both my kids love cats and pretend to be kittens all the time. They know they can't actually be cats.

Very real possibility they'll end up as vets!

My eldest wanted to be Spider-Man. He used to play with spiders hoping they would bite him and dressed in his costume every single day after school. He’s now a 30 year old dentist and not Spider-Man

I do think too many people don't allow young boys to like pretty/cute things. My DS never expressed any desire whatsoever to be a girl but hated that girls got lots of things featuring cute kittens etc (clothes, backpacks etc) and boys rarely did.

He loved (still loves...) cute kittens but doesn't like pink or frilly styles or dresses.... why is it all the cute kitten clothes etc are pink & frilly etc?!!

I wouldn’t overthink it. Just accept him for who he is, let him have access to
to whatever toys, clothes and activities he wants to explore and listen/empathise without going too deeply into it or assuming that his ideas will stay fixed. I agree with others on exploring what he thinks he would like about being a little girl and saying ‘it’s not only girls who play with dolls/paint their nails/wear fairy wings (or whatever he thinks they have that he doesn’t!), boys can do that too’.
If it does encroach into his school life, you can tell the school that is the approach you are taking and I can’t imagine they’ll be anything but supportive.
I’m not sure about the idea that kids know on some level this young that they are a different gender, maybe it’s true. I am sure you can’t go far wrong with just accepting them.

Id gently talk to him to find out what he thinks "being a girl" really means. Its likely to him it means things like wearing sparkly clothes/shoes or playing stereotypical "girl" games. If you've just had a baby it could just be that he is seeing you caring for it and needs to understand that Dads parent too.

If necessary just say in an age appropriate way that boys have penises and girls don't, they have womb/birth canal etc. Explain that boys get to be parents/have kids by being a Daddy and Daddies are really important.

Make sure he knows he can wear/play whatever he wants and having a penis doesn't affect that.

I would try not to worry at this stage OP. When my son was in reception he was saying things like he wanted to be a girl, didn’t want a willy & “wanted to chop it off” quite dramatic!! I didn’t make a big issue of it really just rolled with him but told him he had a willy as he was a boy etc.

He then declared his favourite colour was pink as he needed a bath towel I bought him a pink one which he loved. Having read one of your updates my son sounds similar to yours in that he has/had one main friend & his reception class was full of boisterous boys & in his teachers words there seemed to be a “power struggle” there were many complaints about a certain boy from my son & many of the other children & he was quite unsettled.

Roll on year 1 where he is now his class changed so he is in a mixed year 1/reception class which is very girl heavy. He is much more settled this year so I’m thinking the less boisterous class may have helped. He is also learning the typical stereotypes like boys don’t like pink they like blue & green and boys don’t play with girls etc (although he does play with them!) No mention about chopping his willy off!

What I am saying is that they are so young and they are still learning so just hang on in there!

Yes, good idea. Ask him what the difference is between boys and girls and see what he says.

My dd is 11 asd diagnosed in 2021' went through a phase of wanting to be a boy, wanting short boy hair and referred to as a boy name. I went along with it and supported her, eventually even let her have her hair cut short as she was adamant she wanted boy hair. This went on for a good few months on and off at the age of around 6 now at 11 she makes no mention of being a boy or wanting to be one. She isn't an overly girly girl or anything, she prefers boys clothing but I think its more of a sensory thing than anything else.
Honestly at 5 they are just curious and expressing themselves and learning.
I wouldn't worry too much, my dd also wanted to be a cat and a dinosaur at one point, i think its all par for the course with growing up

Nobody is encouraging the OP’s son to dress like a girl or telling him he’s in the wrong body. He’s 5!

I know a few boys around this age would only wear princess dresses, pretend to be girls / have dolls etc. they are currently 13 at Secondary and are very much straight male now and going goofy around girls.

its more common than you’d think, he will probably watch others and be guarded at school and eventually outgrow it.

if you think about it, girls wear trousers and love playing around in the mud, they don’t all like dolls and pink and no one bats an eyelid.

This reminds me of my ds (now 15) when he was about 4/5 had a dream about a tortoise (I’m not sure if he was the tortoise in his dream) he then become a tortoise for what felt like months!

Around the same time he also had a dream about playing with a bear and the bear was spinning him around 🤷🏻‍♀️ he was in a right strop for days because he want to play with the bear.. weirdly to this day he still remembers that dream vividly and always smiles if I mention it 🙃

i wonder if around this age they become more aware of their dreams and emotions within the dream state? Perhaps your ds had fun in his dream and was excited etc. and is seeking that ‘emotion’ but not necessarily wanting to be a girl?

It’s not a book you’d read to Reception children though usually…
I’m a reception teacher and while I wouldn’t encourage it, both boys and girls access all areas of our provision so if he was playing with dolls or dressing up for example then that would be fine. Lots of our boys do just that.
Does he have a lot of female friends/siblings/cousins that he maybe is trying to be more like?

Personally I think 'preferred' pronouns are very problematic as they indicate that you agree gender is more important than sex, which I profoundly disagree with. Ultimately it makes it much harder to argue that a man shouldn't access women's spaces and services if you're referring to that man as 'she'.

Having said that, if I'm dealing with a troubled teenager I can't expect them to get all that and I wouldn't want to antagonise. So I'd try to avoid pronouns altogether. That would probably be easier than avoiding the 'wrong' ones.

While most of these stories about all the silly things children say they want to be are intended to comfort and put things into perspective ('it's just a phase'), this is a legitimate cause for worry today. If a child (especially a child who's more vulnerable or impressionable) says something like this or goes through this phase, there are people waiting to pounce on it and push their agenda, regardless of what's best for the child. They may even believe they're on the right side of history (🙄), but that doesn't change the fact that their interference can cause serious, irreparable harm. It's not unreasonable to want to actively avoid those people and the negative outcomes they often promote, and pretending that it will be fine because when we were a child in the 80s or 90s, we wanted to be a lion and no-one came along and told us we could be a lion, it was good to want to be a lion instead of a human child, mummy was wrong for asking us to behave like a child and not roar all the time, and they'd help us make the transition. These days, there are some people around who would be all to happy to step in and 'help' that way, and if you as a parent object, you may find yourself in legal trouble.

I used to work with such an individual and when he was in the room, I naturally spoke to him directly so no need for pronouns and when he wasn’t in the room I find the normal standards for pronouns - someone male is ‘he’ and someone female is ‘she’ perfectly adequate.

There were no upsets and we worked together successfully with no issues. He kept out of the ladies toilets for which I am eternally grateful.

For the record, I would never set out to deliberately upset someone I worked with, just as I would hope they wouldn’t set out to upset me by demanding I use words which I know to be incorrect.

I hope you agree that relationships, whether professional or family, are a two way street where considerate behaviour goes both ways.

Out of interest, outside of the social media space would you routinely refuse to use a transgender person's preferred pronouns, even if you were working with them or they were a member of your family?

Exactly, I therefore dont 'live as a woman', dont wear traditional womens clothes, I wear trousers only, dont wear make up. I sport a pretty mean moustache at times. Dont like pink. Dont like 'girly things'. Never played with dollies when little

I had fairly short hair in my 20s.

Oh I must be a man!!

I think you might have hit the nail on the head here, that it's about his sister. People can be very over the top gushy about a little girl, in a way that can make a toddler brother feel overlooked. Usually it's all looks-based stuff about how pretty she is, which can be damaging in its own way to little girls. But to a five year old boy, attention is attention, and all he's seeing is that she's special. Because pretty and pink and girl.

Siblings often struggle with the attention given to a new baby. They don't remember getting the same fuss made over them - even if they did! And kids can get funny ideas. I'd definitely dig a little deeper into this. He might just need to feel a bit special. Maybe some boy time with dad, to make him see that are plenty of good things about being a boy too? Obviously you don't want to lean too hard into gendered stereotypes, but DH might have some ideas here.

If all else fails you could try and divert his focus to a new fixation.