Gender non conforming child (mine!).

No advice from me but a big hug.

‘The Boy in a Dress’ by David Walliams? Funny and touching kid’s book about a cross-dressing boy who has a love for ‘girly’ things but is also definitely a boy.

Talking of gender non conforming male role models, I thought of Jonathan Van Ness, from Queer Eye. Your son is maybe a bit young for the programme right now, but Jonathan is a (gay) man who 'performs femininity'. He has long styled hair (is a hairdresser), wears androgynous clothes, cries easily, is sensitive and 'girly' etc. He is very definitely a happy man. And a lovely one at that.

All of the 'fab five' are obviously gay (so not GNC straight guys) but there are also more stereotypically masculine men who reject toxic masculinity and hug, talk about feelings, support each other.

My husband watched the original programme when he was a teenager (instigated by his mum!) and said it was a memorable and valuable way to see that there were different ways of being a man, other than what society told him he should be.

Just food for thought as a teenager maybe. The men talk about dealing with high school too (especially Jonathan) through the programme.

Oh op I really feel for, I would be scared as well and that makes me so angry. Ten years ago I would have said that's great, we need more GNC people in the world and that you don't need to do a thing about this, he can like whatever he wants. These days, things are different. I think if this were my child I'd now be trying to steer him towards 'boys things' and I know that is so, so wrong. Other posters had much better ways of helping him.

TransgenderTrend have some resources on their website that might help you respond to this
www.transgendertrend.com/resources-for-parents/

Books - we liked the Artemis Fowl books. Artemis is a child genius criminal mastermind but is more than matched by Holly Short from the fairy police. These fairy police are armed and dangerous not sparkly

DD suggested the His Dark Materials Trilogy, a bit darker, but Lyra is not a stereotypical girl and the boys she is friends with are important to her and to the story, so a book about a girl but not a girls (or boys) book.

Two animal books - Born to Run by Michael Morpurgo about a dog who is rescued by a boy, and a girl, and an old man and
A Boy and His Dog by Eva Ibbotson about a boy and his relationship with a dog and his friendship with a girl who he teams up with.

good luck.... so agree with all the other great advice on here... and that he is whole and perfect as he is.... you will help him navigate these years....

And I hope somewhere there is a resource - or one will emerge - for GNC children who want to flout convention and just enjoy being themselves.....

I can't offer practical advice but I do wonder if in view of the prevalence of teaching kids about gender so early we should also be teaching them basic biology much earlier too.

Have you told him he's going to be a brilliant man when he grows up? Because he is. Ask him if he;s thought about what he wants to do with his life as an adult. Let him explore possibilities.

moofolk

If you are concerned about this, do consider limiting his exposure to the internet because it's very easy indeed for young people's heads to be turned. You mention that he's not quite at that age, so it could be easier for you to set his access up in a safe way than in a situation where someone had already been influenced by trans activists online. It sounds ridiculous to be writing like this, but there really are lots of sites out there containing people and messages willing and able to damage your child's sense of self & turn a child away from trusting his or her parents.

Sites that are absolutely unsafe for young children include youtube and tumblr, but there are many others. www.gendercriticalresources.com has lists of sites that parents have learned to be wary of.

NC for this.
I have some GNC kids and some more conventional kids. I recently got some praise from the older DC after we watched Channel 4’s “No more boys and girls” for us just having toys and dressing up stuff when they were younger.

I have a bit of a mantra - you are perfect, you can love who you want, be who you want, wear what you want. The kids yawn and say “yeah mum, gender is a social construction”. I do worry my gender critical views might be shutting down them talking to me. It is really hard.

The older kids (young adults now) are big influences on the younger ones and I was so relieved when we watched Transformation Street and they said how sad it was that people kept spending money on changing themselves in the hope it would make them happy..

I know not many people will have this option available to them and I hesitate to share it for fear of being flamed but one of ours is at an independent boys’ school partly so that he can be in art, drama, musical theatre clubs and not be the only boy there, as everyone there is a boy (of course).

It sounds counterintuitive to send a sensitive boy to an all boys school but it’s going well compared to previous school. He’s not turned into a team sport loving alpha male (of course) and is clearly more comfortable being the design obsessed flamboyant person he always has been.

I also hope that we have a relationship with school where we can have a partnership supporting any future difficulties (of any sort) together rather than school going off down a particular route without us having a say.

I have a couple GC friends in RL (although we are not “out” due to jobs). One of my fiends has a very sensitive boy and she says, “My best hope for him is that he is a happy gay man.”

oh christ, serious link fail

linky

I guess what do he want that he thinks being s girl will give him?

Is there any way you can help him achieve those things now, without changing his body?

Make it clear that people can't change sex

Talk to him about what men who do change their bodies to be like women lose - the chance for children of their own for example.

And YY to strict internet controls. No devices in his bedroom at night.

I read [[https://lilymaynard.wordpress.com/2017/11/06/my-first-article-a-mums-voyage-through-transtopia Lily Maynard's article about talking her GNC daughter out of transitioning] and it scared the bejesus out of me, but also gave me some good ideas.

It sounds so hard. You haven't 'done' anything to him.

just support. I have a friend going through this w/ her 6 year old biologically born son. He now identifies as a girl. At school. Name changed. Teachers met with. School board met with. This is a tough situation for the parents, for sure. They are very open minded, extremely so, but trans people have hurdles socially.

HE doesn't need to change anything but I would start to "prep" him for Secondary School. Ime the pressure to be gender conforming takes a serious uptick once in high school and GNC boys can take a real pasting.

My, now 13 year old, whilst not GNC in terms of dress and interests, is GNC in other ways and it is a seriously difficult task to uphold his self esteem and his resolve to just be himself and not be swayed by the crowd, but also give him tools to navigate an extremely hostile environment for GNC boys (and girls).

One thing that has helped is that we have encouraged him to make male friends that are similar to him. The peer to peer support has been really helpful.

I have also been very blunt with him about the fact that, although this is utterly wrong, it is going to happen and may continually happen throughout his life. That he needs to find an internal dialogue that strengthens and soothes him and an external dialogue means that he can stand up for himself. That sounds a bit like "toughening up" but I don't mean it like that. I think all children, regardless of sex or gendered expression need to know that the whole world will not validate or approve of them but they do not need this to be happy or whole.

Not easy during teenage years when they are exploring relationships and their place in the world though. It's an ongoing dialogue.

another one with a GNC kid here.
dd1 is a 'tomboy' (I really hate that phrase) and we have been buying her clothes from the boys section for years.
She and I have had lots of conversations about gender stereotypes being societies problem, and how anyone can be who they want to be, and wear what they want to wear etc.
She is 13 and there is now a group at her school, an LGBT discussion group, she came home delighted from it, and raving about how great it was. All her friends now identify as gender non binary/pangender/transgender or agender.
To be honest I don't think most of them are anything other than kids, but they are ripping up their parent's rule book about gender and declaring it a new world order.

I am at a loss as to how to support her really, I keep the door open, reassure her of my love and that she can be anything she wants to be. But it is a scary place to be.

Just to reassure you OP, her brother and sister are very stereotypical make and female, and they were all brought up the same.

Can he articulate why he'd rather be a girl, ie what would that mean he would be able to do that he can't do now? To be honest I think I'd have been ridiculing the idea that girls can do things that boys can't for years and saying how silly it was that some people thought otherwise.

And put pics up of David Sylvia's and boy George, prince and all those fabulously successful GNC adults!

Also I would be gathering parents stories from 4th wave now and other resources so that you are ready with ideas on how to manage a situation where he wants to eg see a doctor, stops listening to you etc.

Agree with everyone about 'leave be' and I would also do anything possible to keep him away from malign people online who grrom children like him into believing they need to change their bodies.

When he gets older and has internet access I'd have massive parental controls on the wifi (can you block specific websites?) and on his phone.

Also be wary of 'concerned' professionals, teachers etc who might steer him the wrong way.

John maclean is a makeup artist on Facebook, beautiful GNC man
In fact a lot of the male makeup artists are very GNC and androgynous. It sucks though doesn't it. Everything else we have to prepare them for and now this shit.

I totally get how you must be feeling OP, as his mum the instinct to protect him and try to make things as easy as possible for him is natural but there's only so much you can do here.

All you can do is focus on being supportive and building your relationship so he has somewhere to come when he needs to. I would teach him to think critically about what he sees on the internet from the outset, explain how easy it is to only get one side of the argument online and end up in an echo chamber which only reflects one view.

Teach him to always look for the opposing view and then to take time to make up his own mind away from external influences, that people are often not who they pretend to be online and to respect the difference between someone who purports to care about and understand him through a computer screen and the people who actually know and love him.

If he's equipped to think for himself and has strong RL relationships to balance out what he sees online you've done all you can wrt the internet, none of us can protect them from it completely much as we may sometimes like to.

I agree with jelly about assuring him he's perfect just the way he is and I don't think you've 'done this to him' at all. He's been allowed to be who he is and that can't be anything but a good thing, having confidence in himself and his own choices is probably the best defence he can have against the very things you're worrying about. Sounds to me like you're doing fine so just keep doing it

I do feel for GNC kids, the pressure on all sides they will eventually face (especially the boys) will be immense.

It’s all very well saying, “look at Bowie”, or other GNC role models, but they tend to be creatives. Where are the GNC men working in banks or garages? Is it any wonder that people turn to organisations like Mermaids, or choose to become part of an LGBT scene where they will find acceptance?

The choice between trying to find acceptance as a GNC male and trying to find acceptance as a transwoman - I honestly don’t know which would be harder.

I do think it’s easier for girls and women. In my office the women dress in a wide range of styles, from dresses, heels and make-up to jeans, flats and jumpers. No-one bats an eyelid. All the men dress the same. It’s not suits, but it is a male “uniform” of jeans, t-shirt, jumper. There’s one man on another floor that I see from time to time, who sometimes wears a long, floral maxi skirt (with his regulation t-shirt). He otherwise presents male. I admire him, because even in my workplace, which is a creative organisation, there’s a male uniform and although I don’t think any man would get bother for being GNC, it certainly wouldn’t go unnoticed the way it does for the women.

As ever, it’s a problem with male culture isn’t it? This aspect of it is where I completely understand transwomen wanting to be fully accepted as women.