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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

re: 4 year old DD and gender identity

298 replies

herethereandeverywhere · 12/02/2016 08:42

Sorry, have posted here for traffic, not sure where else it should be.

[trying to avoid drip feed, sorry if long]

DD2 is 4 next month. She wants to be a boy. If I ask 'Are you are girl or a boy?" she answers "I'm a girl but I want to be a boy". She selected lots of 'boy' toys for Xmas like fancy dress outfits of male characters. All of this I'm comfortable with. I was very 'ant-pink' with DD1 but as soon as she hit about 2.5 and started mixing with other kids it was Disney princesses and pink sparkles all the way. So DD2 was raised in a fairly universal environment of choose what you want.

Summer last year (just after I'd bought several dresses in the sale in time for holidays) she declared she would no longer wear dresses. This has moved on to any item that looks remotely female. I have replaced her princess knickers with pirate underpants, ditto socks. There is no way she'll wear any of DD's hand me down tops with 'girly' motifs on them. when I take her for new shoes she selects the 'boy' style. I have been fine with this and was pleased she was finding her own identity. She'd been shy-er and quieter than DD1 and I saw this as her coming out of her shell, being her own person.

The issue at the moment is her hair. It's currently past shoulder length and for the last week she has been going nuts when I try to tie it back, screaming 'no ponytail'. She says she wants 'boys hair'. Today she literally screamed the place down for 10 minutes and was sobbing, utterly heartbroken. I'd been hoping she just forgot about the hair thing but it's getting worse.

I really don't want to cut her hair off - it would take so long to grow back. Until now her choices have all been instantly removable (clothes/toys) if she moved on from this, but a short hair cut is something else.

So, I suppose it's AIBU about the hair - but more importantly: is this normal? How far do I let it go? has anyone else experienced similar and what did you do/say? I'm not afraid of having a transgender child but it seems wrong to be expressing what she's doing/saying in those terms when she's not yet 4.

OP posts:
Thehumaneggtimer · 12/02/2016 12:43

I'm hoping the whole 'transgender child' diagnosis is something that looks bigger than it is than it is on the Internet and in real life people respond more like they do on here. Hard to know though isn't it?

CultureSucksDownWords · 12/02/2016 12:53

There was a bbc article about the rise in the number of children being referred for "gender identity referrals" in the last 5 or 6 years:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-nottinghamshire-35532491

The headline is that in 2009-10 there were 94 referrals, and in 2015-16, from April to Dec only, there were 969. So a 10-fold increase in referrals.

Alisvolatpropiis · 12/02/2016 12:54

That's a horrifying increase, Culture|

foragogogo · 12/02/2016 12:55

bet it's way more in the US.

TheHoneyBadger · 12/02/2016 12:55

yes it is hard to tell. of course you tend to read about the extreme cases of nutty parents in america rather than normal responses to identity play and experimentation in children.

Lasaraleen · 12/02/2016 12:56

Not sure what the issue is with cutting her hair.

At 4, my dd loathed having her hair put up. I told her that she either had to have it cut, or at school/nursery she had to have it tied up. She is not particularly "tomboyish" but asked to have it cut like her brother, I suspect because she could see he never had to bother about having it brushed or fiddled with! It's her hair, I think she should get a say in what happens to it, but I thought she might regret getting it cut so short so initially we went for a shortish bob. She was much happier and didn't want it like her brother's any more.

Now she is doing ballet and so has started growing it so she can have a bun. She still doesn't like having it put up every day but the desire for a proper ballet bun has overridden that!

Incidentally, the only time she has had nits has been caught at school with her hair in a ponytail.

TheHoneyBadger · 12/02/2016 12:56

god that's a huge increase! shit.

originalmavis · 12/02/2016 12:59

Whereas anecdotal evidence (lots on here) would suggest that whereas there are a fair few kids who seem to want to be another gender, very few still want to go this by puberty.

Give it a few years, and a few cases if kids suing their parents, doctors, psychologists, health care providers, hospitals, God... for arranging gender realignment when they were kids.

OneMagnumisneverenough · 12/02/2016 13:05

I agree, that it is certainly far too young for some of these parents to be pushing down that route. Loads of people I know went through periods of doing activities or wearing clothes generally associated with another gender - much more girls than boys though. However I did have a nephew who as a young boy liked to collect soaps (and would sit and sniff them a lot) and had a little bean doll in a matchbox he was obsessed with. he ended up being the boy in high school who always had a girl friend and is happily married (to a woman) with kids of his own now. Likes aftershave and smelly stuff still :)

Zazedonia · 12/02/2016 13:06

Why are you even thinking about transgender? You will only put the idea in her head.

originalmavis · 12/02/2016 13:13

It's the 'new thing'. Everyone's gotta have something these days...

FreshHorizons · 12/02/2016 13:15

It worries me terribly when people start to read things into perfectly normal child development. Goodness knows what you are supposed to do with those who want to be a horse or a pirate!
Just get her a short haircut and stop questioning her and get on with normal life.

FreshHorizons · 12/02/2016 13:16

You can imagine the teenage child saying 'good grief, mother I was only 4 yrs old!'

originalmavis · 12/02/2016 13:18

Or as my friend said when thw nanny bought her 4 year old son something or other unsuitable that he desperately wanted 'he's 4! If he said he really wanted a machine gun would you give him one??'

LovelyFriend · 12/02/2016 13:21

Why are you even thinking about transgender? You will only put the idea in her head.

A lot of the "my child is transgender" stuff I am seeing online these days make me think very much of Munchhausen by Proxy disorder.

I predict that over the next decade or so we will see a growth in parents saying their young children are transgender in order to attract attention to themselves. Very sad all round.

icanteven · 12/02/2016 13:24

It makes me sad and annoyed that there is so little choice, especially at the high street end of the market, between MASSIVELY gendered children's clothes. Don't want a bloody great big sparkly picture of Elsa on your t-shirt? Well, I guess it's Spiderman for you, then, right? Everything in H&M, Gap and Next is so bloody patronisingly girly. M&S has some nice blues/yellow/oranges in at the moment though.

I was born in the 70's in Ireland and I remember having an accident at somebody's house when I was tiny and the friend's Mum giving me a pair of knickers to wear and I distinctly remember being OMG KNICKERS COME IN PINK??? Mainstream children's clothes were just children's clothes. Not princess v pirate. There weren't girl's socks and boy's socks. I don't remember any of my friend's clothes leaning towards one palette or another at all - we wore green, blue, red, yellow, brown. Brown corduroy was definitely a thing. The first anorak I can remember having was red with green lining. There were no pink anoraks in Ireland in 1982, to my recollection! I had short hair and so did lots of little girls. Although Sharon Roland (how do I even remember her name?) had long blonde hair, and this was a source of great envy.

This an unrelated tangent. It just makes me sad that when a little girl of 4 rejects princessey shite, the gender question even enters anybody's head.

icanteven · 12/02/2016 13:30

(This ISN'T an unrelated tangent.)

starry0ne · 12/02/2016 13:33

I have read about half this... Op you are giving your child far too many choices...

Do you want to wear this top or this one is enough choice for a 3 year old...

My Ds (8) goes to the barber ..I ask him what he wants he tells me and I tell him how we incorporate that into his cut..

I think you are giving far too much space for this nonsense.. No wonder kids are so confused about gender when if they change there mind they get a whole new waardrobe.

Meeep · 12/02/2016 13:34

My DD was desperate for 'boy hair' from about 3 to 5. To my shame I only let her have a bob. I was concerned that she would regret it and not understand how long it would take to grow again when all her friends had waist length hair, also I know growing out a pixie cut is such a pain.
Now I wish I had let her!
Maybe start with a bob.
You can do two little bunches to keep it out of the way.

LauraMipsum · 12/02/2016 13:46

I get my hair cut at the barber's (short back and sides). I have yet to grow testicles.

I wouldn't worry OP. Let her express herself how she likes. There's no rule to say girls can't have pirate pants and short hair.

I want some pirate pants too. Grin

Original poster
herethereandeverywhere · 12/02/2016 13:46

Hi all. Thanks for all the comments - I'm at work at the moment so can't read them all and respond properly until this evening.

I do think there's been a misunderstanding over the me labelling my kid as transgender. I may well have worded things badly but that isn't what I'm doing, not am I trying to seek help for a 'transgender 4 year old'. I was trying - badly - to say this issue isn't about my ideas of prejudices, she is loved and will always be so, no matter what. I want her to be herself and not my constructed ideal.

What I do want to sort out is how distressed and upset she is getting about things she places high value and gender identity on. It's so out of character for an otherwise mild-mannered child. I'm also conflicted that DD1 doesn't get to wear her princess party dress every time she demands it (e.g.: for a trip to the park) so why should I treat the sobbing for boys hair differently. But her upset feels different...aggghh.

Thanks all and more later.

OP posts:
Bluebolt · 12/02/2016 13:47

All photos of me as a child were denim and a lot of double denim, many of the other children dressed the same. I put it down to my mothers twin tub and no tumble dryer. Dark practical clothing, passed around with little regard to gender. No play dates just hanging around with children (boys and girls) in walking distance and playing football, British bull dog, tag and hide and seek. The gender differences did not really appear till late primary when some girls separated from the boys. I noticed with my DCs the gender identities are much more prominent, marketing of cheap clothes and toys. I also noticed friendships formed at an early age based on sex by parents trying to ensure peer friends for children, probably not realising the steering of their children to one sex.

Woodhill · 12/02/2016 13:48

It was known as being a tomboy when I was growing up like George in famous five although I am not that old:)

I wouldn't overthink it.

TheCountessofFitzdotterel · 12/02/2016 13:57

But there are good practical reasons not to wear the party dress to the park, op, while there is no practical reason to insist on long hair and in fact if she was a boy you wouldn't.

Jesabel · 12/02/2016 14:08

Why is it so important to you that she has "girl's hair" not "boy's hair" - why can't she just have a haircut she likes?

It sounds like you have pretty inflexible ideas about things girls should like vs. boys should like, which is what she is picking up on. Instead of just being able to do what she likes, she knows she doesn't like "girl" things and therefore must be a boy.