Teaching toddler non-binary pronouns without teaching gender stereotypes - help!

[Glycerinstrawberry]

My 3 year old is largely using sexed pronouns correctly, with the odd mistake, however two of her older cousins identify as non-binary and I'm really struggling how to explain their pronouns!

The family will want me to tell her that her cousins are neither boys nor girls, and thus use they/them, but my daughter can see that they are female and I don't want to be on her case correcting her when she's actually not making a linguistic mistake, it will upset her confidence and I feel like I'd be gaslighting her.

She knows the difference between boys and girls, I don't know how I can tell her they are neither without throwing that all into confusion and using stereotypes (which we avoid naturally).

Any tips? So far it's been largely avoided as she doesn't talk about them much, they are both early 20s but have not flown the nest and still come to all family things so it won't be an infrequent problem.

Why are all the women chopping their healthy breasts off but the men all tend to hold on to their penises?

It’s all at root the same old, same old denial of female sexual and bodily pleasure, and the worshipping of male sexual pleasure. As it ever was.

How absolutely ridiculous. Don't pander to your child's cousins' silly whims, and praise her for getting the grammar correct at such a young age - don't confuse her.

Just encourage her to use their names, gets out of pronouns

Small children get confused by pronouns anyway, maybe it's at a slightly younger age we tend to automatically use 'motherese' and use names instead of pronouns. 'Mummy wants Sam to sit down', that sort of thing.

Maybe the most constructive way forward is to not get hung up about pronouns and 'misgendering', certainly not collude in any notion that the cousins aren't either male or female, but to support the cousin's rejection of gender stereotypes.

Really, wtf. Well in that case I'm a jacket potato and not a he or she. Bunch of fairies.so surgery to remove hair and all parts that make them look make or female. If they look like a box then they are a box if they look like a women then they are a women.

Stop the world and let me off 😑

I think they need to give the 3yr old a bit of slack. My niece is similar with random people, ‘look at his ice cream’, said to 40yr old woman (who I didn’t think looked particularly ’male’). Her mum’s friend although male sex, dresses and looks very feminine and goes by she, and my niece has always called her ‘she’ as they do look extremely feminine. They just say what they see at that age, and often get it wrong. Who get annoyed with a 3yr old?!!

This.

In fact, I doubt the non binaries are too happy about everyone being forced to use non binary language. The worst neutral pronoun militants I have seen have not even heard about the Jogjakarta Convention.

“at the risk of being moderated, OP, I don’t think your child misgendering them is the worst thing to be concerned about in their contact.”

This. I wouldn’t want my three year old to be anywhere near gender zealots, in exactly the same way that I would avoid any extreme religion.

My autistic 18 year old says she identifies as male. She used a male name. Her 3 year old sister calls her by her given name and uses 'she'. My 18 year old accepts it because she understands that a 3 year old understands the concept of sex, but not gender.

Don't explain anything to your child at this age. It's unnecessary.

This

Your DD misgendering her cousin should be the least of your worries.

If that happened, id be telling my dc that their cousins just have a different way of speaking. I wouldn’t try to explain because
a: I don't believe in gender ideology
b: I will not go along with something I don't believe in just to spare someone’s feelings.

I'm sorry you have relatives who are willing to have bits of their healthy bodies removed because of mental health issues. It must be very stressful for your family. Personally I wouldn't be letting my young children anywhere near them unsupervised let alone encouraging my child to go along with their non-binaryness as I believe sex is very much binary - either male of female.

If your niece was Rachel Dolezal (trans-racial US woman) would you be happy with her expecting your child to refer to her as of African descent because as far as I can see this is no different.

I’m too old for all this rubbish but given you only use a pronoun when the person in question isn’t there how do they know? Unless the world is fluid little snitches??

I wouldn’t explain anything to your child. I’d let them say whatever they felt was right to say. Your child is 3… I think doing anything else will be damaging/confusing to your child. If they say anything to you, I would just say ‘we are talking about a 3 year old here’ and laugh it off. Sounds ridiculous to me that you’re even worrying about it! I certainly wouldn’t engage with them over it.. not about a 3 year old. X

If these 20 somethings are so unbearably self centred they worry about 3yr olds they need serious help. Thus is so awful. No you cannot lie to small children to make insecure adults feel better and if any of your family expect you to I would lose my shit and tell them exactly what I think about their ridiculous nb id. Ffs almost all females are nb if you want to go down that route.

Just don’t, let this nonsense die of death.

Easy....just say for toddler to call them by their name.

Absolutely this!

Seriously I have heard it all now. A grown adult being so self centred they they complain about a toddler misgendering someone. Aside from all this woke nonsense it is a TOTALLY NATURAL PART OF SPEECH DEVELOPMENT for a young child to mix up pronouns!

FFS! I really do just despair... Op just don't buy into it- it's very much their problem not yours.

This. Don't worry about it and if they moan remind them that she is 3!

Why mention it? Just call them by their name ?

What is factual is that she was born female.

that is quite different to her identifying as non binary.

the doctors et al didn’t think she was a girl - they knew she was female.

I find it really disturbing that we're talking about indoctrinating TODDLERS into this homophobic, misogynistic alt-religion - because that's what it is. You're teaching her to ignore her instincts, believe fantasy over reality and ignore the truth in favour of lies. It's really, really dangerous.

I find it particularly troubling that we're teaching little girls that male people - who they will instantly and correctly identify as male - aren't always male if they say so. It's so important that we teach girls to trust their instincts, a huge element of safeguarding. If 'non binary' people get upset about that, too bloody bad. Girls' safety trumps their feelings.

We live in a world in which 99% of sexual violence perpetrators are male, and 89% of victims are female. If that ever changes, then we can start to talk about 'respecting people's gender identities'.