A Parent's Perspective "Tell Grandma I'm a Boy" by Florence Dillon My children, husband and I live with a golden retriever(male), a cat(female), and a cockatiel (gender indeterminate). Working to make the elementary school environment safe for our son has convinced me that public awareness of the realities of transgendered experience is critical for the healthy development and survival of all gender-variant children. My husband and I have two sons. Like most siblings, they’re enmeshed in a love–hate relationship as rivals at home, they staunchly defend each other in the world outside. Alex, who just turned fourteen, is a classical musician and computer whiz. He’s wired his room like a space station command center. He seems to have weathered puberty with ease, his voice is deeper, his personality composed. Steve just turned eleven. His life revolves around rocketry, soccer, and improvising stand up comedy routines in the kitchen. Still enjoying the comfortable androgyny of childhood, he is in denial about puberty being just around the corner. As his parents, we’re concerned about the changes puberty will bring, because we know how distressing it will be for him to begin to develop breasts in middle high school. And we’re sure that unless something is done to postpone or stop it , he will develop breasts and begin to menstruate, because this child who feels and behaves in every way like an ordinary boy, has a normal female body. When our second child was born, the doctor lifted the tiny, squirming baby so my husband, James, could see it clearly. I heard jubilation in James’ voice as he announced , “It’s Sarah!” That was the name we had decided to give our first baby girl. By the time we left the hospital 24 hours later, our daughter’s birth certificate read “ Sarah Elizabeth Anne.” Honouring both her grandmothers. During her first year of life, Sarah ate, slept, and watched the world through wide, wise eyes. An avid breast- feeder, she was almost never out of my arms, and almost never made a sound. This observant stillness erupted into a storm of vigorous activity shortly after age one, however accompanied by a torrent of grammatically complex sentences. Her father and I were delighted with her verbal skills but terrified by her tendency to seek out the most hazardous physical challenges. Our experience with her more cautious brother, Alex, hadn’t prepared us for this toddler who would climb to the top of anything with handholds and, later, the preschooler who loved to jump from the tallest branch of our backyard tree down to the roof of the garage. But we were very proud of this child. I had always wanted a daughter who would be independent. As a girl, I had been surrounded by a capable women living purposeful lives, my mother grandmothers and aunts, who loved me and made me feel very happy to be female. I grew up believing I could be and would do whatever in the world I wanted, and one of the things I wanted most was to be a mother. Birthing this lively, fierce, and thoughtful little girl gave me a chance to hand down the powerful woman-centered heritage that had cradled me. I wanted to create a safe, warm nest where I could mother my daughter, then set her free to fly. Sarah tested my resolve to set her free in a way that I had never imagined. On her third birthday, she tore the wrapping from one of her grandmother’s gifts and discovered a pink velvet dress trimmed in ribbons and white lace. I knew she wouldn’t wear it. She hadn’t voluntarily put on anything but pants since turning two, and this dress was totally impractical for playing the way Sarah played. Nevertheless, I was surprised by her reaction. She looked up, not unhappy, but puzzled and confused, and asked, “Why is Grandma giving me a dress? Doesn’t she know I’m not the kind of girl who wears dresses?” Then , with an air of great satisfaction at finding the solution to her problem, she added, “Just tell Grandma I’m a boy.” Initially, I assumed Sarah’s announcement was simply an attempt to communicate a clothing preference in language she thought grownups would understand. Then a few weeks later, Sarah said she wanted us to call her “Steve.” We thought this an odd but harmless request, and tried to remember to say “Steve” from time to time. Then we received a call from the Sunday school teacher who taught the three–year-olds at our church. She told us Sarah had asked her to cross out “Sarah” and write “Steve” on her nametag. We realized from this that the name “Steve” must be very important to Sarah, so we told the teacher it would be all right to call her “Steve” for the time being. At home we talked to Sarah about the difference between a nickname like “Steve” and her real name. But in our neighborhood and on the playground and in the park, Sarah began to introduce herself only as Steve. She never said “I want to be a boy” or “I wish to be a boy,” but always, “ I am a boy.” She demanded we use masculine pronouns when referring to her. When we forgot or refused, her face would screw up in a fury and exasperation and the offending parent was likely to be pinched or kicked by this usually loving Child. I stopped using pronouns altogether when Sarah was within earshot. The teacher at out Montessori preschool wasn’t as flexible as the Sunday school teacher. The children were learning to write their names, and “Sarah” was evidently the only name the teacher was willing to teach. This became an issue as Christmas approached. Four-year-old Sarah came home one day and asked how to spell “Steve” so she could write her letter to Santa. When I cautioned that Santa might not be able to find our house if the name on the letter wasn’t correct, she looked at me scornfully. “Santa Knows where I Live, Mummy. He knows my name is Steve.” I decided it was time to seek professional help. I had no idea why Sarah was convinced it was better to be a boy. Surely someone could tell me what I was doing wrong. And it must be something I was doing, or failing to do, because the children were in my care twenty-four hours a day. No one else had as many opportunities to influence them. My husband was successfully pursuing a corporate career that required attention eleven or twelve hours a day, and I, Very much by choice after fifteen years of work and academia, was a full-time mum. Our single-earner lifestyle, unusual in the nineteen-nineties, fulfilled the nostalgic fantasy of nuclear family life in the nineteen fifties. I baked whole-whet bread, cooked organically grown vegetables, read aloud to my children every day, and volunteered in Alex’s first- grade classroom two mornings each week when Sarah was in preschool. My first call for help was to our state university’s human development department. When I described my child and our family’s situation, the “human development specialist” who took the call laughed a reassuringly and said, “Don’t worry about a thing. Your child has a great imagination. Lots of bright , creative kids try out different role-plays at this age. She’ll grow out of it.” With relief, I took her advice, stopped worrying, and waited for her to grow out of it. For the next couple of years I supported my child’s wish to be called Steve. I no longer made her unhappy by insisting, “You’re a girl.” Instead I said, “you have a girl’s body though Mummy and Daddy know you feel like a boy.” But I still felt responsible for my second child not being able to accept that she was a girl, and set out to correct whatever misapprehensions she might have about becoming a woman. Because being a mother was such a joy for me, I told Sarah that what was wonderful about being a girl is that girls can grow up and have babies of their own. Hearing this, Sarah’s face darkened. She shuddered and said, I don’t wont to talk about that.” She asked if everyone had to get married and have babies when they grew up. When told no, of course not, she relaxed and said she was always going to live in our house with Alex. By age five, Sarah had given all her dresses to a neighbor girl the same age that loved dressing up. She wouldn’t put on any item of clothing without first asking if it was made for a boy or a girl. Only boys clothing would do. For Sarah, having an older brother ensured plenty of boys “hand- me-downs”. That saved me the discomfort of shopping for my daughter in the boy’s department of clothing stores. Even when Sarah wasn’t even with me, I felt compelled to confess to sales clerks that I was buying these shirts and pants and sport coats for my daughter who evidently thought it was better to be a boy. For some reason, I believed I owed perfect strangers an explanation of something I couldn’t explain to myself. Since traditional feminine dress and behavioral expectations were so distasteful to Sarah, I began to separate these “cultural trappings” from the biological fact of being female. I wanted Sarah to know she could be whatever kind of women she wanted to be; she had the right to define herself as a person without regard to anyone else’s expectations. Not only did she not have to get married and have children but she would never have to put on a dress or wear makeup or wear her hair in any particular style unless she wanted. She could continue to be physically active and competitive all her life. I looked for children’s books with strong female protagonists. Not at all athletic myself, I made friends with active “outdoorsy” women who could be better role models than I for this sports-minded kid. Whenever a woman was mentioned in the news for any type of achievement, I trumpeted it loudly for Sara’s ears. To encourage our child to develop a well-rounded self image, James would tell Sarah how pretty she was at the same time we were congratulating her on her strength and intelligence. We had read somewhere that the most successful professional women remember their fathers’ recognizing and valuing their attractiveness as well as their intellectual accomplishments. One day, after years of exposure to our “:women can do anything”: message, my seven year-old turned to me with tearful eyes and said, “mummy, you only like girls.” Suddenly, I realized that everything I’d been doing to help my child feel good about herself had instead made him feel that I didn’t accept or love who he really was. My child was Steve, a wonderfully creative, articulate, and very patient boy who had been waiting his whole life for his parents to see him. Today, Steve is known as a boy by his classmates. He is serving as president of the fifth grade and holds school records for pushups and sit-ups. A very supportive administrator solved the classic bathroom problem by establishing single-person restroom for Steve’s class. Instead of labeling them “boys” and “girls” , there is one for “kids” and one for “adults”. The principal of the middle school Steve will attend next year has agreed to list him as a boy on all school documents. I’m writing this under a pseudonym to protect his privacy. So we’ve come to the brink of puberty, when the disconnection between biology and gender threatens the psychological health Steve has so buoyantly maintained since his family acknowledged his reality and began to advocate for him in the world at large. It has been more than eight years since our three-year old first said, “just tell grandma I’m a boy.” That message has never varied. We’ve learned to listen to our child. He’s the only expert on his own experience. And although his parents and older brother find it helpful to describe him as transgendered, Steve doesn’t refer to himself that way. As far as Steve is concerned, he is simply a boy.			Home ·  About M.A.N. ·  Activism ·  F.A.Q.'s ·  Legal ·  Documents ·  Publications ·  Education ·  Health ·  Supporters ·  Links ·  Sitemap ·  Contact Related ·  Information ·  Kevin Case
	Last modified: 22 January 2003

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