Hello Again!

It’s been a long time since I have written anything.  I don’t have a great excuse, other than this year just got away from me.  Between three kids, sports, after-school activities, and my own job, the school year just flew by.  And then summer has been filled with camping, beach trips, visits with friends, a wonderful wedding and so much more.  But, I wanted to take the time and reintroduce why I have this blog.  And hopefully, I can get better at updating more frequently.

About four years ago, when Hayden was around 3, we started to notice how much she preferred to wear an Elsa dress instead of her normal boy clothes.  She would spend hours in this dress.  Play in the mud, wear it in the snow, wear it all over the house.  But we drew the line at wearing it out in public.  She was a boy and we had to have boundaries after all.  

But the older she got, the more insistent she was about wearing dresses.  She wanted to play with all of the dolls and sparkly things.  She still liked playing with trucks with her brothers but preferred dolls and anything that she deemed beautiful.  We had switched daycares when she was 3, and the daycare teachers told us she was having meltdowns at school.  This was unlike Hayden.  Hayden was a go-with-the-flow kid.  She always had a smile on her face.  But around 3, that seemed to stop.  She didn’t want to participate in activities and only played with other kids when the dress-up clothes were out.  Once she put on a dress, her entire mood seemed to change.

When we were at the store and she saw the girl section, she would tell us how much she wanted all the beautiful dresses.  Going to Pre-K every morning was a fight.  She absolutely hated the clothes we picked out for her.  She begged to wear a dress.  We compromised with an Elsa shirt.  She wanted to wear it every day.  The older she got, the more vocal she became about what she liked and didn’t like.  She often said if she were a girl she could wear dresses all the time.

Once the pandemic hit, the fighting over what to wear stopped.  She wasn’t going to school, so she lived in her dress-up dresses.  Her whole demeanor began to change.  The fighting about clothing stopped.  She spent hours twirling around in her dresses.  She showed up to her class zoom meetings in a tiara and a princess dress.  Her smile spread from ear to ear.  One day she asked to get rid of all her boy clothes.  She didn’t need them anymore.  My happy, confident kid started to return with the dresses.  

Around this time I began to do my own research.  I read books, watched documentaries, looked at other blogs.  I wasn’t alone.  Hayden wasn’t the only child who was going through this.  My husband and I wanted our child to be happy and confident.  And clearly, the boys clothes were causing her to crawl into her shell.  We talked about it endlessly.  We reached out to therapists and other groups.  We worried constantly about how other kids would treat her, how the world would treat her.  We didn’t want her to be hurt.  But, we soon realized, we were hurting her by not letting her express herself.  Gender is a spectrum.  It is not simply male and female.  There is so much more to it.  It’s been understood for hundreds of years, but we were just discovering it in 2020.   And the boundaries we had created were for our comfort, not for hers.

Every parent wants to do what’s best for their child.  And the confidence we have seen in Hayden has been inspiring.  By simply loving her for who she is has helped her come out of her shell.  It’s a world of difference from the withdrawn little boy who was having meltdowns at daycare.  It’s even a world of difference from the first time she put on that Elsa dress.  Unless you are living it, it can be hard to fully understand what it means to be transgender.  And I know people judge us for the way we are living our life.  And I’m sure I judged others before I fully understood everything they were going through as well.  But, what is under my child’s clothes doesn’t matter.  It’s not a topic that is up for discussion.  No one asks my boys what is under their pants, so why should it matter what is under my daughter’s pants? The only thing that matters is that she is happy, healthy, and confident.  Her friends love her for who she is.  Most of her friends have been with her since before she transitioned.  And they seem to love her even more for being her true self.  

So, if I’ve learned anything from this journey so far, it’s that we should all live the life we are most comfortable with.  We should accept people for who they are.  People should love whoever they love.  And unless you are going through it yourself, you can’t fully understand the choices families make.  Everyone is just trying to do their best, raise their families the best way they know how to.  And the confidence my child has, shows me that we are doing something right in raising her.