Gender Confused toddlers

The other day I had to make a mad dash in the rain from Liverpool Street station to the taxi rank. While I stood under my umbrella a woman joined the queue behind me. In toe, she had a small child which I would put at around 3 years old. Now this child left me with some serious questions.

I have a friend who has a daughter who calls herself by a boys name, insists on wearing boys clothes, insists on short hair, plays with boys toys.

Mother has tried putting girls clothes on her, giving her girls toys, growing out the hair. The result was the child cutting her own hair, fighting with boys at school to use thier toys and a wardrobe ripped to shreds.

The child has been psychoanalysed several times over. She feels as though she is a boy, she should be a boy and hates everything feminine about herself.

In olden days i expect the child would have been beaten until it submitted into a female role.

People should be less judgemental.

I am not sure how far I would go to agree with you!
But it does bring up something interesting!
Until he was 10 yrs old,Ernest Hemingway's parents dressed him in girl's dresses and with girls hair styles. Of course he overcompensated in his adult life by becoming excessively macho,and blew his brains out in his 60s!

This may be different than what the op wrote! If the child insists on the role change it is one thing,but to have it foisted on them by parents,is dangerous!

That's what I was trying to get at. If the little girl wants to be a boy get her a nice cropped haircut so she at least looks current. A flipping mullet though? What the heck?

a child aged 3 is perfectly capable of voicing what they want to wear or how they want thier hair. We assume the parent is dressing the child up this way but how do we know mum doesnt battle every day to dress the child gender appropriately?

I see it is just the hair style you are objecting to!

I saw an interesting tv show on this some time ago. A little boy who wanted to dress as a girl carry a purse play with dolls the works. It was upsetting to his father (a single parent) to see his son swaning about, the little boy put on quite a show of dancing like a girl,and showing off his wardrobe.

I think it's 110% perfectly fine.

If you honestly and truely think that you were born in the wrong body, who's to tell you different?

the kid looked odd. If it was the child's choice surely it's up the parents to try and teach it some sort of fashion sense.

I remember wanting to wear a bright pink skirt with this greeny blue top when I was about 5. It looked horrible and my mum stood me in front of the mirror and pointed how and why I looked like a commplete muppet.

How is a little kid going to learn if mum and or dad let go out dressed as a smurf everyday?

my mum works at a school and theres a girl called melissa there...around 7/8 years old and she thinks of herself as a boy too. shes been to see the "proper people" and been diagnosed as having that thing, where you feel like youre in the wrong genders body. she's told the teachers she feels she should be a boy also. she wears boys clothes, has a boys cut hair do, plays rough boyish games...
from what ive been told and from what ive witnessed when ive gone into the school to do vol., being a 'boy' makes her happy because its who she really is. her classmates i suppose are at an age where they dont feel the need to judge as much... unfortunately, its the teachers who are closed minded in her case, and the parents of the other children. i really worry for when she gets to high school... she wont have an easy ride at all and its a huge shame.

anyway, i agree...people should be less judgemental. in all aspects not just gender issues.

fare call.

my little boy wears heels and beaded necklaces and whatever other dress-up stuff his cousin has at her house... we've given him incredibley dorky haircuts as well...

so what? a child of two-three years old doesn't understand embarrassment anyway... if the parents want to dress them like a dork the kid not going to care; it's not going to scar them... and if the kid wants to pick out their own dorky outfits they should be allowed to do that too-- that's actually good for their independence, even if they look kind of dumb...

to me it's just silly to teach a child that they have to dress a certain way to be acceptable... it's a bit shallow, imho... there are much more important values that we need to instill into our kids than a fashion sense...

Hmm this reminds me of a movie about this guy Gwen Arujo who felt like he was actually a girl. Good movie. Yeah I've heard of that mental thing though. It has something to do with one part of the brain not developing into the right gender mentality or something.