Raising Your Kids

[Guest i is Sam :-)]

After your experience with trandsgenderedness (whether it be as a trans person, SO or parent, etc.) Would you be more inclined to raise you children more androgynously, so that they could find what was comfortable for them while they were young.

Imma try and add a pole

That's all the questions I'm allowed, but if I could add one more to the poll it would be,

If you had 2 kids of different genders would you treat them differently?

[Guest van-na]

Hi Sam,

<<hug>>

I was blessed with two wonderful children.

A boy(Brian) @ 16 and A girl(Chantal) @ 14.

My wife picked both of their names.

They both know the truth about me.

I have tried many times to talk to them about transgendered issues, but they don't seem to care much.

Sure I treat them both differently; they are two different people.

vanna

[Guest Pól]

What do you mean by 'differently'? Treating two children exactly the same is not necessarily equal. Different people have different needs.

[Guest Donna Jean]

What do you mean by 'differently'? Treating two children exactly the same is not necessarily equal. Different people have different needs.

How true......different needs....

But, Sam....I really like the way you constructed the poll...

Allow

Encourage

Two totally different things...

"Encourage" seems to be steering while "Allow" is letting whatever happens, happen...

I like that you did it that way!

HUGGS!

Donna Jean

[Carolyn Marie]

Interesting poll, Sam. Good one!

The results, while still small, show results all over the place in the second half. It will be interesting to see the results again when more people

have taken it.

Carolyn Marie

[Guest Robin Winter]

I chose both allow and encourage for all but the last one. When I think of encourage, I don't think of forcing them, I think of it as if I'm saying "give it a try, who knows", because I think gender stereotypes need to be put down. They are, after all, why life can be so difficult for the GLBT community, n'est pas?

[Guest Janis]

Very good poll. I was a little confused by the 2nd questions. I guess I was looking at if from the stand point of the child is trans. I mean I wouldn't start talking about being trans to a child that my be showing no signs, unless of course they asked. That said, only one of my children will have the vaguest memories of me presenting as male. There will come a time that I need to disclose this information to them. I probably will not discuss my transition with them until they either ask about it or they are much older. On that line of thinking if they ask at like 6 years old I will need to discuss at their level of understanding.

Janis

[Guest ~Brenda~]

Hi Sam,

As a parent of three children (two girls, one boy) I can say that my wife and I always had the philosophy that we would allow them to be who they are with nuturance. We treated them like flowers giving them all that they needed to grow into healthy well adjusted adults. Which now they are, all living their dreams.

All of my kids know who I really am, at this point, and they all understand what being transgendered means. They and I appreciate the uniqueness of people. You cannot treat everyone the same because they are not, regardless of being transgendered.

Your questions are thoughtful and I am sure that you will make a terrific parent some day

Brenda

[Guest sarah f]

I too have 3 kids like Brenda. Me and my wife had to both agree on the names and let me tell you that is hard. We finally came up with Madison, Katelyn and Andrew. We gave them more traditional names based on their sex. We treat them as individuals and let them decide what they like and don't like. You can't force something on a kid as most will rebel when they get older. You just have to let it run its course. If they decied later that they want to be different, I will be right there to support them.

Love,

Sarah F

[Guest i is Sam :-)]

By would you treat them differently I guess I mean would you offer certain opportunities to one child not the other like. Things like would you let a boy go somewhere by themself at a younger age than a girl. Tell a boy he is the "man" of the house and has to look after his sister. Would you encourage girls to be polite and quite, while excusing "boystrous" behaviour from a boy? Would you let a girl see a gory movie?

[Guest sarah f]

As a parent, you try to direct them in the easiest possible road for them to be happy. You teach them the ways of their gender. I never want them to go through what I have all of my life. If that means steering them around, then that is what I will do. If they ever start to show signs then I will let them know what I went through and let them know that I am ok with anything that they decide to do in life. All you can give your kids is your unconditional love.

As far as going out by themselves, I don't think you can let any kids out on their own anymore. There are too many child abductors out there. They will have to wait until they are teens before they will be able to go anywhere without adult supervision. That may sound to strict but I am not going to have my kids be a victim either.

I will let them watch movies when they are old enough to realize what they are watching is only a movie.

I also will teach each of my kids to be polite. I can't stand rude kids that don't respect their elders. I was raised that way and so will my kids.

Love,

Sarah F

[Guest Ryles_D]

We plan to raise any kid we have gender neutral. By the time they're old enough to start school they'll hopefully have decided which one they prefer- most kids seem to show the signs very young. We really can't lie about "everyone's a boy or a girl" or "people with [genitals] grow up to be [gender]", because both of us are neutrois and have very vague gender roles. Besides, they'll get enough of that from television and stories. Even the most progressive TV shows are fairly insistant on gender.

[Guest i is Sam :-)]

As far as going out by themselves, I don't think you can let any kids out on their own anymore. There are too many child abductors out there. They will have to wait until they are teens before they will be able to go anywhere without adult supervision. That may sound to strict but I am not going to have my kids be a victim either.

Not to get too far off topic, but actually the percentage of children abducted or abused by strangers is tiny, it is much, much, much, much, much more likely to be a family member or close friend.

Whether you find that statistic comforting or not I don't know.

[Guest Pól]

By would you treat them differently I guess I mean would you offer certain opportunities to one child not the other like. Things like would you let a boy go somewhere by themself at a younger age than a girl. Tell a boy he is the "man" of the house and has to look after his sister. Would you encourage girls to be polite and quite, while excusing "boystrous" behaviour from a boy? Would you let a girl see a gory movie?

I dunno if you can know this without having a specific child in mind. I mean, in a purely theoretical sense, you might have answers that kind of function as your principles, but once you get specific things can change. For example if you have a 12 year old son and a 6 year old daughter, and you were running out to get milk for about 10 minutes, I could see telling him that while you're gone he's "the "man" of the house and has to look after his sister." Boy girl twins -- totally different scenario. See what I mean?

I don't want children, though, so the question is kind of moot for me, I guess.

[Guest i is Sam :-)]

Interesting how split the response is to the first question.

The reason I would give a child an androgynous name, is because whether they like it later or not, they can change it, and if they did turn out to be TG, changing your name almost always means having to provide people with your old name for a while, and in the case of some documentation like passports your old name is printed on them. So an old name that was androgynous would look innocent, people would assume it belonged to whatever gender the new name is.

A lot of us also grow up hating our names because of the association, this might still happen even with an andro name but maybe not, and giving a child one less reason to hate themselves seems like a good thing.

[Sally]

I would not give an androgynous name because that is sort of like leading them much like all of the encourage versus allow.

It is very important to me that they be given the information and allowed to do with it what they will, if they are transgendered then they will feel free to tell me and we can deal with finding a new name at that time.

Acceptance of everyone begins with knowledge - if you don't know that someone exists you can not accept them.

Love ya,

Sally

[Guest i is Sam :-)]

Alex, Chris, Sam, Cameron, Riley, Tyler, Jamie etc.

These are all names that sound fine on a boy and cute on a girl. I don't think it's leading at all, you don't have to tell them why you picked a unisex name

Leading would be naming your child, male or female, Princess Tinkerbell Happyfeet, and telling the how you always wanted a daughter to go shopping with and get your nails done with and pushing them to compete in gymnastics because you were almost statewide champion and then you broke your knee and could compete again.

Or always wanted a son to carry on the family name etc.

That is the kind of crap that makes kids believe they have to act as something they're not their whole lives so as not to disappoint their parents.

[Guest CharlieRose]

I actually am not planning on raising my kids with too much preparation for "just in case" they might be transgender. I've heard that significant gender variance only occurs in about 1 in 1000 people, so 99.9% of the time, if a kid is born with girl parts, saying, "It's a girl!" will turn out to be correct.

Of course, as far as activities go, I'm going to let them do what they like, perhaps encourage them to try things boys/girls don't usually do, but if they don't like it, I won't force them.

[Guest Ryles_D]

I would not give an androgynous name because that is sort of like leading them much like all of the encourage versus allow.

I've known a ton of cisgendered, heteronormative parents who give fairly androgynous names to their children, especially girls. If parents who would disown their kid for being trans are allowed to do it- so am I.

We aren't saying name a female child Andrew because "Well, 'Andy' is okay for girls" or a male child Alexandra because "'Alex' is okay for boys". But there's nothing wrong with naming a kid of any gender "Alexis" or "Shawn" or "Ariel" or "Shannon" or even "Kyle" or "Ryan"- and I've known both boys and girls who use those spellings. I'd check the census data for the years before my kid's birth to see if the name still is acceptable for their birth sex, but that's about it.

How is giving a perfectly normal and everyday, though technically unisex, name leading them?

[Guest i is Sam :-)]

Oh and Robin, soooo cute as a girls name.

And there is nothing forcing you to put Axelander or Alexandrea on their birth certificate, Alex is perfectly fine, and they can choose if they want to use the full masculinised or feminised version. Or even call your child by the gendered version, at least until they get old enough to tell you they don't like it.

It's also reasonable acceptable to give your child a middle name that can be either gender regardless of what their born as, say if it's in honour of a loved one who passed away etc. So you could name you boy with a first name unisex and a middle name male, and they can be called by whatever they prefer, but it still won't cause the same problems on paperwork in the future if they do turn out TG.

I just feel sorry for people who's passports will forever say

Name: Claire Previous Names: Johnathan