Tonight, as neighborhoods are flooded with ghosts, goblins, princesses and pirates, one princess in my grandchildren’s neighborhood will be a 4-year-old boy from their preschool.
Halloween is a night of fantasy and imagination when we can cover our bodies in an entirely different image than the one beneath all that fabric. If he chose this costume, then let him wear it and have fun.
There are no Halloween rules on attire. I can be J.Lo or Jay Leno, albeit a more voluptuous version of either cultural icon.
The thing is, that when Halloween ends, the boy dressed as a beautiful princess will return to his preschool dressed as a girl in skirts, lovely sweaters, cute shoes and hair bows.
His parents made this choice for him so he can explore “the fluidity of his gender identity.”
At least that was the explanation in a September letter to parents of his preschool classmates, many of whom knew him last year as a boy.
Their letter asked other parents to encourage their children to accept this change.
When their son was 2, the letter said, he began to express a strong desire to play in “typical girl ways” and with girl toys. “In the last year and a half, he has also shown a strong desire to dress as a girl. … As parents we embrace and support all of who he is and want him to live authentically and without shame.”
Call me politically incorrect (and I’ll pull out the “older and wiser” card), but sending him to school in girls’ clothing so he can explore his gender identity defies my definition of common sense.
He’s just a kid, and that’s confusing enough at times.
As a toddler my son liked to pull off his jeans and the plastic coverups we used over diapers. He then put the plastic pants on his head and chased his siblings around the house dragging a bedraggled teddy bear as his weapon of choice.
We didn’t look for some hidden psychological meaning to these repeated wild romps. We just put his “plastics” back on his bottom and suggested he “play nice.”
My daughter, who preferred digging in the sandbox or a pile of dirt to playing with Barbies, is a soil scientist. She’s still our favorite “dirt girl.”
My children shared a common supply of toys (as do the grandkids). They didn’t sort them by gender each time they played. They just played with all of them.
Decades later, I’ve watched my grandkids play dress-up and cook in their toy kitchen as well as roll through mud puddles with the Tonka trucks. Playing in the dirt pile is an equal-opportunity event.
Yes, our 4-year-old boy prefers trucks to dolls, but he’s also played Polly Pockets with his sister on a rainy afternoon.
Their cousin, 3, is crazy about Matchbox cars, toy horses and watching NASCAR races on television with her dad.
They all know their bodies are beautiful, healthy and strong. They understand the physical differences between males and females. Learning about those differences has been easy and natural in a home where their parents use the correct words for the parts of the body and answer their questions in a straightforward manner.
However, discussing “fluidity in gender identity” with these children was never anticipated. My grandchildren seem unaware that the boy from last year’s class now appears to be a girl.
The parents say their son was “born this way” and to teach him to suppress his true self might lead to depression and low self-worth. They are right to be concerned.
His playmates at preschool have been accepting so far, but what happens in kindergarten next year and the primary grades that follow? What bathroom will he use?
Children, no matter how loving their nature, have the capacity to be very cruel. Dressed as a girl, he will one day be a target of that cruelty regardless of how many letters go home asking that he be allowed to live “authentically.”
If they decide he should return to boys clothing next year, will that not confuse him more?
As his parents wrote, “This is a journey for which there is no manual.”
In my children’s journey through life, I taught them to value people by their actions, their interests and their care for others. Expensive clothes and fancy toys are only outside trappings, I said. “It’s what’s in their heart that counts.”
I’ve watched them share those values with their own children. So if my grandchildren ask why the boy is wearing girls clothes to preschool, those are the values my son and daughter-in-law will use to frame their answer.
“Is he kind to others? Does he share well? Does he behave in class? Do you want him for a friend? Then his clothes don’t really matter,” they will say. “It’s something his parents want him to do.”
That answer should hold because they’re talking to 4-year-olds who don’t understand political correctness but do trust their parents to tell them the truth.
So here’s the treat I want tonight and every night, even when it’s not Halloween: I want a world where all parents and grandparents focus on keeping their children safe, healthy, understood and accepted for who they are and the values by which they live.
Linda Bryant Smith writes about life as a senior citizen and the issues that concern her now that she lives in a world where nothing is ever truly fixed but her income. You can e-mail her at ljbryantsmith@yahoo. com.
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