I have triplet seven-year-old cousins who don't know that I'm trans yet, mostly because I haven't exactly come out to my aunt and uncle. They live in a big house with my grandma and other uncle who I DID tell, so they probably know by now, I just haven't felt confident enough to sit down and tell them.
My cousins are always asking me why I look like a boy, why I have body hair, why I wear boxers, why I keep cutting my hair... and I just tell them it's because I like looking this way, which is true, so. Yeah. I'm going to sit down and tell them next week, and then probably tell my aunt when she gets home.
I'm going to explain that when I was born, my mom thought that I was a girl because my body looked like a girl's body. She put me in dresses and made me grow my hair long but I never liked it because it never felt right to me. Then I'll probably ask the boys how they would feel if I put them in a dress and made their hair grew long and then sent them outside to play. They'll probably say "ew, gross!" and that they wouldn't like it. I'll ask them if it would feel "right".
Now, I know I'm relying on stereotypes here, but I don't feel comfortable discussing genital dysphoria with seven-year-olds. I'm sure we can talk about it if they ever ask again when they're older.
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It's a heck-of-a-lot easier to explain things to me niece and nephew. My niece is turning four in a month and my nephew just turned five. I pretty much caught them during playtime when I was babysitting and told them that I'm actually a boy. I kind of said something like 'my mommy THOUGHT I was a girl, but now she knows I'm a boy.' They just accepted it and asked a few innocent questions that I don't remember.
It's weird, but if i ask them "am I a girl or a boy?" they'll say boy, and they know that you use she/her pronouns for girls and he/him pronouns for boys; however, my niece corrected a little boy we were with when he used male pronouns and was like "no, she's a SHE" so it's kind of like I'm a exception to the rule, ha ha! I'll need to explain that further, and they still use my birth name more often than my chosen name, but they're getting a lot better with it, considering their dad's family and all the neighbors don't know that I'm trans.
