Explaining to Young Children

[doctorinkwell]

So, my 8-year-old brother uses my Minecraft account. Today, he walks into my room and asks me to change the model of my character to not be a girl since I use a female-styled skin on the "Alex" body type. It's not a terribly big deal, so I just changed the skin back to the default "Steve" skin since I don't use my account a whole lot. However, this got me thinking about a few things.

He does not know anything of me feeling transgender (born male; do not want to be a boy), and I don't express myself as a female a whole lot around the house. I do little things like paint my nails and wear earrings, and he does not seem to care. I've just avoided talking to him about it since I figure he'll know as time goes on and things change.

However, that's the thing: what experiences have people had with little kids? What are their reactions? I know kids tend to take these things a lot better than most adults, but it's still an unknown for me. I wouldn't expect any monumental reactions from my little brother, but I'm still curious. I'm just not ready to tell him about it until I've made more progress for myself.

Again, I don't feel he'd react badly at all. I'm just curious as to how other little kids have reacted to it.

And perhaps when I do come out to him, it'll serve as a very valuable lesson on all the different type of people in the world. I have an older brother, and he's gay, and my younger brother barely batted an eye at it. He just said, "Okey dokey then."

- Sam

[Sydney_NYC]

I just had this experience last week with my wife's high school friend's 7 year old daughter. Kids are a lot easier to tell than most adults realize. Just keep is simple. I usually say that I was born with a female brain and a male body. So I changed my body to match my brains. It's that simple. I posted the scene on this forum last week, but here is how it went:

.....

Most of my wife's family had already seen me after I transitioned with a lot positive support. One of my wife's friends has a 7 year old daughter that has seen my twice since I transitioned but she never asked about my change even though she saw me a month prior to transitioning so we just let it go and she has just called me Ms Sydney. So tonight she asks if I was my wife's cousin because she thought we looked alike but I was much taller. (I'm 6'7") Her mother wasn't sure what to say, so the subject got changed. So then she asks my wife, "What happened to your husband?" We weren't sure what to say, so we told her it was complicated and changed the subject. She then says "Don't change the subject mom, where did he go?" My wife and I are cracking up and we just said it was complicated. She runs into the other room thinking we were talking about adult things. So I tell her mother, tell her whatever your comfortable with. She apologized in that she hadn't thought of it, but she wanted to raise her child open minded. She calls her daughter back in. Here is how the conversation went:

7 Year Old's Mother: "Come over here so we can tell you what happened to her (my wife) husband."
Wife: "Sydney used to be my husband, but is now my wife!"
7 Year Old: "What are you talking about?"
Me: "I used to be her husband!"
7 Year Old: "No, your kidding me, that's not true."
Wife and 7 Year Old's Mother: "Yes, it's true, she used to be him."
7 Year Old: "I don't believe you, your teasing me."
Me: "Yes, it's true, I used to be him."
7 Year Old: "Wait, but your a girl!!"
Me (after being told it was OK to explain it from her mom): "I was born with a female brain and a male body, it's very rare, but it does happen. I decided to change my body to match my brain to be my true self, but yes I'm a girl."
7 Year Old: "Oh, that makes sense now. I wondered why you were always around her. (pointing to my wife.) I though maybe her husband was hiding upstairs this whole time."
Me: "Do you have any questions about it?"
7 Year Old: "I like you much better as a girl and your very pretty. I want to be tall like you when I grow up."
Me: "Thank you, I like myself as a girl better too and being tall is pretty cool."

Of course she continued to gender me female the rest of the evening.

And that's all there was to it.

[iKate]

I told my kids that I am transgender and I explained what it was that I'm really a girl on the inside and not a man. They asked once or twice why I'm wearing a dress but they don't really do it anymore.

[Felix]

My experience is that little kids are way easier to talk to than adults about identity topics. A child will tend to just take whatever you say at face value and go with it.