Hi, I am new here. I am a mother of a preteen child that is a boy but dresses like a girl (makeup and all). Being that I am single and don't have a strong social network of people, I looked online to try to find a place to educate myself and find support for myself, on this topic. So here I am!
At first I was pretty tense with my son going out looking like a girl (like to school where others know he is boy), and kept waiting for something bad to happen. It started slowly. He grew his hair first. He talked to me about his feelings about this. I started some basic research. In time his hair was longer and he went to school with feminine hair styles that I did up for him. Than it was clothes. Later on came the idea of makeup and nail polish, a dress, etc. So over the course of a year, here we are... my son looks like a girl most days. I was very tense unsure how to handle it when he went out.
Someone told me that rather than waiting anxiously, that I could run interference for him, to mention the elephant in the room, and talk about what everyone is seeing rather than trying to act like everything is normal while really holding my breathe that nobody rejects him for this, feeling anxious and just isolating myself. So I did and this has changed so much for me. Now I will see someone trying not to glance at my son and I will laugh and say "yes he is wearing a dress" (and at this point my son usually strikes a pose), we laugh and the other person seems at ease. I am surprised at how well people are responding (now that I am talking to them about it, like I am giving air around the situation that others seem unsure how to respond to). The fact I can bring it up, actually puts people at ease to talk to me about it and I am finding people are surprisingly supportive, so far anyway. I assume at some point some negative responses will be apparent from others but for now I am very surprised at how few people really care, in fact most think of him in positive terms such as "brave" "or "good for him being himself even with the knowledge that others may respond badly", or "wow that is so cool that he cares so little what others think of him, I wish I was more like that" etc.
I don't know where this is going and I guess time will tell. I think my greatest worry at this point is that, in my going with the flow, that I am too supportive and will "make him into" a transgender person and than maybe he becomes a female and than changes his mind and wants to go back to being a boy, and that is my fault somehow that I confused his life. I am confused if he could be transgender because he doesn't seem distressed at his body now, and he has started puberty. However he says he wants to be a girl (so much so that he is willing to face rejection to dress how he wants). He is young so I guess it is one day at a time and I will see where this goes. I guess I have some learning to do, and some reading to do around this site. But for now that is abit about me, so HI. I am looking forward to reading around this site and learning from you and hearing your stories.
