I'm specifically interested in telling my 8 year old son.... a video game lover and minecraft geek.
He knows that I and his mother are at odds (I'm sleeping in the basement. My young girls just think it's weird my pillow is gone and don't understand much more). I've brought it up hypothetically - he said he'd still love me if I turned into a girl. I've introduced my new, transgender bear (I changed a VT Teddy bear from boy to girl... using our other bear's girl clothes).
My son is very sensitive and very geeky, so I think he'll respond well to emotion rather than specifics.
He's not sleeping well and is very worried about what's going on. How and when should I sit him down and feel out his concerns and tell him the truth about what's going on? I'm pre-everything. I think I'm mentally ready for HRT (though yeah... that's probably a bit too soon), but not physically ready. His mom is still in grief and I'm also waiting for her sake. Yes we might split up, but that hasn't been fully decided yet. We're certainly not going to be in a physical or even husband/wife relationship if I take this further (and I'm 95% sure I will).
Thanks!
I'm not sure what the best way to tell your son is. Maybe play Minecraft with him and use a female skin? Maybe he'll come to the conclusion that you're really a woman?
I'll tell you what I did for my four year old (turned five today). I was already on hormones but not full time yet. First, at the suggestion of my therapist, I read him The Very Hungry Caterpillar (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Very_Hungry_Caterpillar) by Eric Carle (your son is possibly too old for this). I explained how as a boy I was like the caterpillar and I would change into a beautiful butterfly and become a girl. Was a little bit more in depth but that's the gist. ;)
I explained how I was born with a girl brain in a boy's body and assured him that neither he or the rest of our family was the same way. May or may not be true but don't want to stress him out. This was the simplest thing I could think of to explain my gender identity.
Our talk caused him to cry. He wanted me to stay a man because he knows me as a man. He was uneasy about it for a couple of weeks and only ever mentioned it to his mom and brother, if I asked him about it, he was fine with it.
One night when I was taking him to bed he said that he was said that I was changing. I explained to him how I needed to become a woman in order to be happy because I've been sad my entire life. His exact words were "Oh, I didn't know it makes you happy. If it makes you happy then you can change your body however you want."
He's been my biggest supporter ever since. He was the first person in my immediate family to gender me properly and everyday since then he tells me that I'm beautiful. He even made a Lego minifigure who was a girl but was born a boy like me. :)
I hope you can find any of that useful.
Amy