OMG it’s happened for the first time – a friend of a friend has been given my details in the hope that I can give them some help and advice with dealing with a gender creative child. I feel so happy that I can be there to support another parent and be the source of information / strength that I longed for in the beginning!
I guess a Ben update is in order – Ben is still Ben, he is nearly 5 and getting on amazingly well at school. His peers appear to have no problem with his gender and he seems to have been accepted as one of the boys.
He tells me he has been using the boys toilets at lunchtime (something that I really want to feel okay about but am really not sure if I am!) when I quizzed him about it his reply was “I don’t stand up mum because I don’t have a willy, I just go in the cubicle obviously” (that’s me told) I have decided that at this point as they are only 4/5 it does not matter if he uses the boys toilets however have had to have a discussion about private parts and not showing them to others! (something I did not expect to be doing this early!)
We have started our sessions with the Gender specialist and although at the moment due to Ben’s age we are in a watch, wait and see situation it feels good to know that we have the support there if / when we need it. It was not a straightforward process as it required a doctors referral to a child psychologist (which took 21 weeks) who then did an assessment and decided that no Ben was not mentally ill (surprisingly) he just did not feel comfortable with the body he was assigned at birth and who then finally refered us to the specialist. Fantastic! It does however make me sad that my own doctors reaction to me saying I thought my child had gender dysphoria was “well I have children, they want to be different things all the time, just tell her she’s a girl and stop letting her wear boys clothes” Helpful! Luckily I had read up on this via a parents group online and politely asked the doc if she had ever worked with young people with gender issues – obviously she had not so again politely I asked her for the referral to someone who might know what they were talking about!
We have our first parents meeting in the summer – I am very unsure how I feel about this, I don’t know if I want to be forced into being friends with people just because we have children who have similar issues but at the same time I am interested to speak to people who have been through it and know what to expect next . . . . I would also love Ben to meet some other children like him, so he know’s that he is not the only boy in the world who was born a girl!