re: 6 Year-old Transgender

quote:

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My Child Is Transgender: This Is How I Know

We were in bed, my arm around her shoulder, her body warm and soft. I gave my 4-year-old a squeeze. "Night-night, buttercup." So tired, as always, I slid one calf from the Spider-Man comforter, my foot onto the floor.

"What happens when we die?"

There was anxiety. I'm not ready for this. Not now. Then a deep breath. A sigh. "Well, honey..." A long pause.

Then, finally, "No one knows for sure. Some people believe that nothing happens. Others say you go to heaven and are reunited with your loved ones, and then there's reincarnation -- that you are born again as a baby and you start over."

I expected questions that I wouldn't be able to answer: What is heaven like? How does reincarnation work? Isn't nothing scary?

"I believe in reincarnation," my 4-year-old announced, confidently. "And when I come back, I'm going to be a boy, and my name will be Shane."

My breath caught in my throat. What did she just say?

Until that moment, I'd seen my rough-and-tumble girl as a tomboy who loved mud puddles, forts, superheroes, zombies, and Hot Wheels. Brave and true, she was 35 pounds of adorable awesomeness.

Or was it more than that? Didn't she always choose the boy pieces in Chutes and Ladders? Weren't her closest friends boys? Did she ever once play with the My Little Pony she got for Christmas? Hadn't every pink or purple outfit ended up in the Goodwill bag, unworn? Didn't she enjoy it when other people mistook her for a boy?

Did she want to be a boy so badly that she was looking forward to death and a do-over?

It's nothing. I'm just tired. Don't make too much of it.

I gave her a squeeze. I rolled out of her bed and soon I was climbing into my own and falling asleep.

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