Won't Someone Think of the Children?

In October, CNN published this pretty good article about a family made up of three adults and their nine-year old daughter. Of course, the responses across the internet ranged from supportive to appalled, and many on toward the "appalled" side of the spectrum purported to be about the writers' concerns over a child being raised in such a family. Some folks assumed that the situation was de facto unhealthy; others saw it as unstable, and wondered what it would do to the girl when her family broke up and the third partner, who is not one of her biological or legal parents, disappeared from her life.

Whenever an unconventional relationship comes up, onlookers always express concern about the children. Whether it's the mixed-race child of a biracial couple, or the black child adopted into a predominantly white family, single women or men becoming parents by choice, lesbians and gay men parenting, or non-monogamous people practicing non-monogamy while raising kids, the same questions come up: Is this good for the child? Won't it be harmful to them? What about the social stigma they'll face? Is this family--whether of gay men or of three people in a partnership or a couple that dates outside the relationship--too inherently unstable to raise children?

This concern is so common that I have even had a polyamorous friend tell me he thought it was wrong for parents to practice polyarmory while raising their children.

I, of course, have several thoughts about this.

Gosh, I Never Thought of That Before

I can't tell you how many people have told me that the Tiny Tornado might change his mind about his gender expression. People somehow believe that the first thought that pops into their heads when they hear about him is something that hasn't occurred to us in all the years we've been living in the situation.

The "what about the kids" questions about polyamory feels similar. Whether people pay due attention to the needs of their kids is independent of whether they're monogamous. Surely you can think of plenty of examples of monogamously married people who think only of their own wants and needs and not of their children's; I was raised by such people, and I'm pretty sure my brother is another such parent. Whether people take good care of their kids' physical and emotional needs is about whether they take good care of their kids' physical and emotional needs, not about whether they do that as a single parent, part of a married couple, as part of a trio, as someone who's been celibate for decades or someone who has a new sexual partner every time the moon is full.

This is why I'm such a fan of the good-faith question. Because I'm perfectly happy to answer those. "How have you dealt with being a parent and being polyamorous," for instance, is a good-faith question, and I can tell you a story to help answer it. "Don't you worry about your kids?" is not a good faith question, because it tells me that you think the answer is "No, I don't. I think only of my own gratification." But that's not how it is.

Last year, I dated a person I'll call Lovely Girlfriend. It was a long-distance relationship that started at a Quaker gathering, and the first time I visited her, we were sitting in her kitchen drinking tea and she said to me, "So, I'd like to talk about breaking up."

"So soon?" I said. "I didn't think we were there yet."

She wasn't dumping me. But she wanted to talk to me about how to be with each other so that if we stopped dating (and we did, about a year later), we could do it well. We both have kids; we like each other's kids, and our kids are friends. At Gatherings, we've done a lot of shared kid-activities and reciprocal child care. We have a lot of friends in common, and a relatively small, tight-knit community of people is an important part of both our lives. Lovely Girlfriend wanted to talk about how we would be with each other so that, whether dating turned out to be a long-term thing or not, we could still care for each other's kids, and we could continue to share our community.

It boiled down to being decent, and honest. And I think we were. Next time we see Lovely Girlfriend and her kids, the children might or might not sense that the relationship between us is different than it was. But her younger kid will still hug me hello (I hope), I'll still be happy to take the whole passel somewhere fun while Lovely Girlfriend fulfills a work commitment, she'll still sit with my younger kids in the cafeteria while I have a committee meeting, and the two of us will still be glad of the moments we can steal to be together in the busyness of a gathering. She'll still be one of my kids' grown-up friends, and mine, too.

Things aren't always that smooth, because people aren't always decent and honest, especially if strong emotions get involved. But that leads me directly to my next point:

My Kids Have Lost Precious Grownups. But It Hasn't Been Anybody I Was Dating

I think people who worry about relationship instability in polyamorous relationships imagine that we're doing something like telling the kids, "Hey, kids, here's Lovely Girlfriend. She's your new Other Mommy. Give Other Mommy a great big kiss!" And then a year later, Other Mommy is gone and the children are bereft.

We haven't done it that way, though. Lovely Girlfriend and I, for instance, were friends before we started dating, and we didn't announce the change to the kids, though they did notice we were visiting each other a lot more. Once when I hung up the phone, Word Boy said, "Was that Lovely Girlfriend?" and I said, "No, it was my doctor. Why?" He said, "Because usually you only answer if it's Lovely Girlfriend." So, you know, they do notice things. But they don't get real-time updates every time a relationship shifts a bit in one direction or another.

I always want to tell people, too, that being monogamous doesn't necessarily protect your kids from these kinds of losses. It hasn't protected mine. Raider used to have a friend, one of his best friends since college, who was very involved with us and our kids for years. She was so close that the kids called her "Aunt Cowrie," and my photo albums are full of pictures of her giving Baby Lego Savant bottles, playing with him, reading books to him, helping him plant flowers. She was the one who saw Word Boy's first steps, hanging out in our living room with him while I cooked dinner, and the turtle-shaped sandbox we recently got rid of was a gift from her.

And then she disappeared. She told Raider that she disapproved of our parenting so strongly that she couldn't bear to stay around and watch us ruin the children. And, just like that, one of the most important people in my kids' lives was gone.

But we still had Farina, one of my best friends, and her family. Now that was a close, stable relationship--a few years ago, Raider commented that our families had become to intertwined he didn't think we could get rid of each other if we tried. We lived about an hour apart, but visited back and forth regularly. For most of a school year, I kept their oldest son two days a week while they were experimenting with homeschooling, but that was OK because he was one of the Lego Savant's best friends. Farina repaired my front door and put new screens in the breezeway windows. I lent her money to buy her first rowing shell, and she lent me money when we were having trouble paying our mortgage during the custody fight with TT's birthfather. We took vacations together. Farina's wife became a good friend in her own right.

And then some problems Farina had with PTSD and depression got worse, and she began to lie to me, and to be verbally abusive. When I tried to talk to her about the situation, she became more entrenched, describing herself as my victim and redoubling her attacks on my character. I ended the relationship, and one more time the kids--and I--lost someone important.

You all probably know, as well, that last Christmas my dad, the kids' only surviving grandparent, disowned me for letting the Tiny Tornado live as a boy. I don't expect to see him again.

My point is, my kids have already suffered the kinds of losses that people worry about when polyamory comes up. But not because I was dating someone. We could have avoided these losses by not having best friends and a dad, but that hardly seems reasonable. (And I don't go around asking people with friends and parents whether they've really thought about the risks.)

Let Me Sum Up

My point, and it seems like such an obvious one that I can't believe I've taken so many words to make it, is that, in some ways, there is nothing special about the relationships you have when you're polyamorous, and the path they take is as varied as the paths taken by monogamous marriages, close friendships, relationships with biological family, dating relationships you have when you're single. As parents, we're making decisions all the time about who is part of our children's lives: whether to take them back to Miserable Small Town for another crappy tension-filled Penn family Thanksgiving, for instance (thank you, Dad, for solving that one for me); whether to introduce them to a certain friend; whether to trust them with that coach or that teacher. We make decisions ourselves about who to trust with our own hearts. Sometimes we get it right; sometimes we get it wrong. Sometimes we get it right and it still goes wrong. Sometimes somebody you thought would be there forever, isn't, and there's nothing you can do about it.

I still trust people. I trust Raider to the ends of the earth. I think we'll be together forever, but I believe that even if we're not, he will always be a great dad and a decent person. I have a girlfriend now that my kids adore, and I trust her with them. I trust her with their hearts. She might break mine, but she'll always take care of theirs.

But what I trust most is myself. I trust me to take good care of my children. I trust me to stand by them. I trust me to get into good relationships, and to get out of bad ones without drama. I trust me to explain things to my kids, as clearly and compassionately as I can, and I trust me to stand by them as they work out any confusion or sadness they feel. I trust me to do these things because I have done these things. I trust them to be smart, loving, emotionally whole, and resiliant, because they have always been these things.

There will always be losses. That is the cost of loving. I hope my kids come to feel, as I do, that the loving is worth it.

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Not Actually a Boy, and Here Are the Reasons Why

When I said the other day that I was going to try to do a post every day in August, I was hoping to pull my daily readership back into the low (very low) triple digits, which is where it lives when I'm posting regularly. And then my article at Friends Journal about the Tiny Tornado's gender history went viral. I don't know how many total hits it's gotten, but nearly over 14,000 people have "liked" it on Facebook, and it's been reblogged and linked to all over the place, including at It Bets Better, which must have given it a big boost.

The article has driven traffic to this blog as well. I got nearly 4000 hits on Friday, though today we're down to a mere 1500 (so far). I figure today's decline marks the end of my fifteen minutes, and I'm trying to accept it with good grace. By tomorrow I'll be a has-been, and by Tuesday, I hope to be poised for a comeback.

The response has been overwhelmingly good, but of course we've had the usual assortment of judgment and ignorance, and one or two actual trolls. A favorite activity for commentators is explaining why the Tiny Tornado could not possibly be a boy. We have heard all of these theories before, and we're going to hear them again. Here's what I think of them as of today.

1. Sexism

This is a common theory. It goes like this: The Tiny Tornado, observing the sexism that is rampant in our culture and recognizing the limited options available for women, decides to be a boy to protect himself and to give himself more opportunities.

Why I love it: A child who is two or three is not imagined to know enough about his internal landscape to express a preference about his own gender expression, but is nonetheless somehow able to analyze and interpret the cultural landscape in a sophisticated way and make a rational decision to maximize his privilege within it.

2. He is emulating his older brothers.

Another popular contender. In this one, the Tiny Tornado is so enamored of his older brothers that he abandons his innate and biological sex and gender in order to be more like them.

Why I love it: The Tiny Tornado, an independent, assertive, confident, fashion-conscious, extroverted athlete who doesn't sit still even when watching TV, is almost nothing like his older brothers. If he were emulating his older brothers, he'd consider extended periods of "alone time" to be essential to his functioning; he'd sit still for hours on end, building with Lego, reading, or playing Minecraft on-line with friends. If he wanted to be like Word Boy, he'd be more interested in dissecting animals than in training them, and if he wanted to be like the Lego Savant, he'd have a passion for history. His older brothers are wonderful kids and well worth emulating. But the Tiny Tornado is a force unto himself.

3. He's never seen a girl playing hockey or wearing an oxford shirt.

In other words, he simply lacks role models for the kind of tomboy he really is.

Why I love it: The theorist imagines that ze knows what the Tiny Tornado has and has not seen, and also that something as minor as a girl playing hockey (which he owns a book about) or wearing an oxford shirt (which he has seen many times on the older girls down the street who dress very well) could shape a person's entire identity. It would be like diverting the mighty Mississippi with a popsicle stick.

3. He doesn't know that being a lesbian is an option.

To be fair, this is actually part of the gender pathway for many gender-variant kids. It is not uncommon, I am told by people who know a lot more than I do about these things, for a kid to approach puberty, begin to feel sexual attractions, become aware of lesbians and gay men through the media, and realize that they can resolve their sense of not-fitting by coming out rather than by transitioning.

Why it doesn't work for the Tiny Tornado: many if not most of our closest friends are in same-sex relationships, including TT's much-loved Uncle Toots, who is practically a third parent to him. In addition, the two women next door, who are the best neighbors in the world and also TT's mentors in the world of dog training, are an affectionate couple who love each other very much and are not exactly conventional in the femininity department.

4. He wore a Spiderman t-shirt the summer he was two, and wanted short hair.

Nobody actually thinks that wearing a Spiderman t-shirt and cutting his hair makes TT a boy. But they think I think it.

Why I love this: Because these people simply don't know us. I identified as a lesbian for much of my adult life, and have a whole string of butch lovers in my past (and maybe not only in my past). If there is one thing I know about women, it's that they can have short hair and shop in the menswear department. In fact, I'd say that one of the things I love about women is that they can have short hair and shop in the menswear department.

Also: although I currently have luxuriant curly hair, this is me in the summer of 2009, holding my newborn nephew. Why did I have that haircut? Because I wanted to. Am I a girl? Yes.

Su Penn, who identifies as a girl, rocks her buzz cut.

5. His parents are unable to imagine anything beyond the gender binary.

I'm being playful in this post, so I won't rant about how people seem to believe that transgender kids somehow have an obligation to be "ungendered" or "bigendered" that their non-trans counterparts don't share. I will say that I do my best to imagine what is beyond the gender binary because people I love live there. And maybe the Tiny Tornado isn't fully aware of the option to be both/and or neither/nor or "other," but he has encountered the possibility. Our kids met a both/and adult who was helping in the children's program at TransHealth, and meeting zer challenged all three of them in ways that we are still having conversations about.

6. His parents are pushing him, deliberately or subconsciously, into a male identity for self-aggrandizement or to further their own political agenda.

Yeah, OK, this one is totally true.

Ha, no. Just kidding. If anything, our love of GLBTQ people (including our own selves) and our sense that we would find it somewhat satisfying if one or more of our kids grew up to be G, L, B, T, and/or Q led us to hold back, to not take steps like suggesting male pronouns or a name change until the Tiny Tornado brought them up or was offered them by other adults, because we didn't want to push him. We were always supportive, I think, but we really forced him to be very clear with us. If you want to know more about just how slow I really was to let go of the bright, sassy girl I was sure he was going to grow into, you might want to read the story of the daisy dress in this post from last August.

I sometimes still feel a little sad when I see a black girl of 6 or 7 or 8, with her hair done up nice in braids and beads, wearing something bold like a purple skirt with red tights, and bossing somebody around. I thought he was going to be that girl. I love boys. I love being the mother of boys. I was going to love my daughter, though, just as much. I wanted that girl, no denying it, and letting her go grieved me, even as I celebrated the emerging little boy.

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How Do You Know He Won't Change His Mind?

I have a tremendous backlog of writing notes--at the moment, I have notes in three different notebooks, which is simply unacceptable to me. I'm going to try to write a post every day during the month of August; I did it in May of 2012 and enjoyed it very much. I hope to be able to retire two notebooks. So here we go, in Notebook #1, all the way back to June, when I was at the TransHealth conference and had the opportunity to attend a talk by Dr. Johanna Olson, who works with transgender youth at the Children's Hospital of Los Angeles.

Whenever I am involved in a conversation about young gender variant kids, somebody asks, "But how do you know he won't change his mind?" I've been asked this about the Tiny Tornado, and I've heard it asked at conferences and in on-line forums. The asker is generally concerned that such a young child is being allowed to make what seems like such a momentous decision. In addition, they imagine complications if a child chooses to live as their chosen gender for some number of years, and then remits.

I think these people would be interested to know that people who work extensively with trans and gender variant kids wonder about this, too: how can you tell, at age 6 or 7 or 8, which kids will revert and which kids will maintain their gender identity into adulthood? How do you choose an effective and appropriate treatment plan when you can't know a child's future gender with absolute certainty? Most kids, according to Dr. Jo, do grow through their gender variant behavior, and though many grow up to be lesbian, gay, or bisexual, only a minority of gender variant kids are trans. How do you know which are which?

Well, according to Dr. Jo, trans kids tend to have a constellation of characteristics that gender variant kids will not share. They will tend to have most of the following characteristics:

• There is an early onset of gender variant behavior; age 2 or 3 is common (and in parent support groups, many of us had stories of kids asserting their gender preferences before age 2).
• The child experiences body dysphoria, which is to say, their body seems wrong to them. The Tiny Tornado, for instance, was never willing to call his genitals anything but a penis, and he still has anxiety about the possibility of someday growing breasts.
• The child has a consistent self-articulation around gender; their assertion of their chosen gender is, to quote Dr. Jo's PowerPoint slide, "tenaciously clung to, unremitting, pervasive, insistent, clear, and acute."
• The child engages in cross-gender play extensively or exclusively. A child identified as male will play only with dolls and his big sister's kitchen set; a child identified as female seeks out trucks and building toys.
• The child cross-dresses, either in daily life if allowed, or in pretend play.
• The child chooses playmates who share their preferred gender.
• The child either does or does not tend to engage in rough-and-tumble play.

I can hear you saying, "But some of those things fit me, and I'm not trans!" Me, too. I went through a stage in late elementary school when I preferred to wear my older brother's hand-me-downs over wearing my own girl clothes, and I was pleased if I was mistaken for a boy. This lasted a year or so. This list is explicitly making a distinction between a kid like me, who engages in gender variant behavior for some period of time, or in some circumstances, and a child whose gender identity is lasting and engages multiple areas of their life.

You may also be uncomfortable with the stereotypical elements of those last four items on the list. So is Dr. Jo. Nobody wants gender identity to depend on stereotypical behaviors. We all want kids to feel that they can engage in any kind of play, and with any playmates they choose, regardless of their gender. But anyone who has been a parent knows that it's not as easy as you think to create a generation of freewheelers, and, for now at least, it seems to be true that consistently crossing lines on gender stereotypical behavior is meaningful if it occurs in a context where other items on that list are also present.

Given the difficulty of predicting a child's future preference, Dr. Olson said that the tendency is to intervene cautiously, avoiding engaging in irreversible treatments prematurely. Social transition, which is what the Tiny Tornado has done by living full-time as a boy, is both the most effective treatment for young kids, and completely reversible. I had a friend once express her concern that we were making such an "irreversible" decision at such a young age--TT was not quite five. My response was that all we'd done was buy him boys' underwear and start calling him "he," and that these things could be reversed with a trip to Meijer and the letter "s."

Puberty suppression is also a completely reversible treatment. The use of hormone blockers delays puberty; it doesn't cause a child to enter puberty as the "other" sex. Discontinuing puberty blockers without engaging in cross-sex hormone replacement therapy simply allows the child to enter puberty as their biological sex later than they would otherwise have done.

Even the use of HRT is partially reversible, depending on how long a person has been using hormones and at what doses. Only sex-reassignment surgery (also called sex-confirmation surgery) is irreversible in all cases. So you can see that practitioners, children, and families have lots of time to develop an understanding and make good choices.

I have pages and pages of notes from Dr. Jo's presentation, but I think I've hit the highlights, and given myself something to point people to when they ask me this classic question. We can't know for sure he won't change his mind, but we can make a pretty good guess based on what we know about him, and about other trans kids.

I'm going to close with a semi-random collection of bits and pieces that didn't make it into the body of the post.

• By age 6 or 7, kids generally have internal gender constancy.
• Dr. Jo says, "You can't make a kid trans." This is also an answer to a question--or is it an accusation?--I've heard from time to time. So there.
• Gender Dysphoria is not, in and of itself, a psychiatric diagnosis. Well-adjusted trans kids do not necessarily need psychotherapy.
• It is hard to know how many kids are remitters--revert to their assigned gender--in part because, in most research, those who can't be followed up on are classified as remitters. Dr. Jo commented, for instance, that one Dutch clinic reports all clients they lose track of as remitters, because they assume that any trans youth who does not remit is still in treatment with them. For this and other reasons, she suspects that the reversion rate is overstated in the available research.
• Among adult trans people, about 1% express regret. Dr Jo says that this is often due to the difficulty of reconciling a new life when older, and she hopes that as this first cohort of effectively-treated trans youth grow up the rate will be lower.
• Social transition is a pretty strong predictor of persistence; kids who undergo social transition are about five times more likely to maintain their gender identity into adulthood.

 

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Six Months in the Public Schools

So, the Tiny Tornado has been a public school student for six months now, and that seems like a good time to take stock. My older two, who are almost 12 and almost 9, have been homeschooled straight through, so I am now qualified to talk at least a bit from both the perspective of a homeschooling mom and a public school mom.

The first thing to say is that the Tiny Tornado is in an excellent school with an excellent teacher. I like and respect the principal so much that I am sorry that he won't be able to continue at the same school next year. The school has plenty of resources, and good music and gym teachers. The building is clean and in good repair. Teachers change their bulletin board and hallway displays regularly, and the effect is one of a busy school where students are engaged in a variety of activities.

I've only been disappointed in two of the staff. I volunteered at a book fair, and got to spend some time with the librarian. At least on the day I was there, she was cranky with the kids who came through the library; she seemed to expect the worst of them; and she spent some time talking with a teacher about her class in very negative terms while the students, sitting quietly on the floor waiting to be released to explore the book fair, could hear them. OK: I have been disappointed in three of the staff, since I should count that teacher as well. As a parent, I think that it's important for kids to overhear us sharing the good things we notice, and expressing our high expectations. I think it's also important that they not overhear us venting our frustrations. For instance, when Raider comes home from work I might tell him, "The Lego Savant was a big help today! He took out the recycling without being asked, and organized the other kids to pick up the living room floor." If the Lego Savant is sitting nearby reading a book, it's just fine with me if he overhears this.

But if we've had a challenging day, and I've maybe disciplined the kids--say I took away the TV for the afternoon because they were fighting over it all morning--I think it's important for the kids to know that, once the discipline has happened, or once we've worked out a disagreement, it's behind us. I turned the TV off for the afternoon: they don't need to keep being punished for it. I might need to rant to Raider about the rough day I had, but I'm not going to do it where the kids can hear me. At least, I shouldn't do it where the kids can hear me.

The teacher's conversation with the librarian was like that. She'd had a rough morning with her class, and rather than letting it go, chose to have a loud conversation about it with the librarian where the kids could hear her do it. I think this sends a terrible message to kids. It says that whatever disciplinary action was taken for their behavior was not enough, that the incident isn't really put behind them. It suggests that the teacher sees them in negative terms, that she expects bad behavior from them. I also think it's wrong to poison the well: a student who is struggling in class may find a change of environment to be a new chance to shine, and a new adult as an opportunity to form a positive connection. For how many "bad" kids has a librarian, a gym teacher, an art teacher, a coach, been the one adult who saw them differently? For how many kids has the library or the art room been a refuge? Children should not be preceded into a new environment by the suggestion that they are troublemakers.

I was quite distressed by this teacher's behavior, and I hope it was a lapse brought on by stress and not a habit. But I was also bothered by the librarian's willingness to engage; she might have said, for instance, "Tell me about it later! Let's get these kids ready for the book fair!" But from watching the librarian interact with kids for the next two hours, I would not expect her to have that kind of sensitivity. She was suspicious of their motivation and behavior; she questioned the buying choices they made as she was helping them check out (if you don't want the girls buying the Justin Bieber photo books, don't put them out. If you put them out, let them buy them in peace! Say, "I hope you enjoy it!" Not, "I'd have hoped you could make a better choice. Is that how your mother wants you spending your money?").

The other weak staffer is the art teacher. At the beginning of the school year, I was actually quite excited by the projects I saw on the wall, and that the Tiny Tornado brought home. The kids painted great big sheets of paper in interesting patterns, then used them for the background for themed art that incorporated painting and collage. They were bright and arresting, and if they were a bit cookie-cutter (everybody make a house! everybody make an elephant!) the medium was at least interesting, and provided a chance to explore different textures and techniques.

And then the next set of projects went up. And they were big splashy colorful painting-and-collage projects. And then the next one. And the next one. As far as I can tell, all the art that the children have produced so far this school year has been in this same style. Maybe I simply don't understand what the expectations are for elementary school art, but I'd have liked to see some variation. And for the Tiny Tornado's sake, more opportunities to work in three dimensions.

One day in the hallway, I was admiring some really impressive clay sculptures in a display case. The art teacher passed by, and I said, "Are these all student work? They're very good." He said that they were indeed student work, from past years. I was pleased. I was happy to think of the Tiny Tornado working with a teacher who was capable of getting that quality and variety of work from students, and who would give them the opportunity to do it.

My bubble was burst when the art teacher said, "They did those with the previous art teacher."

Who is she, I wonder, and where is she teaching now?

As far as the Tiny Tornado's own classroom goes, there can be no complaints about the teacher. TT's class is "Begindergarten." This is a special class for kids who are old enough for Kindergarten but whose parents didn't think they were ready for it. So: 20 kids. 17 of them boys. Most of them perfectly nice, reasonably well-behaved kids like the Tiny Tornado, who just need a little time to mature. A handful of them: handfuls.

The teacher is a young woman in her second year of teaching. She is full of enthusiasm and good cheer. She handles her kids' behavioral challenges appropriately and affectionately. She and the school practice catching kids in good behavior. I have seen her, in the middle of a loud and chaotic process of transitioning from one activity to another, see through all the movement and noise in the room to catch a kid who can almost literally never sit still in his one fleeting moment of perfect behavior, and call him out on it to the whole class ("I see Aidan sitting quietly, ready to get started! Good job, Aidan!").

The classroom is extremely well-organized, and her days seem very well-planned with activities the kids enjoy. My only concern about Miss N is that, as a former teacher myself, I worry that she is going to burn herself out. Sometimes I joke that I'm glad TT got her early in her career, before she learns to temper her enthusiasm and manage her energy. But, sincerely, I hope that she makes a productive transition to being a slightly-less perfect teacher who can stay in it for the long haul.

That said, I think that an excellent classroom in an excellent school is a perfect case study for what is wrong with public education, as well as what is right about it.

Even in the Begindergarten, this school district places a strong emphasis on academics from an early age. There is almost no activity--not even during class parties on holidays--that doesn't focus somehow on phonological awareness, alphabet knowledge, or math skills. They've done some really cool projects. For instance, recently the kids each drew a winter scene, framed it in brown construction paper like a window frame, and then the teacher added a picture she took of them from the back, as if they were looking out the window. These came out very charming.

They also came out mostly all alike. All the projects are cookie-cutter projects; there's no room for variation. If the kids are gluing together pre-cut pieces to make snowmen, the snowmen will have two eyes, a carrot nose, and buttons just like the model the teacher showed them. If a child wants his snowman to have three eyes, he will be told to do it like he was shown. The activities they do have a surface purpose: to practice the letter M, to count as high as 12, to make a little snowman. But the underlying purpose is also always to produce work that matches the model, to do it the way they have been told to do it.

The kids seem to enjoy the work they do; when I'm there helping with centers, they're having fun. And they are definitely experiencing multiple approaches to learning things: they might do a measurement project, a count-the-little-bears project, or a make-a-book project, each focused on a similar numeracy skill. But as they do each project, they are expected to do it exactly as they are told to do it. There is very little time in the classroom for children to make choices about how they will spend their time or what they will do. All the kids seem perfectly happy whenever I'm volunteering in the classroom (except poor B, who is temperamentally never happy: if they're doing centers, he wants to be doing morning meeting. If his group is at the math center first, he wants to be at the puzzle center. When he gets to the puzzle center, he doesn't want the puzzles that are available, he wants the firefighter one another kid has already started. And so on. I'm actually impressed with how Miss N and her classroom aide are supporting B in the classroom, and I hope he grows into a sunnier disposition, poor kid). But I can't help but wonder about the long-term effect of thirty-five hours a week, of "Do exactly what you're told. Produce exactly what you're told to produce."

The Tiny Tornado has learned a lot. This cannot be denied. He knows all his letters, is making big progress in matching letters and sounds (and can now identify consonant sounds at the end of words as well as the beginning!), can write all his letters, can count past 20 (though it's hilarious when he gets to 20-10 and 20-11), can recognize numbers into the teens. He is ahead of where both his brothers were at the same age, because we didn't do much systematic instruction when the Older Two were 5.

I am neutral on whether this is a good or bad thing. Both of the Older Two are perfectly numerate and literate now, which suggests that it is not necessary to spend hours and hours in direct instruction when kids are young. On the other hand, the TT was developing an interest in letters and numbers before he started Begindergarten, and has enjoyed learning them this year. It hasn't been stressful or negative, and his progress spares me the years of anxiety I suffered about whether the Lego Savant, now a voracious reader who devours multiple novels a week, would ever learn to read. As far as I can tell, TT's classmates seem to be enjoying themselves as well.

One area of flexibility in the classroom is that the kids are welcome to be where they're at: at a journal-writing center, for instance, some kids will dictate, some kids will write with spelling help, and some kids will write using their own mix of correct and invented spelling, and this is OK. This ameliorates much of the concern I might have had about the relentless emphasis on academics for what is essentially a class of pre-kindergartners. But I wonder what it will be like next year, when they move on to kindergarten or first grade. Last year, at the kindergarten information night, I was very uncomfortable with the academic expectations for kindergarten, though I suspect I'll be less concerned now that TT will have had a year of what is essentially Kindergarten Readiness. Still, I plan to visit a nearby district I've heard good things about, and consider whether I might be able to send him there under Schools of Choice.

I have heard a lot of criticism of the district from the parents of kids in middle and high school, from young adults who recently graduated from the district, and from the one or two kids I've met while they were attending the high school, about the effect that academic pressure has on the students. The district is affluent--at least 3 of TT's classmates are the children of doctors, for instance, and other parents are research scientists at the university. I hear that there is quite a bit of class-based tension at the middle and high school levels, and that it can be an uncomfortable setting for students whose families don't vacation at ski resorts or buy late-model cars for sixteenth birthdays.

Our decision to send TT to school was made pragmatically for the family: I needed childcare, and he needed stimulation. I am happy and relieved that it has worked out so well. Although I miss the wonderful open-ended art projects he used to bring home from his Reggio Emilia-inspired preschool, I am pleased with his academic progress (and so is he). Having some first-hand experience of the public school reinforces my belief that it would have been terrible for the Lego Savant (all those people around! all the time! never a moment to yourself! never a moment to think quietly!), and OK for Word Boy, who is more adaptable and inclined towards traditional academics. Though I think it has been good for Word Boy, who thinks too much of other people's preferences, not to be reinforced in his tendencies. I could do a whole nother post on that. Maybe I will sometime.

I've never imagined that the Tiny Tornado would stay in school long-term, and I continue to hope that's true, though it's not clear how my plans to become a Speech Language Pathologist will affect our homeschooling in another few years. I continue to be concerned about how factors like the pressure to conform, and the relentless beat of academics, will take their toll as the years pass by. The Tiny Tornado wants to homeschool for first grade, or possibly even this next year for Kindergarten. For my part, I very strongly do not want him to continue in this district past elementary school. We'll have to see what time brings.

 

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The Real Thing

Found this in my drafts folder. I had forgotten about it! Just needed to edit it a little.

Years ago, when I was the mother of just one baby, I met a woman who had several kids. One of her children, she told me, had been very challenging as a toddler and preschooler. "She just didn't like being a little kid," she told me. "It wasn't fun for her, it wasn't interesting for her. She got a lot easier to deal with when she got old enough that she could do the things she'd been wanting to do all along."

I thought that sounded very odd. Children are supposed to be children, after all. The years from 2-6 are something every kid has to live through. Surely the pleasures of the age are universal? It just didn't make sense to me then.

A few months ago, I was doing one of my periodic sweeps through the rec room in the basement, getting rid of stuff nobody was using anymore. With the Tiny Tornado about to turn five, I finally gave up on keeping things around in case he got interested in them in the future. Among the stuff I hauled off to Goodwill, or donated to his preschool, were two large bins of food and cooking toys.

The Tiny Tornado counfounded us for all his years of baby- and toddler-hood by not playing with toys. I tried to get him interested. I bought all kinds of toys in the vain hope that we simply hadn't found the right ones yet. I tried to play with him. I removed nearly all the toys from our living area on the theory that such a quantity was too overwhelming and disorienting, and that maybe one smallish bin of toys would be more appealing that the wide variety we'd collected in 8 or 9 years of parenting.

Nope. Toys, he made clear, were just not interesting

People ask me, "What did he do with his time?" I hardly know. I know he wandered around the house exploring and getting into things. It was from him that we learned you can draw pictures under the water in a toilet if you use a pencil, for instance. He was talented from a young age at putting boxes on stools on chairs to get to things on high shelves. He never, except when watching a movie (and not always then) sat still in one place long enough for me to, say, use the bathroom in peace. But he wasn't unfocused; he was very focused on looking around, getting curious about things, imagining things one might do if one could only get to that shelf, or through that door, or into that cabinet, and then doing them.

Usually he followed where I went. Lots of little kids like to help their parents around the house, dusting or sweeping or wiping tables. It was a passion for the Tiny Tornado, to be doing what I was doing.

I was halfway up the stairs with a bin of plastic food when the obvious hit me between the eyes: the Tiny Tornado never played with toy food because, before he was even 2, he wanted to be in the kitchen with me, cooking for real.

He always wanted to be doing things that were "for real." He loved to watch us do things, and try to emulate us. He dressed himself from an early age; fed himself from an early age; toilet-trained himself--not early, but when he got tired of waiting for me to do it.

 

One of my favorite stories is from when the kids were maybe 10, 7, and 4. Word Boy--the 7-year-old--has asked me for a snack. I say, "Just let me finish this up and then I can help you. Or, if you don't want to wait, you can get yourself something."

 

Word Boy went off, whining, to his older brother, who said, "I'm right in the middle of something, but if you can wait a bit then I can help you."

 

Word Boy collapsed, still whining, into a living room chair. The Tiny Tornado--age 4--said in a resigned tone, "All right. I'll do it." And he did. He got up off the couch, went into the kitchen, and fixed his older brother a snack.

 

Sometimes we say that the Tiny Tornado did a thing earlier than his brothers, and people say, "Oh, that's really common for younger kids, they want to emulate their siblings." And we say, "No, you don't understand. He didn't do it at a younger age then they did. He literally did it before they did."

 

Back to the staircase and the bin of plastic food. I don't just realize that the Tiny Tornado has never been interested in play as much as he has been interested in doing real work, but I realize, that like the daughter of that long-ago mom whose name I have forgotten, he didn't really enjoy being a toddler. He is still busy and into things, and that's still a challenge--because he often does things I don't want him to--but it gets easier and easier to pass the days with him as his abilities catch up with his aspirations.

 

It also gets easier as I learn to help him find real things he can do with his time. You can see from the picture above that he is quite adept in the kitchen. Yes, that's my big chef's knife! No, I don't let him cut anything but tofu and mushrooms with it, so far at least. But he can measure ingredients, mix and pour them, stir a pot at the stove. Like his older brothers, he likes to cook with me, and like his older brothers, he does most of the work when he does.

 

We took a class called "Small Dogs, Big Fun" this summer, where he learned some training techniques. Not only was he almost completely in charge of his own dog in class, but he has been working with Gemmy every day at home, sometimes for more than an hour. Gemmy has become a very happy dog, and very attached to the Tiny Tornado. He has also become reliable off-lead, something he never was before.

 

Our wonderful teacher took this picture of TT calling Gemmy to him after working on "stay." His summer class ended last week, but in the fall session we'll be taking our dogs to "Circus Dogs," where they will learn to jump through hoops and other neat tricks.

Likewise, he is surprisingly adept at archery:

He looks like an old pro at the pottery wheel at the clay studio:

And he just likes to goof around, to see what his body can do:

He is happier now that he has real work to do. He helps take care of the hamsters and the dogs. He does hands-on science experiments with his brothers and me. He has his own crate of "school" supplies and is learning the rudiments of reading and writing. He likes the clay studio, where he works side-by-side with artists of all ages, doing the same work they do. He likes helping me make the shopping list and pick out groceries (though I do have to watch for the many extras he likes to slip into the cart). He liked preschool, too, where his favorite activities were the open-ended craft projects, and doing a very thorough job of wiping the tables when it was clean-up time. And he's very excited about an outing he and I are taking to a nearby horse farm early next Saturday morning, where we will help with the morning barn chores. He is nervous about riding horses, though he wants to. But he will sincerely enjoy learning to take care of them as he gets bigger and more confident.

As a toddler, his most common morning greetings to me were, "What are we doing today?" and "Where are we going today?" His special gift is competence at planning and carrying out tasks and activities. Most often, he wants to be in the world and interacting with it not as a kid at play but as a person at work.

I hope some kid somewhere is having a great time with the kitchen toys. I know the Lego Savant loved them when he was little. The Tiny Tornado, in the meantime, would be happy to cook your lunch.

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My Vexed Relationship with Giftedness

I mentioned the other day that I had a blog post in me about giftedness, and I'm feeling in the mood to tackle it, although it's complicated and messy in my head. A few years ago, I was talking to my therapist about my own history as a precocious child, and how that was good, and how it was bad, and how it shaped my relationship to school and academic achievement, and she said, "Wow, you really have not got any of this figured out. I can tell because usually you speak so clearly, but when you try to talk about this, you become practically incoherent."

I realized that this was something I needed to work on when the Lego Savant was maybe 20 months old, and we were driving to the library. He had a sippy cup in his hand, with alphabet blocks or something on it, and he was saying, "Letter A...Letter L...Letter B." When he said, "Letter X," I knew he was just saying random letters, because there was no X on the cup.

And then I went to get him out of his car seat, and I saw that the sippy cup said Playtex on it.

"Lego Savant," I said, "Can you show me the letter X?"

And he did.

And I burst into tears.

OK, keeping in mind that I tend to be very emotionally labile, my feelings at realizing that the Lego Savant might be on the bright side made me realize that I had some unresolved issues of my own to work on.

I think I've made some progress.

It helps that I've done some reading on giftedness in the last few years, and learned that my story, which seemed so complicated and incomprehensible to me, is actually an absolutely typical gifted-child story: I was precocious in school, and not served well. In first grade, my teacher made an arrangement for me to go to a second-grade classroom for math, for instance. But when I got to second grade (which happened because my mother refused to let me be skipped to third, because of her own negative experiences being accelerated as a kid), nobody was willing to make an accommodation for me. So I did second-grade math again.

This was the beginning of my disillusionment with school, and was followed by the usual litany: figuring out I was smarter than most of my teachers; being marked down for things that were correct, like using a particular kind of literary device in a piece of writing, because my teacher either didn't recognize it or was sure it was a mistake instead of a deliberate stylistic choice on my part; being restricted to the picture-book side of the library in first and second grade even though I was routinely reading chapter books (my mom got this restriction lifted for me); being put into a completely inadequate pull-out program for a year or two; and so on.

A side story about that pull-out program in elementary school: no one told me why I was being pulled out of class a couple of days a week to go play games with a handful of other kids and a grown-up I didn't know. Based on the other kids in the group, I inferred that I was being pulled out of class because I had trouble making friends. I continued to believe this until I was an adult, when my mother, overhearing me tell a friend that I had been so socially awkward as a child that I had had to go to this special making-friends group, said, "Susan! That was a pull-out program for gifted children!" Maybe someone should have told me at the time.

I got a lot of attention for being precocious and for my academic accomplishments, but I also had a lot of anxiety about it. Being smart mattered so much to me that I was terrified of finding out I wasn't smart, and getting good grades was apparently how you proved you were smart. Any grade less than an A felt like proof that I'd been faking it all along. I adapted to the anxiety by becoming an underachiever. My almost-conscious thought process about this was that if I didn't try, then a good grade proved I was smart--because I'd gotten the A without even trying. On the other hand, a bad grade meant nothing, because it could be blamed on the lack of effort.

Of course, I mostly got good grades anyway, and this led to a long-term strategy of putting in only the minimum effort required to get an A. In my first grad-school foray, after I had turned in my first paper, one of my profs called me into her office. She told me that she had had to give my paper an A, because it was an A paper. At the same time, she could tell that I had put very little effort into it, and that it didn't represent my best work. She wanted me to challenge myself to work harder, to try for my personal best.

This made no sense to me at all. Why would you work harder than you had to for an A? Especially when you'd been told your whole life that the goal was to get an A.

There are many reasons that first grad school foray didn't work out. This was one of them.

I won't digress here to talk about my experience doing an MFA at a school that didn't give letter grades...let's just say it was much, much better.

Anyway, I have learned that all of this--plus my inability to settle on one thing to do with my life--is one of the absolutely typical ways that gifted kids respond to school. I'm not special! I'm like the poster child for Gifted with Academic Anxiety!

So, along comes the Lego Savant, with his "Letter X," and my unresolved issues erupt like a volcano.

My own experiences in school are a big part of why I chose to homeschool my kids. I didn't want them to have the kinds of experiences I'd had. And from my reading, and spending some time on discussion forums for parents with gifted kids, I could see that things hadn't changed much. I didn't want my kids to be bored like I was; I didn't want so much of their time to be wasted; I wanted them to have expansive time to do what they loved, something I got only very occasionally as a child; I didn't want their self-esteem to get mixed up with academic achievement in the unhealthy way mine had.

And, honestly, I was afraid that I'd project my own academic anxieties onto my kids, and pressure them to succeed where I felt I had failed. That I might become the academic equivalent of the guy who pushes his kid to play football because his own football dreams never came true.

(Note: I was not actually an academic failure. But, like Anne Lamott, who says she was in her 30s before she figured out that a B+ is actually a good grade, I was also well into adulthood before I figured out that graduating with High Distinction--but not Highest Distinction--from the University of Michigan actually meant I was successful in college.)

Homeschooling has done much of what I hoped it would for my kids. And one of the things I have liked about it is that I have not had to worry about whether my kids were "gifted" according to any particular definition--they didn't need to score above a certain percentile on an achievement test to qualify for services, for instance. We haven't needed to prove anything to anyone. And I could side-step my own ambivalence about the gifted label by simply not needing to deal with it.

And then...

Some things that had happened to me, that I thought were adaptations to school, turned up in my kids as well. Word Boy, for instance, is such a perfectionist that he will melt down if he doesn't understand his math at first glance. At least I've gotten him past the point of hitting himself over it, but still.

Word Boy and the Lego Savant both suffer from anxiety, inflexibility, high sensitivity, excitability, and a degree of emotional immaturity. I threw tantrums well into high school myself, and I thought this was a reaction to how my parents treated me. Now I know that this is also absolutely typical for some gifted kids. (Sorry, Mom and Dad.) Sadly, it is true for the Lego Savant, who one moment can be talking to you about the literary conventions that make movies and TV shows so predictable as if you're in an English literature seminar, and the next minute can be hitting a chair and screaming that he just. can't. cope. and his life is over because we're out of his favorite potato chips and can't get more until payday.

You should see the two of them trying to work across the table from each other. The Lego Savant is talking quietly to himself as he solves some math problems; Word Boy wishes he would just be quiet, already. Meanwhile, the scratching of Word Boy's pencil is driving the Lego Savant mad! And can Word Boy please stop breathing like that?

I make the perfectly reasonable suggestion that one or both of them could go work elsewhere. They both have desks in their bedrooms!

This is when inflexibility kicks in, one of the hardest things we deal with as parents: they can identify a problem, but (especially the Lego Savant) refuse to accept any solutions to it. No, they cannot go work in the other room because they like to work at the table. No, one of them cannot wait and do his seatwork after the other one is done, because they want to do it now. No, they can't just relax and try not to worry about the breathing and the muttering and the scratching of the pencil.

Sometimes, I tell them that if they were in school, they'd be in a room of 20 to 30 kids, all of them writing with pencils! All of them breathing! Some of them with sniffles! Some of them with a tendency to tap their fingers on their desks! Many of them turning pages in books!

This is what passes for a scary story at our house.

What I have been finally admitting the last year or so is that, even though we aren't in school, I can't ignore giftedness as an issue. The kids' constellation of smartness, anxiety, perfectionism, inflexibility, intellectual and social maturity coupled with emotional immaturity--all perfectly typical. And there's a lot for me to learn from the literature on giftedness.

I have very mixed feelings about this. My first attempts to connect with other parents of gifted children were unsuccessful. I couldn't deal what seemed to me a culture of one-upmanship ("My child read at 3." "I'm not sure your child is truly gifted. Mine was calculating cube roots at 2."). And, to be honest, hearing about these kids' achievements threatened to trigger some of my old anxieties about not being smart enough if I wasn't the smartest, now projected onto my kids.

Another digression: How this plays out in my relationship with Raider: Last night, I read him this quote from Charles Murray's new book, Coming Apart: "It is not a problem if truck drivers cannot empathize with the priorities of Yale professors. It is a problem if Yale professors, or producers of network news programs, or CEOs of great corporations, or presidential advisors cannot empathize with the priorities of truck drivers." (p. 101)

Me: That is a great quote. It encapsulates his argument really well and is a perfect description of the problem.

Raider: It's also an example of chiasmus.

Me: I know what that means, but I couldn't have come up with that word off the top of my head.

A pause.

Me again: I love how smart you are. Except at those moments when I suspect you're smarter than me.

Raider laughs.

Raider, for his part, managed to be a gifted kid and grownup with none of the kinds of baggage I have had. He didn't seem to get the anxiety part. He never over-invested in academic achievement; he never thought his grades proved anything one way or another. He knew he was smart, but he didn't over-value being smart. He didn't invest his identity and self-esteem in it. Periodically he gets a newsletter for people who got the same prestigious scholarship he did to college; the "where are they now" section shows that he is almost literally the only one who isn't a college professor. This bothers him not at all. I'm glad to have him around as a model of what is possible.

Back to my kids.

In my efforts to help them deal with their various issues (and to make parenting them easier, which may be a pipe dream), I started reading up on giftedness. I stuck it out on some of the parenting forums. I read some of the parenting blogs even when they make me roll my eyes ("People think we're so lucky to have gifted kids! Ha! They should see our book budget! They should count their lucky stars they don't have to try to keep up with a kid who wants to study quantum physics at age 8!" The faux-plaints are strong in this community). I tried to be patient with the strings of letters and credentials people put after their children's names ("My daughter Snow, 8, 2e, intellectually OE, IQ 146, Lexile 940..."). And I learned more and more about how absolutely typical my very special unique snowflakes are.

Not that all gifted kids are alike, I should be careful to say. Just that mine are good examples of Gifted Kids: Subtype 2A.

One thing that pushed me into being willing to engage with this whole vexed notion of giftedness was when the boys' excellent therapist, who got the Lego Savant over his elevator phobia and had great rapport with the boys, admitted to me in so many words that he was in over his head and didn't know what to do with my kids. I think this was partly a narrowness of focus on his part--he loves the "behavioral" part of cognitive-behavioral therapy, and much of what my kids deal with doesn't respond to behavioral interventions. Partly I think it reflected a lack of experience with kids like mine. I loved that he was willing to admit he wasn't sure what the next step was, and willing to try to educate himself, but at that point, we decided to take a break from therapy.

And things have stagnated. Behavioral interventions have helped, but I think my kids really need to get into the "cognitive" part of CBT. They need help understanding what's going on for them, and how they can choose to change their thoughts and behavior, rather than simply have us impose behavioral restrictions on them. We've used an audio program called Turnaround that I highly recommend, but we need more help than that. And I need to know whether what I want from my kids--that understanding, that internal motivation to change--is realistic at this time in their lives.

This is why, on Monday, I have an appointment two hours away from home with a therapist who specializes in gifted kids with anxiety. Just five minutes on the phone with her the other day felt like a deep relaxing breath--she knew what I was going to say almost before I said it. She is very familiar with Gifted Kids: Subtype 2A (a designation I made up, in case you wondered). She has experience with them. And she knew exactly what I meant when I said that I wasn't sure whether what we needed was therapy for the kids, or parenting guidance for us.

She's too far away for us to work with very regularly. But I can imagine her helping us in lots of ways: parenting consultations for me, consulting with our local therapist, meeting with the kids occasionally, pointing us to the most useful resources. I have high hopes for this meeting. I will be keeping my fingers crossed.

Her office is right over by Lake Michigan, so Raider took the day off work and we're making this Family Beach Day as well. A fun and ediftying day, I hope.

(You may be thinking: You talk about Word Boy and the Lego Savant. What about the Tiny Tornado? Do you think he is gifted as well? I do. But in very different ways. His path is going to play out very differently from his older brothers', I predict, and I'm excited to help him follow it.)

For Your Edification: What is a Good-Faith Question?

So, one of the things on my list for this week is to make an appointment to talk to the Tiny Tornado's teacher and principal about TT's gender. I have a very clear agenda for this meeting: making sure they understand that TT is to be treated as a boy, and that under no circumstances are they to disclose his status to other parents or children. I intend to be friendly, but this stuff isn't negotiable. He is starting school as a boy; that's his choice and we're going to honor it.

A couple of people have asked me "what if" questions about this plan. What if he decides, a couple of years down the road, that he isn't a boy? Are we setting him up for trouble if we let him identify as a boy now?

I have a few thoughts about that. One is that, as an anxious person, I have a lot of experience with "what if" thinking, and it's rarely productive.

Also, I don't see that we have much of an option other than to have him start school as a boy. He's very clear about his boyness right now; he's not going to want anyone calling him a girl or using female pronouns. And, as one friend pointed out, his gender presentation is so strongly coded "male" that it could only be harder for people to be trying to think of him as a girl. I had to submit his birth certificate to enroll him, and it says he's female. I think that a box checked on a piece of paper filed away in a drawer in the office is going to fade into insignificance next to the reality of the Tiny Tornado standing right in front of you.

At the same time that I try not to engage in "what if" thinking, I have done enough of it to know we have lots of options if the Tiny Tornado chooses to identify as a girl somewhere down the road. For one thing, being a homeschooling family gives us a lot of power--we're perfectly prepared to homeschool him if school doesn't work out in one way or another. In fact, he wants to homeschool, and right now our best guess is that we will homeschool him after this school year. To be honest, our primary motivation for sending him to Begindergarten (a Young Fives program for kids with summer and fall birthdays who are not ready for Kindergarten) is the free respite care. So "how will he cope in school if X happens?" is not something we worry too much about. I have lots of other things to worry about, and don't have a lot of energy to spare for that particulr one just now.

The summer gathering was very interesting with the Tiny Torndao. It was the first time I've been somewhere with him where lots of people just assumed he was a boy, and there was no tension at all between that and who he "really" is. It felt peaceful.

Of course, lots of people there did know him before, and they seemed to adjust very well. Some of his teachers in Junior Gathering had him last year, and they just cheerfully adapted to the new pronoun. It really is easy when you're face-to-face with him. A couple of years ago, we had an intergenrational retreat at our Quaker meeing, and one of the facilitators kept calling Tiny Tornado "he" even after being corrected several times. Because the evidence of your own eyes is very strong.

But the Gathering was also the first place I've fielded people's questions and comments. I've talked about TT's gender journey on my blog and on Facebook, and it seems that, if some of my readers have doubts or concerns about how we're handling it, they're keeping it to themselves. I've gotten only a mix of silence and positive comments about my writing on the subject. But several people at the Gathering--some of whom had been following his story on-line, and some of whom had just learned about it there--took the opportunity to talk to me about it.

Sometimes this went very well. Sometimes it went...less well.

One friend, who just learned about the new pronouns at the Gathering, expressed her interest in what has to be just about the perfect way: "You must have had quite the journey with the Tiny Tornado this past year. I'd like to hear more about that sometime, if you're comfortable talking about it."

Another friend started by expressing a concern about us making an apparently irrevocable decision based on the wishes of a 4-year-old. That's a little less pleasant, but we ended up having a good talk. She was interested to hear me talk about why we don't see this as irrevocable at all ("Irrevocable? All he's done is wear boys' underwear and ask us to call him He. That can be reversed with a trip to Meijer and the letter S."), and then I talked to her about how we are trying to be very in the moment about stuff--we don't imagine that we know the outcome of this.

At TransHealth Raider and I had opportunities to hear from doctors and psychologists who specialize in treating gender nonconforming children. And, statistically, there is a really good chance that the Tiny Tornado will identify as female when he gets older--maybe a little more than 50%, based on their experience with other kids. We're not holding him to anything. We're just doing what seems best to us right now. And right now, it's clear that he is happiest living as a boy.

So, we talked about that some, and it went really well. This friend had been concerned that we were making a terrible mistake, and I think by the end of our conversation she at least felt that, if we were making a mistake, it was at least a thoughtful mistake and not a reckless one.

Other folks... *sigh*

I've had a few things in my life that people were persistently curious about: our two oldest being conceived with donor sperm; Tiny Tornado's adoption; fat acceptance; homeschooling. Things that people are naturally curious about. I have often wished that people would understand that even perfectly natural curiosity ought to be suppressed sometimes; just being curious doesn't entitle you to information about someone else.

But, since I am generally happy to share my experiences, it's not so much that I wish people would suppress their curiosity as that I wish they would learn two things:

1. To recognize when they don't know much about something, and withhold judgement until they do.

2. To ask actual questions.

One thing you find when you homeschool is that most people don't know much about it, but have very strong opinions anyway, and they want to share these opinions with you. I wish we could all learn to recognize our ignorance, and remedy it before making judgements. But I'm pretty sure that's a pipe dream.

The other thing is that I encountered more than one person who said, "I have a question about the Tiny Tornado," and then went on to talk about their own feelings and "concerns." I am proud of myself that I actually did a good job of getting out of these conversations--I'm not a very direct person but I actually said to two different people, in so many words, "I'm not willing to have this conversation with you," when it became clear that "Can I ask you a question?" was actually code for "May I share my ignorance and judgement with you?"

I always say, "I will answer any good-faith questions about this," whenever any of these kinds of topics come up. "I don't think you're thought about the implications of this down the line," is not a good-faith question. "Kids as young as four don't even understand gender, so I'm concerned that you're making a mistake letting the Tiny Tornado choose" is also not a good-faith question. Nor is, "Don't you think he's just emulating his big brothers?" No, I don't. Clearly you do. But you probably wouldn't think that if you lived in our house.

So, what does a good-faith question look like?

Well, it's not a statement, for one thing. "I'm concerned that..." is almost never actually a good-faith question. It's usually actually a lecture or commentary. If your "question" doesn't end with a question mark, it's not a good-faith question.

A good-faith question should actually ask for information. "Don't you think..." for instance, is also almost never a good-faith question. It's an expression of opinion disguised as a question. It's putting words in my mouth. It's telling me what I should think. It's asking for my agreement with your opinion.

How do you know if you're asking a good-faith question?

Well, one way to think about it is to go back to high school journalism class and the classics: Who, What, Where, Why, When, and How. If you can re-phrase what you want to say so that it begins with one of these words, it's harder to turn it into a statement of your own opinion (not impossible, I'm sure. But harder). Think about how different these sound from the examples I gave above:

"How did you decide to use male pronouns for the Tiny Tornado?"

"Where have you gotten information to help you make these decisions?"

"How do you think you'll handle it if he decides, somewhere down the road, that he is a girl?"

"How are you feeling about all this?"

"What kind of support system do you have as you're dealing with this?

You can fix a "don't you think" bad-faith question by dropping two letters and an apostrophe: "Do you think he's just emulating his big brothers?" is a good-faith question, because it implies the possiblity that I'll say, "No, I don't think that, and here's why."

A good-faith question should reflect the questioner's desire to know more. That's why I loved Peggy's, "I'd like to hear more if you're comfortable talking about it." I'm going to be remembering her as a model when I'm dealing with my own curiosity. Her comment could also be rephrased as, "What has this past year been like for you and the Tiny Tornado?"

See how that works?

I try to be patient with people. Their intentions are generally good; they're watching out for the Tiny Tornado. As I said, their curiosity is perfectly natural. And they are offering me an opportunity, however awkwardly, to share what I know. I found at the Gathering that it was easier to be patient with people now that I've figured out how to be blunt; in the past, I've had a tendency to not recognize my own discomfort, to let other people set the parameters for discussion, to share more than I was comfortable sharing when people approached me this way. Knowing that I can say, "I'm not going to have this conversation," or "That's not really a question. Do you have a question I can answer?" really helps.

Maybe I'll make a little card, "What is a good-faith question?" that I can hand to people. I could say, "I'm not going to have this conversation right now, but I'd be happy to have a different conversation with you after you've read this." A little control-freaky, sure. But also an invitation. Because I really am happy to talk to people about just about anything. If I have reason to think they're actually listening.

This Post Could Cost Me Hundreds of Thousands of Dollars and the Love of My Mother. So Be It.

My mom visited me twice last week, driving over with my dad, who is fixing up my breezeway. She and I sat at my dining room table and yakked up a storm. At some point during her second visit, she said to me, "If any of this turns up on Facebook, you're out of the will."

I choose to interpret that injunction as applying to only the subject we'd been discussing for some time at that point: the disposition of estates, family finances, and my father's life expectancy, which I promise you we had a good reason for discussing beyond "when can we get our hands on his hard-earned loot?"

But the conversation we had two days earlier? I figure that's fair game.

Also, my mother didn't say anything about my blog.

My dad is a man for whom actions speak much louder than words. Indeed, his actions often contradict his words. He complains about my mother's disability, but when it comes to caring for her he is, if not quite tender, then certainly kind and indefatiguable. Over the last decade he has taken over all the cooking and housework, after 50 years in a marriage with such traditional division of labor that my mother even fixed him lunch on Saturdays, something it would never occur to me to do for Raider. When my nephew, Word Boy 2, was born three years ago, my 75-year-old dad even took up diaper-changing so my folks could baby-sit him.

He built my mom a little half-step that he carries in the car to help her get up short unavoidable flights of stairs, like my front stoop. For some reason, this little wooden home-made step warmed my heart. Quintessence of Dad, right there, to jump in and build something to solve a problem.

Anyway, on Wednesday my mom and I sat around for three hours and told family stories. I like re-hearing the stories I heard as a kid, if only because it reassures me that I haven't made stuff up. Or because it lets me correct the misunderstandings and mistakes in my versions.

But sometimes, my mom surprises me by telling a story I haven't heard before, and that happened on Wednesday.

I used to joke, darkly, that I came from a long line of women who didn't want children. The only thing in that line that's not true is the "long" part. I don't know how my maternal great-grandmother, parent of 13, felt about having children. I do know that the family story goes that my grandma, number 13, didn't have a middle name because her parents had flat-out run out of ideas.

My grandma, though, didn't choose to have children. The defining story of her life is that at 17, a senior in high school and on-track to be valedictorian, she fell pregnant and was forced to drop out of school to marry my grandfather. She always regretted school; she was proud of her accomplishments there, and hoped at least to go on to nursing school as so many of her sisters had. She sometimes regretted my grandfather; their marriage was not an easy one, marked by conflict, some of it physical, and it wasn't until their children were grown and gone that they enjoyed some measure of financial stability.

She blamed my aunt for ruining her life, as if my aunt somehow got herself conceived and born, and she had a remarkable capacity for not forgiving. She carried childhood slights to her grave, and apparently never repented of her tendency to blame her children for the disappointments of her life.

She was 17 in 1927; she had three children while she and grandpa were still living with her parents. And here's the new story my mom told me:

Apparently, the road they lived on was a long, straight country road with no stop signs. Cars got moving pretty fast, and when the road ended in a T, it took many drivers by surprise. You could tell how surprised they were by the wreckage of their cars up against a big tree that stood straight ahead and brought them up short if they didn't make the turn onto the cross street.

My grandmother, not very happily married and with three young children, found herself pregnant again, and despaired. She told my mother that she drove down that street, thinking about that tree, and it was a powerful temptation.

"Well," my mother said, "I was her fourth child. Talk about your unwanted children!"

My grandma didn't want that fourth child so strongly that she thought about suicide. My mother, pregnant in 1965, didn't want that baby, either. She wanted an abortion, but she couldn't get one.

My mom told me about grandma and the tree without apprently referencing or remembering my own status as the baby who wouldn't be here if she'd had her druthers. And one direction this writing could go in might be about my mother's and my shared wound, of knowing that we were unwanted children. Or it could turn into a story about how my mother, recognizing her own wound, nonetheless turned around and inflicted the same one on me. I've always thought that the "I wanted an abortion" story was one I could have lived my whole life without hearing, and knowing that she was told her own version of it does make me wonder, just a little, what she was thinking, not keeping that to herself?

(It also lends a delicious irony to her distaste for people on Facebook who don't know when to shut up.)

But I don't see the story that way right now. What it has had me thinking about for days is my grandma, my mom, and me, and how our lives were shaped by the times we lived in.

My grandma became sexually active at 17 in a time when birth control was not only not readily available, but frowned upon for "decent" women. There's a story (there's always a story!) about her turning my grandpa out of her bed unless he bought protection. He drove to a neighboring town to buy condoms, because no decent man would use condoms with his wife.

Well, somebody saw him there. And word got back to my grandma that LJ was cheating on her. Because why else would he be buying condoms? The story goes, my grandma just laughed when she heard that.

I don't know if the condoms failed them, or they didn't use them for long, but my grandma got pregnant three more times after my mom, the unwanted fourth child, was born. One of the babies was a full-term stillbirth, which she birthed at home, all alone. Grandpa had to go to work, and although he had stopped by on his way to tell his sisters my grandma needed them, by the time they got to the house it was all over. My grandma had given birth, stripped the bed, bathed and dressed herself, washed and wrapped her stillborn baby and laid it neatly in a clean shoe box.

Because back then, women like my grandma were tough, strong, matter-of-fact people who did what needed to be done. I wonder how she felt about that baby, buried under a walnut tree somewhere on that farm. Grief, I imagine, and also relief. In what measures? We'll never know.

That's my grandma's story, in her time and place: seven pregnancies she had almost no control over; six children to raise in poverty. Wanted or not, the babies came.

My mom got married 40 years later, in 1957. She was 24 years old and had been living on her own and supporting herself for eight years. She and my dad had their first child, my brother, four years later. Sooner than they'd planned to; they were putting my dad through college and wanted him to graduate first. And they had me not quite four years after that, also at a time not of their choosing.

My mom and dad at least had some option for family planning. In the pre-Roe, pre-Pill days of their early marriage, though, their children also came as they would. Two birth control failures. That my folks wanted at least one child is implicit in the plan to "wait" until after graduation. They didn't get to choose their times, but they were at least able to space their children, to have only one kid under three at a time instead of 2 or 3. And they were able to stop at two.

My mom quit work when my brother was born. She'd been at the phone company since she was sixteen, and was by then a supervisor. She liked her work and was good at it. She has some great stories (of course) about being a telephone operator in a college town in the days when operators had to place long-distance calls for you, and fake collect calls ("Collect call from Miss Blue Shoes") could be placed in the hope that Dad would be clever enough to realize you needed something mailed to you in time for Saturday's dance.

In 1961, women quit work when they "started a family." So that's what my mom did. But she always regretted it, at least a little. She liked her work, and felt competent and appreciated there. She liked her independence. And she did not find being home full-time with her children especially fulfilling.

She was just a bit too early; she just missed a coming revolution. By the time I was in middle school in the mid-70s, the mothers of my friends--most of them a decade or so younger than my mom, who'd had me when she was 32--worked. Our neighbors worked. My mom thought it mattered that there was someone home for us when we got back from school, but the other kids in our neighhorhood got by with a mix of babysitters, unsupervised time, and the careless oversight of slightly older children. And they seemed to be doing fine.

To add insult to injury, it seemed to my mother that my brother and I envied them, that we also wanted the freedom of an empty house and no adult supervision. We didn't, it seemed to her, treasure the mother who waited for us at home. We resented her.

(I say "it seemed to her" because I don't remember feeling that way. But I am perfectly preparted to believe that my behavior was consistent with her interpretation.)

By the time I became sexually active, around 1985, I had easy access to a whole array of birth control options (and my mother, bless her, made damn sure I knew what they were and how important it was to use them). Abortion was an option. And by 1986, I'd stopped having procreative sex--I haven't had to deal with the spectre of unwanted pregnancy for 25 years.

I know that, as a lesbian and then as part of a couple who can't reproduce without medical intervention, I'm an outlyer. I could only have babies I planned for. I know that people still have surprise babies. Word Boy 2 was a late-life bonus for my brother and sister-in-law. My sister-in-law's sister has a daughter who is significantly younger than her other children. "We joked," she told me one time, "that we should name her Daisy. As in, Whoops-a-daisy!"

But even these surprise babies are, at least in some measure, chosen babies. At least for the families I know, who have the knowledge and the resources to exercise their options even in today's climate of attacks on abortion rights.

I had the luxury of actively choosing each of my children, something my mother aspired to and couldn't quite manage, something my grandmother couldn't even imagine.

My point is that I don't think my grandma's story, my mom's story, and my story are just sad personal tales of children who weren't wanted and knew it, of women trapped or constrained by childrearing. My grandma was eight years old when women got the right to vote in federal elections. The first time I voted, I voted for a woman for vice president. We're not just our own stories. We're the story of a whole century of women in America.

Some Conversations with My Kids

Warning: Self-Satisfied Mommy Blogging.

1.

The kids and I are walking from the ballfield to our car along a narrow edge of grass beside the parking lot. The Lego Savant's hand bumps mine every time it swings back as I walk.

Me: Are you doing that on purpose?

Lego Savant: Doing what? [He grins mischievously.]

Me: We should have named you Alec. For Smart Alec.

Word Boy: What should you have named me?

Me: Um...

Lego Savant: Brain Boy. Um... The Knower, because you know so much.

Me: The Thinker.

The Tiny Tornado: I am The Thinker, too. Because I am always thinking of things. I always have ideas.

Word Boy: I don't really know so much, it's more like I am always asking questions.

Lego Savant: The Questioner. Curiosity Man!

2.

Word Boy reads in his bunk bed until I get the Tiny Tornado settled, and then I go in to tuck him in. He says, "I like my bunk bed. I like my room." He looks around the room, and then says, "Hey, are the blades on the ceiling fan tilted on purpose, or did something happen to them?"

Me: It's on purpose so they push the air better.

Him: Are all fans like that?

Me: Yeah, pretty much. And propellers.

Him: Huh, I didn't know that. I guess I thought they would just be straight. How did they make them that way? Do they twist?

I inspect the fan: No, the blades themselves are straight, but the things that hold them on are made so that they hold them at an angle.

Him: Ah.

He collects his five special stuffed friends and gathers them into his arms while I climb onto a stool and turn the tangled ball of covers back into a sheet and a blanket. He lies down, all five friends in his arms. I cover him up. He rolls on his side, tugs the blanket up under his chin, and closes his eyes. He gets the same supremely contented look that he has gotten every day of his life when he feels cozy and safe. And then he is asleep.

3.

We are at the park, me and my three kids and a 4-year-old friend ("The Boy With the Beautiful Smile," maybe. Accurate, but too long. I'll have to keep thinking). The Lego Savant is pushing the other three on the tire swing. He gets them really going, then sits beside me on the bench to watch them spin. They are hanging their heads backwards and laughing and laughing.

The Lego Savant: I love making little kids happy.

4. One night, at a Chinese restaurant in Philadelphia, the Lego Savant keeps finding water chestnuts on his plate even though they aren't part of his dish. The Tiny Tornado is sneaking them on there, it turns out, because he knows how much the Lego Savant likes them.

5. That's it. Mostly I just wanted to try out this new blogging software for the iPad.

6. Smug, self-satisfied mommy blogging? Don't say you weren't warned.
 

It's Like a Game We're Playing

The Tiny Tornado is obviously still working through the end of preschool. The other day we had this conversation:

TT, whiny: Mom, do I have to go to preschool tomorrow?

Me: No, honey. You're all done with preschool.

TT, bursting into tears: You mean I'll never see Miss Kathleen again?

At home, despite my recent humorous take on the challenges, we're actually doing pretty well. He spends big chunks of his day playing video games, riding bikes, or sword-fighting with his big brothers. He does errands with me. He has taken up an old hobby, luring the dogs into his bedroom with treats and then dressing them up in t-shirts and shorts. He roots around in the recycling bin for supplies to make houses for his stuffed animals. He sets up obstacle courses in the living room. Overall, he does a pretty good job of keeping busy and actually out of trouble.

My biggest challenge with him is one I still have with Word Boy: the endless chatter, the endless questions. I'm thinking about setting a limit on how many times per day each kid can say, "Mom...?" We'll see how that goes.

The other challenge is this whole boy thing. He stands firm in his gender identify for the moment. "I'm still a boy," were his first words to Raider when he woke up the other morning, and he asked me, "Am I still a boy if I go in there?" when I made as if to take him into the women's room with me. (I assured him that many boys go into the women's room with their moms until they are 5 or even 6.)

For the most part, I am carrying this lightly, as he seems to be. That's made easier because it doesn't quite feel real to me. It feels like a game we're playing. Maybe that's partly because, except for the pronouns, nothing has changed. The Tiny Tornado didn't need new underwear, a new haircut, new clothes, or new toys to be a boy. Just a new pronoun.

It also doesn't feel real because, really, what are the odds? Our lives are full of female-to-male transgendered people. Sure, some of them we've met because, at some point, we started hanging out in that community. But a number of people in our lives have transitioned since we met them--including three people who were still living as women when I dated them, and one close friend of Raider's. Most of these folks are still important parts of our lives.

And then we go adopt some random baby, and he turns out to be gender-nonconforming? *rolls eyes* You wouldn't believe it if I put it in my novel.

The other day, Raider and I got to go out to lunch together while all three kids were at a movie with a friend. We talked about this, of course. I said, "I can't help wondering if in some subtle way we made this happen."

Raider laughed. "You've met the Tiny Tornado, of course?"

I'm not a big fan of "things were meant to be." I love being the Tiny Tornado's mom and can't imagine life without him--but I assume I'd feel the same way about the baby girl whose mom decided to parent her a few months before we brought TT home, or whatever baby we might have adopted had the Tiny Tornado's placement with us fallen through.

But I have often thought that the TT is lucky to have us. He's a challenging kid (though, really, what kids aren't? Maybe your kids. Not mine. Not most of the kids I know, even the "easiest" ones). And we've done a good job of rolling with those challenges. We've always been good at appreciating our kids' qualities even when those very qualities were what made the days hard sometimes--and that's certainly true of the Tiny Tornado, whose drive and self-assurance and competence are a wonder to behold, even as you're excusing yourself to scream into a pillow, "Why the hell can't he ever just do what I ask him to do one time, just one time, without arguing! Argh!"

"Isn't he a wonder?" we say to each other. "Now can you watch him for awhile so I can take a xanax and a nap?"

People often say to me, "I admire the Tiny Tornado so much. But I'm glad you're his mom and not me." I always find "better you than me" statements a little judgmental, but at the same time, I am also glad I'm his mom and not someone else. Because I'm doing a good job with him. And I can imagine that many people might not.

My point was going to be, though, that on top of all that, he's genderqueer. In all the randomness of adoption--the agency we chose; K's decision to place her baby for adoption; her decision to let the agency choose the baby's placement just when we were the family who'd been waiting the longest, rather than choosing herself from all the waiting families--in all of that, this little female-bodied boy ended up with us.

Without false modesty, I am going to suggest that we are probably one of the ten American families who are best prepared to deal with a gender-nonconforming child. And here he is, right now, putting sunglasses on the dogs.

What are the odds?

Like I said, I don't cotton to "it was meant to be." I don't know a thing about what is "meant" and what is just the serendipitous one-in-ten-million chance.

To be honest, I'm not entirely happy about it. About the boy thing, I mean. I've pretty well gotten over my disappointment at not being able to buy funky, colorful girl clothes, and my disappointment at not being able to use all that work and study I put into learning to care for and braid nappy hair. But the boy thing, I'm still working on that.

I used to roll my eyes when I heard gay men and lesbians say, "I wouldn't want my kids to be gay." Because being gay was the best! I loved being a lesbian! I loved lesbians! I loved being part of that community. I loved gay men, the quiet steady ones and the flamboyant ones who showed up at Pride dressed like Vegas showgirls. I could hardly imagine a better outcome for my hypothetical children than being gay.

My thesis advisor at Goddard, Nora Mitchell, whote a poem called "Faggots" that always spoke to me. Here it is:

FAGGOTS

My lover says sometimes
that I look like a faggot, meaning
like a man
who looks like a woman.
On the dark streets a woman veers away from me
and walks faster. Hands jammed
in my pockets and fast-moving,
I am also trying to stay safe

in my city at night. Like a child
I want to protest, I'm a girl --
over and over -- to this woman,
to my father's two friends in the hardware store.
They said they'd have to see me throw
before they'd believe me, but I knew
that I threw just like a boy.
Coming up behind me, my lover teases,

you swish, as if I had to
pretend to walk like a woman,
or it were something I could mimic, like a man.
Like her I love the way faggots move;
I love the humor in their eyes,
their wrists, their chins,
as if their bodies kept faith
with the fire of laughter and repeated

some old joke the world could never get.
Queens are men
who leave their names behind
with all their reasons as delicate
as the works in the heart
of a watch. Robert
becomes Robin, or someone more
extravagent, more vulnerable still.


I love transmen and female-to-male transgender people. I think it's clear I have a way of finding them, sometimes even before they've found themselves.

But when I let myself think ahead, when I forget that we're not worrying about what happens in five or ten years or wondering if our insurance will cover hormone blockers, or whether there's a decent developmental endocrinologist in Michigan with at least some experience with gender-nonconforming children--well, I hope he's not a boy.

Because if he is, well, that comes with a whole lot of challenges. Everyone I know who has transitioned is happy with that choice. But there is often a residue of questions, of regret: from going through puberty as the wrong sex, from never having a perfectly ordinary male body. At TransHealth, I went to a workshop in which a doctor and a psychologist talked about current best practices for trans kids, which usually includes a gender-appropriate puberty. One of them referred to the damage done by past bad practices. After the workshop, a friend cried on my shoulder for a bit. He didn't say why. But I think it was regret for what might have been possible for him had he been a child today.

Gender-appropriate puberty carries a cost, though: almost always, the loss of fertility; not being allowed to participate in either girls' or boys' sports; wondering if your friends would still love you if they knew.

Then, too, harboring, under your clothes, body parts that don't match people's perceptions of your gender is dangerous. Trans people are at high risk of violence. Already, even before the Tiny Tornado chose male pronouns, I worried about what might happen if someone assumed "she" was a boy and then learned differently. Not that I expected physical violence, but expressions of discomfort, of disgust, of judgment? That, I worried about.

I want the Tiny Tornado to be who he is. Of course I do. With all my heart. And if he grows up to join that large and loving community of trans people I love so much, well, I know he will be welcomed and loved there, as indeed he already is and always has been.

I think I just want, like all parents, for my kids' lives to be easy. The Tiny Tornado is perfectly happy, deeply engaged with everything and everyone he loves, in love with his own luscious self, full of piss and vinegar. He has no idea he's on a hard road.

But I do.