I think my son is a horse.

I’m getting pretty tired of this child gender identity crisis thing. Before you get upset, hear me out.

            When I was little, I liked to put on rubber boots and go play in the ditch behind my house, go on secret spy missions, and tag along with my older brother and his male friends. Does that mean I identified as a male? No. Because I also liked to put on frilly princess dresses and have tea parties. I may have hated to get my hair curled, but that wasn’t because boys don’t get their hair curled, and I wanted to be a boy. That was because it freaking hurt like no other when my DAD took those rollers out of my hair in the morning. Really ladies, how much did those sponge rollers suck to remove? Can I get an Amen?!

            Ahem.. But I digress.

            My point is… stop trying to put these children into a box. Just because a girl likes to play with trucks or other “boy stuff” doesn’t mean that she’s identifying as a boy. It means she is identifying as a child. Her interests are probably goingto change all the time. That’s what children DO. They have a different favorite color and a new best friend every single day, for Pete’s sake. And even if their interests don’t change, that doesn’t necessarily mean they would rather be a member of the opposite sex.

            If, one day, your child starts running around the house on all fours, you don’t say “Oh my goodness, he must be a horse stuck in a child’s body!” and then go out that very same day and stick him in a stable to live in for the rest of his life. Sheesh! You put him to bed that night and hope that he won’t break as many glass items tomorrow when he’s sure to run on all fours again. And you just deal with it for that day. And the next day, and the next day, until it either goes away, or he comes up to you four years later and says “Mom, I think we might have a problem.” THEN you can figure out what kind of horse-hormone-blocking drugs to give him.

            I’ll say it again; stop putting these children into a box. If you think your child may really have a gender identity disorder, then fine. But let them come to that conclusion on their own. Let them decide that for themselves when they’re old enough to actually know what a gender identity disorder IS. Sometimes the parents who are “being open-minded” or are “just trying to let their child be him/herself” are actually forcing their child to be something he/she is not. Because they are planting this idea in their child’s head that something is wrong with him/her when there’s really not. That child is really just being a child. So calm down about these labels. Don’t freak out if your daughter wants to wear jeans instead of a skirt, or if your three year old son gets into his mother’s makeup. (Unless that crap was expensive.) Just let these kids be kids for right now and figure all that stuff out later.