How much information is too much information for a child?
All parents struggle with the particulars. When do you tell your kids about the messy reality of birth? The mechanics of sex? Homosexuality? Transgender? Death? War? The Holocaust? Serial killers? 911? The Bomb? Sarah Palin?
If you read the parenting experts, they’ll tell you that frequently when kids ask questions they only need general answers. You don’t need to go into a ton of detail. Their feedback can let you know if you’ve told them as much as they need to know; as much as they can handle. If you’re the type to babble along, filling conversational voids, digging yourself in deeper and deeper, learning how to make a simple statement and wait for a reply can be a challenge.
I’ve had some problems in this area.
Like the time, when Oscar was in first grade, when he demanded a bit more detail on the whole birth story. So I told him, teaching him a few new words in the process. He looked non-plussed. Then I made the Big Mistake.
“You know, not every kid is knows about this stuff, different parents have different rules, and different kids are ready to learn this at different times. So don’t go running down the street screaming ‘babies come out of vaginas! Babies come out of vaginas!’
I don’t need to tell you what happened after that. More than once.
Eventually, we got a good, progressive sex book called It’s So Amazing, which fascinated my younger child when we read it together, and disgusted Oscar, my gender-non-conforming child. (Amusingly, the book features two parenthetical characters who react to the subject matter presented in exactly the same way, for kids to empathize with. It’s a really good book if you’re not a wack-job / hater / fundamentalist.)
You’ll find a lot resources out there for all the common stuff; sex and death and puberty; eating disorders and ADD and Aspergers.
When do you tell your gender non-conforming kid about transgender? About surgery and hormones? About the irrevocable decision at puberty; to block or not to block?
Oscar was finishing Kindergarten, wearing the boyskirt, when at the local coffee shop which I used to haunt, pre-kids, and which I still attempted to hang out in now and then with kids, I saw a male-bodied person going through what I assume was the real life test, though this person could easily have been a cross-dresser. In a very very low key way I pointed him out to Oscar, deciding the breech of etiquette was justified by the teaching opportunity. The guy didn’t pass, having broad shoulders, Adam’s apple, big hands and rugged features.
Outside he asked, “Why would a man wear woman’s clothing?”
Collecting myself I asked. “Why do you like girl stuff?”
So I told him about transgender; the real life test; blocking and surgery, in general terms. He said, “Oh.” I told him there was no hurry, and few people felt this need, and that there were lots of ways to be a boy, and I filled the silence with my babble before grinding to a halt.
And I realized that Oscar lived in the moment, a child, and this story I was telling about this man was just another boring grown up thing that he knew had nothing at all to do with him.
There are kids who have an a-ha moment at this, and start saving money in big mason jars for their GRS. I’m not kidding. Oscar wasn’t one of them. The event, like so many before it, a non-event, for us.
So I don’t know how young is too young; in the end I don’t think it matters, and in the experience of our community no one has ever really regretted their own personal decisions. As long as you’re sensitive, and speak generally, and respond honestly to questions, provide context, and don’t sweat the details they aren’t asking for and don’t need.
Let them be the kids they are.
They grow up quickly enough.
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My wife didn’t think interest in skirts was strange, so the dress-up moved into the house. She had an old floral skirt, a swishy, furled thing, which became Oscar’s.
