A Boy Heart in a Girl Body

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Years ago I sat across the table from a mom at a parent/teacher conference chatting away about how her daughter Bella* was doing in kindergarten.

We talked about reading readiness, math skills, and writing, but what she was really interested in was how Bella was doing socially.  “Do you think she’ll grow out of it?” she asked me, fear and worry in her eyes.  You see, her daughter, at five, loved dressing in sports clothing and could be found at home, mom told me, mimicking her older brother.  At five, the girl would come to school in any assortment of team t shirts, advertising for Nike, Adidas, or the Red Sox, big and baggy just like her training shorts.  At home she wanted nothing to do with “girly stuff”.

“Have you seen this before?  Do you think she’ll grow out of it?”  The “this” she was referring to was that her child, her little girl, wanted nothing to do with being a girl.

“I don’t know” I replied.  And that was the truth.

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When I first started teaching out west in a small charter school, I had a child – Janie – in my morning session of kindergarten. She loved playing with the boys, she wore all assortments of “boy” clothing, and wouldn’t be caught dead in a dress.  Attending parties and at her house, you would find Janie running around with the guys with no shirt on and sporting a pair of board shorts.  Towards the end of the school year, she came back from a vacation with all of her hair cut off.  When she walked into the classroom, the other children remarked heavily on her hair and how short it was.  She looked happy in a way I hadn’t seen before.  Not knowing what was on the horizon, as her teacher, I made a big deal of identifying her as a girl when we were around other people – saying her name loud enough to be heard, calling her and her sister “girls” when they were together…

What her family found out and began to make public in the year that followed, was that Janie no longer wanted to be a girl.

She hated being a girl, and according to her mom, she would say she was born in the wrong body and remark that she would rather be in heaven than live her life as a girl.

Pretty heavy stuff for a six-year-old.

As her amazing family came to terms with the change that they were about to take on, they had to mourn the loss of their daughter as they embraced the development of their son.

At my school there was a lot of professional development on transgender children: We had a woman who was born a man come and speak to our staff about her experience, the parents came and spoke to our staff, and we changed one of the staff bathrooms to a unisex bathroom so the child, now identifying as John, would have a comfortable place to go.  The first-grade teachers did a phenomenal job working with the class on the changes to come and as he shared with the class one day to explain, “I was born with a boy heart in a girl body.”

Before I moved back east to be closer to family, I spent time with John and took him to the movies. Halfway through he told me he had to use the bathroom.  Having never had this experience before, as we got out to the lobby, we both stopped and stared at the bathroom doors.  Men.  Women.  My mind worked quickly.  Which one?  What is the right thing to do?  Without hesitating, I pointed to the men’s room.  “Go ahead,” I told John.  “I’ll wait here.”  He flashed me a huge smile and walked into the bathroom.  After our movie we went back to his house and played baseball and ate dinner with his family.  Before I said good bye his mom spoke with me privately about how, as a teacher, I would be an important part in the life of children who are transgender.

bathroom

This child was my first experience as an educator learning to teach a child who was questioning his identity and was considered transgender.  His words have stuck with me all of these years later, especially every time I work with a child who seems to be struggling with who they are.  I have encountered this more than this one time.  I have had girls who identify as boys, dressing the part and now years later it is difficult to distinguish the difference.  A boy who when I called him “Prince Jack” got angry and told me NOT to call him a prince because he hated being a boy.  Another boy who wore his sister’s clothes and shopped at stores such as Limited Too.

Most families are scared and not sure about what their child is going through, asking me if I have “seen this before” or remarking “I don’t know what I’m going to do with …”

The statistics are overwhelming.  It happens both more than you think, and not as much you think.  People who are transgender have been heavily highlighted in the media lately, between Caitlyn Jenner and Laverne Cox  and the latest issue of the Kids Vermont newspaper with the headline “Young and Transgender: Vermont Families on Raising Kids in Transition.

I am nowhere near an expert on this matter.  I have taught my handful of children who have struggled or who are still struggling to come to terms with who they are and how to identify themselves.  The child mentioned at the beginning of this post never did “grow out of it”.

What I do know through my experience as an educator, is that when a child, no matter how young they are, expresses that he is unhappy in his body and wants to live as someone else, it is typically not a phase.  I do know, that regardless of who they are, these children need their families and communities to love them no matter what.

I do know, that even if you are born with a boy heart in a girl body or a girl heart in a boy body, that your heart loves and needs love just as much as anyone else’s.

transgernder

 

Awesome children’s books about celebrating differences:

  1. Woolbur by Leslie Helakoski
  2. We Are All Alike, We Are All Different by Cheltenham Kindergarten
  3. Red: A Crayon’s Story by Michael Hall
  4. Jacob’s New Dress by Sarah Hoffman
  5. My Princess Boy by Cheryl Kilodavis
  6. Not Every Princess by Jeff and Lisa Bone

For more information regarding transgender youth, go to:

  1. Outright Vermont: Kids under age 13
  2. Outright Vermont: Kids ages 13-22
  3. TransYouth Family Allies

*All names have been changed throughout this post.

4 COMMENTS

  1. Thanks for the great story and recommended books. I’m always looking for stories that help diversify our reading collection and these are very helpful!

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