But in general what you said is a pretty good rule for parenting. Also I think it's impossible to not have your child look back and question “what if” in something being different! What if my dad had forced me to play tennis when he wanted to, I might have been a pro…

Behaviors are pointers, but it's not always clear what they point to.
Also, I don't know how much help extreme cases are in provididing guidance for parents whose children appear to indicate a gender preference , but it's borderline.

In the best of all possible worlds, I would delay final decisiona as long as possible (no surgery) and just concentrate on removing anxiety from the child's process of developing his/het final self-identity.,

The outside world makes it tough, both for the child and for the parents. Fitting in is a huge challenge and it's potentially deep scar producing.

The existence of phases is real, too.

Not trying to influence the child has an effect, just like overt attempts to inluence him do. Some people grow up with neuroses because their parents forced them to take arduous piano lessons. Other people blame parents for not making sure they could play the piano well.

Where is the golden middle, the safe road??

My sympathies are as much for the parents as for the children.. If only they had a crystal ball to tell them what the outcome would be. They have to navigate in the dark on that score, however.

I come back to concentrating on the individual child, on what helps him get through his days in a harsh world.
I don't see any easy answers, exept for the gemeral; rule pf avoiding extremes and removig anxiety.

.

I agree about not forcing a child, one way OR the other though. But it's not easy when the issue is children who wish to be identified by one gender. At that point, a decision sort of has to be reached, it would seem.

In short- my admittedly layperson's opinion is- just let them be kids.

Then, on Halloween, the calculus began to tip.

To simulate Dorothy's hair, Carol covered Bradley's blond crewcut with a brown tea towel. Bradley loved it. In fact, he became obsessed with his tea-towel hair. For months afterward he would wake up every morning and put the towel on his head. When Carol tried to remove it, he would protest.

“It was really obsessive,” Carol says. “We really had to negotiate times when he just couldn't wear it anymore. … He seemed to feel uncomfortable and nervous sometimes when he didn't have this hair, this tea-towel hair.”

and

“I mean, he tells us now that he doesn't dream anymore that he's a girl. So, we're happy with that. He's still a bit defensive if we ask him, 'Do you want to be a girl?' He's like 'No, NO! I'm happy being a boy. …' He gives us that sort of stock answer. … I still think we're at the stage where he feels he's leading a double life,” she says. “… I'm still quite certain that he is with the girls all the time at school, and so he knows to behave one way at school, and then when he comes home, there's a different set of expectations.”

I presume as a child you didn't start wanting to take on the physicals characteristics of girls and dream about being one.

I read this as Carol blaming her son for getting beaten up. She's taking the side of the playground bullies and telling her son he needs “treatment” because other people hate him for being too feminine. She probably wouldn't see it that way, but I can't find any way around my interpretation.

I'm not advocating the ex-gay movement or anything, just saying that it's not always right to jump on perceived gender identity before someone is old enough to realize or articulate what they really feel.

While I don't reject the idea that some people can go through confusion with their orientation, the rejection to conversion “therapy” is justified for several reasons:
1. The minute you need “therapy” it's because you have a “pathology”. By accepting gay to straight (funny how there are NO cases of straight to gay therapy huh?0) therapies, you are implicitly saying that being gay is a pathology, a bad thing, hence the rejection from the gay community. Of course there could be people who are going through a time of confusion and need help, but therapy must be oriented towards helping you be what you really are, not pre.designed to be uni-directional gay to straight, but leaving open the possibility that you are really gay and it's the straight feelings which are the anomaly.
2. The “Ex-gay” movement is pretty much exclusively made up of fundamentalist Christians. This is not a group of people who base their work on psychological or medical sciences, but on religion. Homosexuality is sin, therefore it must be a choice always and “curable” always. Conversion advocates view ALL gays as actually straights suffering from a pathology. This does not engender friendship from gays, as you might imagine.
3. A child who is 2 and is self-identifying as another gender is a pretty strong argument in favor of it being biological and not a lifestyle choice, since I would suppose very young children self identify based on instinct, not based on a sophisticated internal simulation of what a female and a male is and what sounds better.

In any event I would LOVE to read what Clarissa has to say on this subject, being as she's the one with actual, you know, knowledge of psychology.

By the time he was 5, Jonah had made it very clear to his parents that he wanted to wear girl clothes full time — that he wanted to be known as a girl. He wanted them to call him their daughter.

That is not about being gay/straight but about gender. I believe most transsexuals are actually straight inasmuch as they are attracted to the opposite gender of the one they identify as.

Now I don't really know many transsexuals, but I also found this quote interesting

In other words, allowing a child like Jonah to transition in kindergarten will essentially track him into becoming a transgender adult. And for Zucker, no child under the age of 10 or 11 can be definitively labeled transgender. He says that kids' gender identities are flexible. And that even a child like Jonah, who appears to be absolutely consistent from the ages of 1 and 2, can change.

I think that this is an interesting position to take, and from what I've read I'm not sure it's true. I am always critical when people try to label kids as gay/straight since that is about sexuality and most of the time doesn't come into play until near puberty. Just because a kid likes playing with dolls doesn't mean that he'll be gay. So I agree that until about 10/11 (at least, I know a lot of people that didn't realize until 17-18) it's not wise to judge about sexuality.

On the other hand, boy/girl is one of the first constructs that we identify with. I have a hard time seeing (does anyone know differently?) that many people would self identify as a different gender only to change their mind. I think it is far more likely that they will simply repress their urges.

It seems like Zucker was way too fixated both on the sexual aspect and the physical aspect: “”We're not talking about minor medical treatments. … You're talking about lifelong hormonal treatment; you're talking about serious and substantive surgery,” he says.” like the child will instantly be taken to be fixed once the diagnosis is made. It's appropriate to delay those sorts of changes until they are older (and I can see how lots of therapy to figure out the best way to express the gender might be required) but that is different than not allowing them to express who they are.