education expands the horizons. definitely. you're never too young to start questioning if a tree falls in a forest, would anybody hear, how can you prove that each snowflake is different...has anyone seen each one...or in jasper's case, his gender.
jasper knows he is a boy. he knows this because he wears bobs, and in our family, boys wear bobs, and girls wear knickers. it's the law. jasper is also aware that he has permission to wee standing up. his bits allow for this, much to his sisters' firm, high pitched disapproval. boys can wee standing up, girls cannot. another gem he has tucked into his tiny grey matter.
jasper was the first of this batch of kids to become toilet trained. so he has had a bit of time to become familiar with his bits, and from the amount of time he spends with one or more hands attached to them, i figured he had his bits and his boyhood all figured out.
so i was a bit surprised the other day when as i was picking jasper up from school his teacher said to me while choking back a laugh, "jasper had a good day today. he made us all laugh."
"not surprising," i said, wondering if he had done his latest dora dance for them, which does get smiles.
"we were choosing the special helper of the day, and we established that the special helper was a girl, which meant all the boys had to sit down...."
"yes?" i politely inquired, wondering how my child fit into this scenario.
"and jasper stayed standing and then when i said, 'jasper are you a boy or a girl?' he responded, "i am a girl with a willy."
i said nothing intelligable, but burst into laughter. my eyebrows jumped somewhere up to my hairline.
on the ride home, jasper repeated his new found knowledge, with confidence. "girl with a willy, girl with a willy." sebastian, ever the policeman, informed jasper not only that he was wrong, but where he was wrong. he gave detailed descriptions and was mostly correct.
since then, i have told him that he is a boy and he will say, "no i am a girl". and then i will say, remembering my first year university philosophy and logic course..."jasper do you have a willy?" and he'll say, "yeth!" and i will say, "do boys have willies!" and he'll say "yeth!" and then, hoping that i have gently led him to some conclusion, i will say, "so..." and by then he will be picking a scab or pulling out his hair (seriously, he does this, does this seem odd to you ???) and the discussion will be over.
free willy!
The hair pulling does seem a little odd. If he does it often might it be trichotillomania (big name for what is basically compulsively pulling out hair or picking at skin).
Posted by: Megan | March 12, 2007 at 07:46 PM
i have a sudden desire to watch blackadder II.
Posted by: knobody | March 13, 2007 at 01:54 AM
Oh dear - too funny! Maybe because he is one of three (as you say, "from this batch of kids"), he just assumed if the other two are girls, then he must be too. I know we laugh, but it is all so very sweet and innocent - they are just adorable. Good luck on this one.
Posted by: AngelaM | March 13, 2007 at 02:39 AM
What will 'e do next???
Posted by: Dad aka Grandad Blake | March 14, 2007 at 12:22 AM
Its too soon to diagnose formally (I am a psych), but there are potential signs here of a kid who MAY be anxious (hair pulling etc.) because he is telling you who he really is and no-one is accepting that. Also possible that it is a phase. About 30% grow out of it. Allow a little wiggle room for him without correction and see if the hair pulling, etc. stops. It'll be a fairly good indicator of where he is at TODAY re: gender identity and selfhood.
Posted by: m | March 14, 2007 at 02:48 AM
Too funny! We have had similar discussions in our house--when my girl twins were about 2 1/2, their little brother (then 8 months or so) started taking a bath with them, so we had many, many talks about girl/boy parts. One night, Bella kept insisting that she was a boy and I went through the whole thing about boys having penises and how Daddy and Max are boys, etc. So then she said that she was a boy and that she has a penis--so I said, "By all means, show me your penis!" She looked down, cleared the bubbles out of the way, looked up at me with shock on her face and said, "Huh? No penis?!" like it had fallen off in the bath or something! But "girl with a willy"--I like that a lot!
Posted by: Minxie | March 14, 2007 at 07:12 AM