International School Parent Magazine - Autumn 2019

Understanding
GENDER
IDENTITY
in the World of
Global Nomad Families
Imagine your son beaming with joy about wearing his
bright purple dress to Kindergarten, his first week in a new
international school, in a very socially conservative region
of the world. Does your gut clench? You aren’t alone if it does.
Even the most open-minded people understand that our world is
still heavily gendered, and that there are consequences for kids who
don’t play by the spoken and unspoken rules about how boys and
girls “should” act. There are also consequences for the parents
of kids who behave in gender expansive ways, and it is the fear of
the consequences for ourselves as parents and for our kids that lead
lots of parents to worry and wonder quietly: “What is all this new
gender stuff?”
A gender expansive child is a child whose clothing, toy, game,
and/or friend choices is different from what is expected of them
based on the sex they were assigned at birth. In a nutshell, their
interests and tendencies expand beyond the limited “boys do this”
and “girls do that” boxes. As you set out to read this, maybe you
are a parent whose child is somewhat (or very) gender expansive.
Maybe this doesn’t apply to your family at all, but you know other
families on this journey and you’d like to learn to be a good ally.
Maybe you are admittedly suspicious of this seemingly new trend,
and you are uncomfortable with something that seems unnatural.
Statistically speaking, odds are very good that there are gender
expansive and/or transgender children in your communities right
now. In this Part One of a Two-Part series I hope to shed some
light on “this gender stuff.”
First, some definitions:
Sex Assigned At Birth: The way the doctors labeled you (most
often male or female) after a peek at your outwardly visible body
parts.
Gender Identity: Your internal, personal, heart-and-head-felt
sense of how male, female, both or neither you are.
Cisgender: Refers to the identity of a person whose body parts
(Sex assigned at birth) are aligned with their internal heart/head felt
sense of gender (Gender Identity).
Transgender: Someone for whom their body parts (sex assigned at
birth) are different from their internal felt sense of gender (gender
identity).
Gender expression: How we express our internal felt sense of
gender to the world.
Parents often have questions as they begin to understand that body
parts do not determine gender, and that gender is broader than two
simple categories.
1Is it normal for kids to be curious and “try on” other
gender identities?
It is absolutely a healthy part of child development to explore
a wide range of interests and clothing. Why else would preschools
have such wonderful costume/dress-up sections? But trying on
clothes or finger nail polish or playing with toys (gender expression)
usually associated with “the other gender” is not the same thing
as trying on gender identities. We know from research and clinical
experience that of the children who behave in gender expansive
ways, some grow up to be cisgender, heterosexual adults. Others
grow up and identify as cisgender and gay, lesbian, bisexual or
pansexual. Yet others grow up identify as non-binary or transgender
(Ehrensaft, 2016).
2How will I know if my child is transgender?
As you can see above, just because your child is gender
expansive in early childhood, it doesn’t mean that they
will inevitably identify as a transgender child/teen. Dr. Diane
Ehrensaft (of the UCSF Gender Clinic and The Gender Affirmative
Model) notes that when children are insistent, persistent and
consistent about their transgender identities than it is an indicator
that their internal felt sense of gender is different from the way the
world expects them to be. We know that many children whose body
parts are different from their internal sense of gender feel increasing
dysphoria (upset) as their body develops and/or as the world
around them treats them as if they are their sex assigned at birth
rather than in alignment with their felt sense of gender. Children
who are merely experimenting with gender expression (trying on
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