Confessions of a mom forced to address boys in dresses

How young is too young to talk about gender and sexuality?

My four year-old daughter is opinionated on many topics, including fashion. She refuses to wear sweatshirts and is quite skeptical of the fact that her soccer uniform requires shorts (instead of skorts). She generally has a keen understanding of the world around her, but the other day, was genuinely confused. “Why do boys and girls wear different clothes? Why don’t boys wear dresses? But…why do some boys wear dresses?” she asked me as I was slipping into a dress.

It quickly came out that she’d read a book in class about a little boy who loved wearing a dress and high heels. The book, entitled Morris Micklewhite and the Tangerine Dress, has been named a top 6 book for transgender and gender-fluid kids.

I calmly told my daughter that yes, some boys do wear dresses, but that it’s never our place to judge; we should aim to treat everyone with kindness and respect. But on the inside, I was indignant.

Why would educators feel it’s their place to introduce the concept of gender fluidity to preschoolers?

It felt like something was taken from me. This was a topic that I wanted to teach my daughter about, when and how I felt it was best. But instead, I discovered after the fact that the Pandora’s box was already open.

Excerpt from “Morris Micklewhite and the Tangerine Dress”

My mama bear mentality aside, the book does have a positive message: that no one deserves to be bullied or mocked, and that it is what’s on the inside that counts. It’s an important, universal lesson - but one that doesn’t have to be taught through the lens of gender ideology.

There are countless examples of children’s books that already teach the concept of accepting those different from us. From my childhood, several come to mind, like Sally Small: a girl who’s shorter than everyone else and feels she doesn’t fit in, until she ultimately realizes “that to be small is not much different than being tall.” Or there’s Jessica, a lonely girl with an imaginary friend, who (spoiler alert) finally finds a real one.

But books like Morris Micklewhite and the Tangerine Dress, which is just one of many in this growing genre, are different. They target the youngest members of society and serve as an inflection point, ultimately normalizing the infliction of irreversible changes that agenda-driven adults are administering, at increasingly alarming rates, to pre-pubescent kids.

The first of 11 pages of “gender expansive” books geared towards pre-k and elementary school kids. And this is just one list.

Countless girls go through a tomboy phase growing up; I certainly did. In 3rd grade, I wore a backwards baseball cap and played street hockey with the boy next door. I can’t imagine the impact on my life today if someone had told me, during that brief phase, that I should consider taking puberty blockers while figuring out my true gender identity.

A snapshot of my tomboy phase

The shaping of a child’s self-concept is a delicate process, one best formed with clear boundaries of love, truth, freedom and consequences. And like it or not, being biologically male or female falls within those boundaries. If girls play with trucks, or boys play with mermaids, that doesn’t mean that they were assigned the wrong gender at birth. It just means they’re learning and developing – in other words, being kids.  Why must we complicate things?

Questioning and pushing boundaries is, at its core, the inherent engine of progress. But we need to know when to question and push them. In the case of introducing gender fluidity to preschoolers, let’s let young children figure out their world first, before we force them to question it.

Do you think preschool is too young for these gender nonconforming books? What age, if any, is the right age to introduce these concepts to kids? And do you think this topic should be introduced by parents or at school?