Psychology - Gender identity issues.

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Katie wears Y-fronts

'She said she felt like a boy inside and if she ever grew breasts she'd pop them with pins.' Reva Klein on what to do if your child develops a gender identity crisis

Reva Klein

Guardian

Wednesday June 7, 2000

We all want our daughters to be strong and brave and our sons sensitive and caring. But when - if at all - does "girlish" behaviour in a boy or "boyishness" in a girl become a problem? And whose problem is it anyway?

Tom is eight, and has been playing with dolls since he was old enough to hold one. A quiet child, he shuns the football brigade at playtime in favour of playing and talking to girls, and the one or two other boys who don't like rough and tumble. At home, he still loves playing imaginative games with dolls and animal toys. Sometimes he and his younger sister dress up in sparkly swirly costumes, festoon themselves with their mother's necklaces and paint their faces with make-up.

Tom will never win a popularity contest among his peers. Because he's friends with all the girls, the boys will have nothing to do with him. At home, his parents love and accept him for the rather eccentric child he is, providing him with a range of experiences, like camping, swimming and music lessons, like all good parents do.

Do they worry about his gender identity? "Not at all," says his father Philip. "Tom knows he's a boy and that he's a bit different from other boys, but he's secure and happy being who he is."

Tom is a very lucky child. Many parents would find his behaviour difficult to deal with, says Dr Domenico Di Ceglie, consultant child psychiatrist and director of the Gender Identity Development Clinic at the Portman Clinic in London. Gender is, he says, a psycho-social construct. "You can't dissociate what the child is feeling from what parents feel and from what society's views of conventional behaviour are."

While Tom's behaviour is different to that of most boys of his age, it would only become a problem if it were part of a larger picture. "When a child's behaviour occurs purely in the context of role play and the child retains its identity in the role, it's perfectly normal. It's when children say they want to be the other sex and cross-dress and avoid play stereotypically associated with their own sex, prefer friends of the opposite sex and dislike their bodies that they and their families need to be listened to professionally."
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When Jacky Miller heard what her daughter was feeling, she knew she had to take action. Almost from birth, her daughter Katie preferred a "boyish" lifestyle. Jacky has a photograph of her Katie, now nine, taken just before her second birthday. In it, she's sitting in the middle of her smiling family, scowling. Why? Because of the dress she's wearing. She hated wearing dresses.

Shortly after the photo was taken, Katie insisted on having all her curls cut into a short crop. She only played with boys and when they'd come over, she'd always manage to ...

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