When I decided to move across the country on a quest for “a dog, a car, and a boyfriend,” I was actually searching for someone to like me the best. Not me the only and not me above themselves…. But to be someone’s favorite.
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I started the “energy” thing as a way to avoid punishing him for doing perfectly normal four-year-old things that drive me up the wall, like running away when it’s time to leave or refusing to brush his teeth at bedtime.
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I sat there on the bathroom floor wondering how many times I’ve used punitive tactics to “teach these kids a lesson.” How many times I’ve been petty and small as a parent. Probably more than I can count!
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Every time I stand in front of a class full of high schoolers, I ask them to think of a time when they have been policed around their gender.
Each time, I find myself hoping that no one in the classroom will raise their hand. That maybe this will be the group where none of them have been told to “man up” or to “act like a lady.” Yet every time, their hands shoot up, almost automatically.
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I first heard about the Five Love Languages at a “Healthy Relationships” workshop at a trans leadership training in Los Angeles—and my mind was blown. It was 2013, Biff and I had been dating for two years, and I didn’t feel like he really cared about me because he never held my hand or kissed me in public. He never really told me he loved me in a way that felt specific or certain. Whenever I brought this up, he would always respond that he kept our house clean, cooked food for us every night, and let me sleep in on the weekends. Wasn’t that proof enough of his love?
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I try hard not to label myself as being “not into something.” But let’s face it… there are just some things I am not into. I am not into sports. I am not into car racing. And I am not into trucks. But when we decided to go to Oregon’s premier sacred music festival, Beloved, I imagined how nice it would be to have a truck.
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Riley has always had to work hard to focus on what was happening in front of him, and has often struggled to stay in a positive mindset. When he was seven, we had him assessed so we would have a better sense of what he might need from us in terms of supports. I thought I was ready for whatever might come up during those assessments, but when the pediatric psychologist gently told us that Riley met all the criteria for ADHD, I was shocked. How had I missed this? Was he going to need medication? Do we really know the long-term effects of that medication on tiny bodies? Weren’t there other options for treating it?
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When you’re pregnant (and even after you give birth), everyone has opinions for you. And for some reason, most of these advice-givers don’t seem able to simply share what worked for them... instead, they all seem convinced that their way is The Right Way and all other ways will inevitably lead to Doom and Gloom for you, your partner (if you have one), and your baby.
This turns out to be true whether you’re transgender or not, so I thought I’d share my tips for surviving Nagging Nancies during pregnancy and early parenthood.
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This National Reading Month, we are partnering with Amazon to make sure you’re providing your family with books that will help prepare them to be proud allies and friends to LGBTQ+ families!
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Ah, the dreaded/dreamed-about family road trip. Biff and I have taken dozens of trips with the kids, and boy have we had some mega successes and some horrific failures. Here are some tips we’ve developed over the years to help us cope with family road trips!
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“Why did you decide to gender your baby at birth?”
Every once in awhile, a stranger (usually online) will ask us this question.
In most cases, it’s intended as a “gotcha.” People who don’t want the best for us will ask it in jest, attempting to poke holes in our argument that perhaps gender is less rigid and fixed than we’ve been led to believe. Other times it’s asked by a trans or non-binary person who imagines that we are upholding the gender binary by assuming what gender our baby is.
It is rarely asked with good intention, but for the sake of this blog post… let’s assume it IS being asked that way (and then I’ll discuss why the first two ways of asking it are harmful).
I guess I have to explain my beliefs on gender to begin with.
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As a transgender person, I’ve had many strange conversations about gender. But none are as strange as the ones I have with and about my kids. Here’s part one in my series on gender and parenting, in which I discuss my resistance to dressing Hailey in feminine attire. Check it out!
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We made a video recently in which Hailey answered questions posed by our Instagram followers. One of them asked about her relationship with her biological parents, and Hailey wanted to tackle it. Check out the video to see her answer!
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This year, we’ve been able to accomplish a couple of our holiday traditions with ease using the new Fire HD 8 Kids Edition. Hailey got hers just a couple of weeks ago and it couldn’t have come at a better time for her development. As it turns out, the Parent Dashboard allows me to pick and choose exactly what games, movies, and apps she’s allowed to access, AND I can see what she’s played, watched, and read at any time. I’ve already been able to pull a, “Tell me about that game!” so she could explain the strategy behind one of her new favorite apps, a problem-solving puzzle based on Beauty and the Beast.
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When you have a crappy stroller... you know it. It doesn’t open up easily, so you’re always trying to somehow balance your cup of coffee and your baby while pleading with the stroller to JUST UNLATCH ALREADY. There’s this little tiny space underneath where somehow you’re supposed to fit your diaper bag but in reality, only one kid-sized sweatshirt can be stored there. And when you have to put it away, it somehow always manages to collapse in the closet, pushing the hallway door open so guests can see all of last year’s Christmas decorations sitting there.
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The first couple of hours were tense. We both held tight to the other’s mistakes of recent weeks. The time he told me he wished Biff was his only dad. The time I told him he couldn’t have screen time because he pushed Hailey (I found out later that she lied about the pushing thing but was so mad about their bickering I said no screen time anyway). We listened to music in silence, Riley occasionally asking tentative questions about the trip. “Where are we going again?” “Did you remember my swimsuit?” “What if I twist my ankle?” I gave him the map and traced our journey over and over again. As the miles passed our mutual anger dissipated and I remembered he was just a kid and he remembered I was just a person and we started to sing along to the music and make plans for counting stars.
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This is the second blog in my series on parenting with a social justice focus. In each post, I start with a specific parenting situation that I found a way to bungle through. Then I cover what my big-picture parenting goals were, in that scenario. Finally, I'll give a few tips and tricks for how to navigate similar situations in your own parenting life. Hopefully, others will learn from my mistakes.
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