Except for the political and social issues raised by the situation itself, I am not at all sure that this ought to be treated very much differently from any other situation where a child’s neurological development does not proceed in the usual way. As the drive to diagnose picks up issues earlier and earlier, the question comes up more often: what do we do with the possibility that maturity or maturity with some extra attention will resolve the problem? And in what way does our definition of the problem, create a problem?
I do think that gender identification takes place sometime around three and that a child who consistently identifies with a gender other than the one actually expressed at the age of five is very far beyond unusual. That he apparently takes no steps to hide it suggests to me that he is at a minimum socially unusual as well. Irrespective of the parents’ attitude, by five a person with a penis certainly knows that behaving in certain ways is socially unacceptable – particularly a child with three older siblings, who has evidently been at school or in nursery for some time.
I do not mean to imply anything negative by this. But it seems to me also exceedingly rare for a child this age to not attempt to comply with social norms, whether they are supported by or actively combatted by the parents. Heck, people with synesthesia (for example) generally know by five not to bring it up and that is far less primal than gender identification it seems to me. I am allowing for some simplification in the article in saying this, though; I suspect the reality is rather more complex. It always is I think.
There is indeed a grey area in which a child can identify with all kinds of things, to a degree far beyond just playing at being something other than what the child is, for reasons which may or may not make sense to an adult. This is usually a coping technique used by a fairly bright child under extreme stress – pretending to be a thing which , if the child actually were that, would make whatever the situation is, “all right”. The article does not touch on this so I can’t really go any further with it.
But it is also my considered opinion that the human brain is remarkably plastic and for much longer than is generally admitted, and also that neurological development isn’t nearly as clear cut as we would like to think. It is further true that, well, psychology is sometimes more art than science and the choice of therapist can make a very significant difference in terms of what would be recommeded as the best way to handle something.
To the question: I think that forcing the child to behave in ways unnatural to him is wrong; but I think presenting to him a world that is other than it actually is is also wrong. I think it is a physiological matter, but I also think neurological development is not set in stone at the age of five – the overwhelming majority of children have a distinct hand preference by three or four, for example, but some do not yet and get one later and some few turn out to be entirely ambidextrous. But you cannot know for certain at five.
As a practical matter, I think the child at a minimum and possibly the family needs some ongoing therapy – whether the gender identity issue persists or not. I think I would enroll the child as a boy in school. Until he is a girl, he is a boy, it seems to me, and I am unaware of an “other” option. I can’t see any benefit to pretending that he hasn’t got the body of a boy. He has.
I think I would tell him that, in age appropriate ways, and I assume that his parents have done this. I think I would tell him that people expect a boy to act and dress as a boy and that I understand that now he feels that he is a girl but that these things can change. Sometimes they do and sometimes they do not, and we will deal with those things as a family as they come up.
I also think that in dealing with the school I would get a 504 plan set up from the get-go to address just the issues associated with GID, mostly bullying and social issues I expect.
