Hmm how you want to think you’ll react and how you do may be two different things. On one occasion, not long after my wife and I had made progress sorting things about my own dressing, we went together to pick up my son from his day care. When we walk in, there he is in one of the dress up costumes, a princess gown complete with sparkly slip on one inch block heels! I think every synapse in my brain fired at once! My wife could tell it made me uncomfortable, but not knowing that it was mostly due to her presence and us witnessing this mutually–and of course she was like, “I would think you’d be thrilled about this!” I still don’t deal too well with the subject of my own dressing being decompartmentalized by surprise, or with the perception that being a CD gives me some special understanding of what’s going on with others.
Fast forward years later to today, while I’d begin by letting them know they can have as much help or as much privacy as they want, and I’d have to listen pretty closely to figure out whether me revealing myself to them would actually be helpful and encouraging and something they need, or just make things weird! Maybe I’d put it like, its something I’ve done before. I can see from what my kids come home from school with–gender expression is a human rights topic in my daughter’s curriculum–that they are coming up with a completely different understanding of these issues than what I was given. We are on board with that, its one of the redeeming qualities of the modern world.
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