All God's Children
When my daughter was three and being treated for cancer, she insisted that she was not Mary Evelyn, but Orla. Orla was her friend who did not have cancer. Of course she wanted to be Orla, Orla was not having chemo. Orla was at the playground.
Mary Evelyn also expressed a wish to be a mermaid when she grew up. In the very young, imaginative play integrates emotional and cognitive learning in a free flowing and interactive way— exemplified by Christopher Robin and Pooh. While pretending, children have freedom to be whatever they want because we all know it’s just “pretend”.
When a young child seems to want to be someone or something else it can be an expression of stress, like my daughter when she said she was Orla. It was a way of letting us know she was freaked out by her cancer and needed reassurance that she was OK as herself. As her mom, I was also freaked out by her cancer. I loved and accepted my daughter. I never wished she was Orla, but I did wish she was a healthy child. I would not have chosen for her to have cancer, yet God allowed it and I had to trust Him. If I didn’t trust Him with my daughter, what was left? Accepting that Mary Evelyn simply came with cancer was a struggle, but I had to accept this, even while praying for her healing. Working through that helped me understand her pain. Once on the way to preschool, she confided she wanted to be “a regular girl- without cancer”. I told her I wished for her to be healthy too, but she did have cancer and we loved her and trusted that God was caring for her. Instead of letting her pretend to be Orla, we told her that she was not Orla, she was Mary Evelyn and we love her as she is. She was reassured by this and felt its truth.
Maria Montessori said that “Play is the work of children”. Imaginative play provides a venue for kids to work through stress and explore feelings which might otherwise scare them or seem forbidden. Imaginary friends, talking animals, or wanting to be a mermaid are all ways kids might escape from problems through play. It’s an expression of the mysterious within.
In a young child, such as a three-year-old girl who expresses a wish to be a boy (instead of a mermaid), we should take it lightly. Children are highly malleable. They conform to their environment and want to please the adults in their lives. As the adults, we should proactively protect their innocence. Gender issues which confuse adults are beyond the ken of children.
The essence of masculinity or femininity is complicated because each person is a mystery even to themselves. We are created in the image of God and each bear that image, which makes us complex beings. We bear the image of God, but in our current state we know we fall short. We have a sense of a wrongness in yearnings that are difficult to express. We are broken inside and are looking for ways to be fixed.
Is a three-year-old girl savvy enough to understand that she might be attempting to re-create herself to fix her inner brokenness when she plays cowboy or pretends to be a boy? She’s probably simply having fun. Maybe she’s testing limits. If she is serious and feels a wound inside about being a girl, we might find a way to nudge, to love, but not to overreact. We might hold that concern in our heart and seek God’s help.
Children do not have the cognitive or emotional maturity to understand transgender identity issues or the means to try to make it happen, but adults do, and more and more adults are enabling children to transition. Among many other things, children who transition use a new name. Adults who are transgender sometimes call their birth name their “dead name”. They feel it is abusive to call them by that name because it negates their felt identity. As fraught with pain as that sounds for an adult, what is it like to deny your birth name- your baptismal name- when magnified by the imagination of a young child?
This is a struggle facing our kids and it frightens many of us. How can we help our children navigate gender roles in a confused and resentful society? How should we guide them to accept themselves and others as people created by God to be male and female when so many around them vigorously dispute this? Why does this seem like common sense and yet overwhelmingly confusing at the same time?
Learn about the teachings of the Orthodox Church on this and other issues so we are informed by our faith. Solomon wrote that there is nothing new under the sun. Christianity is not without hope or help for this. Do not flee the conflict, but struggle with truth, love, and kindness.
As parents, we should have open conversations with our kids while seeking to preserve their innocence but bear in mind -- the world is not preserving our children’s innocence. As adults, we must not abandon our kids to the confusion and danger of the world’s teachings.
When Mary Evelyn was a little older, she no longer wanted to be a mermaid--she wanted to be a cooking show host. Still a long shot, but at least it was possible. Most kids develop a more realistic view of life and of themselves as they grow up. In fact, 80-90% of children* who think they may be transgender but do not start hormone therapy desist by the time they grow up. That means they grow out of it and become comfortable with their biological sex.
My daughter was a beautiful girl, lovingly created by God, yet she had cancer. Cancer affected every facet of her life. But she was not cancer, she was Mary Evelyn. Why she had to struggle so much is beyond our present understanding, but not beyond our trust.
I don’t want to compare having cancer with feeling transgender—trusting God’s love and mercy in His creation of us even in difficult circumstances is the real comparison- one we can all relate to.
Please pray for our children. May God help each of us in our struggle to accept that we cannot recreate ourselves, nor should we want to. We trust God’s creation of us, even when we have other ideas.
We are a mystery to ourselves, but God loves us and understands us, the deepest us. All God’s children are precious and beloved by Him who made us.
Orthodox Resources:
https://denver.goarch.org/to-whom-do-we-belong
https://www.oca.org/reflections/fr.-lawrence-farley/advice-to-the-confused
https://blogs.ancientfaith.com/glory2godforallthings/2019/11/11/is-everyone-transsexual/
Secular Sources:
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/07/when-a-child-says-shes-trans/561749/
https://www.kelseycoalition.org/
https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2019/07/54272/
Citations:
Steensma, T., McGuire, J., Kreukels, Beekman, S., Kreukels, P.C., Cohen-Kettenis, P., (2013) Factors Associated With Desistence and Persistence of Childhood Gender Dysphoria: A Quantitative Follow-Up Study. Reteived from https://www.transgendertrend.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Steensma-2013_desistance-rates.pdf
Cretella, M. (2018) Gender Dysphoria in Children. Retrieved from https://www.acpeds.org/the-college-speaks/position-statements/gender-dysphoria-in-children
Hruz, P., Mayer, L., and McHugh, P., (2017) Growing Pains. Retrieved from https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/growing-pains