Mommyman, Mommyman

I joined Livejournal today, in order to post a response to a transgender parent whose daughter was asking him to where a dress to her wedding. Hopefully, he'll take my advice about leaving the door open for his daughter to come around. We all transition - the whole family - and everyone goes through their own process. It's really hard to hear when parents expect their kids to accommodate them and shirk their parental responsibility.

This is a big challenge, since people going through a gender transition tend to be a little self-involved. I mean, it is an enormous life change. The problem is that if the parent's gender stuff eclipses their parental role, no one wins. Kids are resentful that they've 'lost' the parent they used to know. Perhaps this 'new' person is more interested in their own transgender emergence than in their relationship with their kid, which creates a real loss for the child. My consistent advice to parents: You are the parent! Act like it. It doesn't matter how old your child is. You need to act like the parent and be supportive of your kid.

On a lighter note, one of the parents on lj posted a song his 7-year old sang to him, to the tune of the spiderman song: "mommyman, mommyman, does whatever a mommy can. Can she spin a web, yes he can...cause he's mommyman, mommyman...". I love this kid, wherever he is.