This is another phrase that Peyton quite often utters. Sometimes I wonder if life would be much easier if we could turn back the clock and be born into the life that we wished we were in. Though Peyton is four, I think in some level, he feels this way himself. Not because he sees his life being much better if he were born a boy, but because his desire to be a boy is so great, that this is what he wishes for.

A four year old has no concept of sex, at least not in my household. They don’t know how they are “created” and how they come to be a young child. What they see is how things are. Peyton knows that he was born a girl and that his physical body is that of a girl. But he so desperately wants to be a boy that he wishes that he were born into the correct sex.

Someone somewhere along the lines of my having kids said that parents who adopt often appreciate their children much more then parents who are able to birth kids themselves. I’m not at all denying that most of you love your kids more then life itself. I think the context that this was said to me in was parents who have children and whose children are removed and placed in foster care or are put up for adoption. A foster/adoptive parent has to go through so many hoops just to get a placement sometimes, and then the kids come and it is an entirely different battle. At any rate, I think Peyton feels this way as well. He has to work so hard at being a boy and being accepted as a boy that he just wishes that he were born a girl. When he tells me that he wishes that he was born a boy I just think of all the things that we still have to go through that he has no clue about. While I don’t know the correct terminology yet, I know that female to male transgender kids wrap their breasts so that others don’t see them… Hiding their physical appearance to fit in more… Being picky about the hair cuts… Acting a certain way… Bathroom issues while in school… And this is nothing. There’s so much I have yet to learn that Peyton can’t even begin to imagine.

But he knows, at four years old he knows how much easier things would be if he had the body of a boy instead of a girl. He knows that he is a boy and there is something there within himself that just does not make sense. His appearance doesn’t match what he feels like on the inside and I think that this eats away at him every day. I’ve said it before, I can not, can not imagine what it would be like to have a child transition during the teenage years. Having Peyton transition now gives him and I so much more time to learn. So much more time to acclimate to his changing and so much more time to reassure him that it’s ok to be him even if his body looks different on the outside.

Peyton and I talk a lot about him being born a girl instead of a boy. I don’t have the right answers in this area. We are not very religious so I can’t say, “this is how god made you.” All I can say is, “this is how you were born.” It doesn’t explain much of anything at all. We do talk about why it is okay to be a boy in a girl’s body but nothing is clear yet. Thankfully his four year old brain can only focus for a few minutes before he moves on to something else.