then it was orange. They picked the pink,
purple and aqua bedsheets; the fire-truck
socks; the outer-space sleeping bag; and
the violet climbing shoes. They wanted
the Cars Pull-Ups one time and the Min-
nie Mouse ones the next. Zoomer has a
stuffed dog named Dante that goes every-
where with them and a baby doll that they
named DeeDee. Zoomer loves Play-Doh
and molds neon- colored animals and pre-
tend food. They say, “I’m not going to eat
it.” Then I see that their teeth are bright
blue, and they have, in fact, tried to eat it.
A common critique of gender-
creative parenting is that “the kid will
be confused,” but Zoomer doesn’t seem
confused at all. In fact, they have a more
nuanced understanding of sex and gen-
der than a lot of adults. We teach them
to use gender- neutral words until a per-
son tells us about themself. We call kids
friends. We have taught Zoomer about
their own body without using boy-girl la-
bels. Zoomer understands that some girls
have penises and some boys have vulvas,
and some intersex kids have vulvas and
testes. Zoomer knows some daddies get
pregnant and some nonbinary parents are
called Zazas. At day care, I tell teachers,
“Please snuggle them and wrestle with
them. Please compliment their painted
ing out of the girl box I was placed in in- I’m trying on new labels and pro-
nouns, and giving myself the same en-
couragement to play with gender that I
am giving my child.
Not everyone has the support that
Brent and I have. We sprang gender-
creative parenting on our families, and
they decided to get on board. They shared
in the emotional labor and took it upon
themselves to educate our extended fam-
ily and their co-workers, neighbors and
friends. They are champions at using
gender- neutral pronouns. Some of my
friends have not been so lucky. They’ve
lost touch with family members or have
strained relationships because of their
decision to do gender- creative parent-
ing. I know of a grandparent who keeps
a stash of clothing, so whenever their
gender- creative grandchild comes over,
they change them out of the outfit the
child picked to put them in something
more stereotypically associated with their
sex. Some of my friends’ family members
have called child protective services, re-
porting their grandchild is being abused,
simply because they weren’t assigned a
gender. This is also a reason I feel strongly
about being a public
advocate for parent-
ing this way—many
others don’t have
the safety, support
and resources to talk
openly about it.
Around their
fourth birthday, Zoomer started declar-
ing a gender identity and claiming some
gendered pronouns. Brent and I are hon-
oring Zoomer’s identity and expression
and answering all their questions in an
age- appropriate and inclusive way. (I’m
using they here because Zoomer is still ex-
ploring gender and I want them to have
some autonomy over how they share their
identity with the world.)
I’m witnessing my child create their
own gender—and who Zoomer has be-
come is greater than anything I could have
imagined or assigned. Instead of us telling
the children who they should be, maybe
it’s the children who will teach us how to
be. We just have to get out of their way.
Myers is the author of Raising Them:
Our Adventure in Gender Creative Par-
enting, from which this essay is adaptedWHEN A CHARACTER
SAYS, ‘HELLO, BOYS AND
GIRLS!’ ZOOMER ADDS,
‘AND NONBINARY PALS!’
toenails and let them get muddy. Call
them handsome and beautiful; sensitive
and brave. Give them the opportunity to
play with the Hot Wheels and the kitchen
set.” Because Zoomer has been raised
with a focus on inclusivity, they have an
instinct to make everyone feel welcome.
When a character on a kids’ show says,
“Hello, boys and girls!” Zoomer adds,
“And nonbinary pals!”
A friend of mine recently told me when
she first found out how we were going to
parent, she thought, That’s going to be
endless work for Kyl. “But now I actually
think that you are so lucky and had some
great foresight,” she said. “I spend so
much of my time tearing the walls down
that people are trying to build around my
daughters. People aren’t trying to build
walls around Zoomer because they don’t
know which walls to build.”I wanted to gIve my child a gift. The gift
of seeing people as more than just a gen-
der. The gift of understanding gender as
complex, beautiful and self- determined.
I hadn’t considered how much of a gift I’d
also be giving myself. While curating an
experience for Zoomer to come to their
own identity, I in-
advertently started
taking a closer
look at mine too.
One day, Zoomer
and I were playing
hide-and-seek. They
cupped their eyes as
I hid in the pantry, then walked around the
house mimicking the words we use when
we are trying to find them. “Mommy, you
in the plant? No... Mommy, you under
the couch? No.” As they got closer, they
called out, “Kyl! Where are you?”
Gender-creative parenting comes with
a giant mirror and forces me to ask myself,
“Kyl! Where are you?” I’ve examined my
own gender identity and expression more
in the past four years than I had in the
three decades before becoming Zoom-
er’s parent. As I’ve tried to create an en-
vironment where Zoomer is free from the
chains of binary gender, I am working to
figure out what about my gender is au-
thentic and what was prescribed to me,
and is it even possible to differentiate at
this point? I love my body, but I don’t love
that I was assigned a specific gender role
because of it. In my early 30s, I’m climb-June 2018