Never let my son put a dress on. Never, ever. ever.

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[–]Alienhunter糞大名 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

Yep agreed. Small kids are going to cross dress while playing dress up. Doesn't mean anything besides it being a kid doing random kid shit. Adults interfering in that is where problems arise. They either encourage it creating problems as the kid now associates cross dressing with adult approval or the adults forbid it and react way to strictly which makes the dress a "forbidden fruit" that the child will now seek out.

What generally happens is if the adults don't give a shit the child will grow out of it. Some won't but high chance they were gay anyway.

[–]Haylstorm 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Same with makeup at that age. Kids main thought is "this is pretty and colourful and mommy plays with it so I want to copy her". I know with one of my cousins he idolised his older sister and wanted to copy her. Apart from her being annoyed that her makeup was ruined they just rolled with it. Got a costume makeup set so he could play with the pretty colours but not ruin her expensive makeup. Grew out of it unless we count halloween/horror makeup.

Considering he's straight as fuck and married with a kid now and going through the same thing with his own son it just seems like a normal development stage. Young kids like bright/pretty things.

[–]ClassroomPast6178 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Yep. It’s when it elicits an overreaction that it risks becoming a problem.

Forbid it and it becomes that taboo that generates a thrill due to transgression. Encourage it and it becomes a mechanism by which the child seeks reward/attention/approval.

Best to be completely neutral and let the fascination run its course unless there’s a good reason to intervene, such as they’re doing it inappropriately.

Professionally, I would be more interested in observing the adults in the child’s life and seeing whether there is any abuse occurring. For instance, is the mother encouraging or forcing the child to behave this way or is the child displaying other inappropriate behaviours or knowledge that might mean they’re being sexually abused.

A sad case occurred at a school I worked at where a child visited family abroad and was abused by an older cousin. The victim didn’t recognise it as abuse, despite it being of the worst kind, and we picked it up because the child was talking about it to their classmates and the classmates got upset and scared by it. It was all extremely awful.

[–]Haylstorm 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Yeah we all figured it was just because it was 'new' and he spent I think a few months playing with the costume makeup until the new thing came along. Then it was fire engines and whatever came after that.

You're right that if the child is being forced into one behaviour or another that more oversight would be a good idea, you might be able to catch something and get the child out of that environment. That poor child who went abroad though. I can't imagine how awful that is for them. Another worry there would be how cyclical abuse can be and if the older cousin was abused by a family member that may have access to the child. I wish them well in their recovery, young children are often quite resilient but that would be a lot for anyone.