Would YOU let your son wear a dress?

Add to My Stories

LORRAINE CANDY's four-year-old son adores floral frocks and runs an imaginary boutique called Slinx in her bedroom. She isn't worried. But should she be?

Princess boy: Lorraine doesn't mind that her three-year-old son likes dressing up in girls' clothes (posed by model)When I was pregnant with my first child, part of me longed for a boy. Ive always worked in the ultra-feminine world of glossy magazines, so Im immersed in female culture, behaviour and attitudes. I wanted a change at home. Some testosterone in the mix.But my first child was a girl, and 17 months later, I had another girl. Obviously, I was delighted to have healthy babies whatever their sex, but the desire for a boy was getting stronger. Then, miraculously, my third baby was male: a proper, chubby bundle of brown-eyed boyness. Goodbye sequins and My Little Pony; hello khaki combats and Bob the Builder.So imagine my confusion when at the age of two, my son Henry rejected T-shirts and trousers in favour of dresses. By the age of three, he was calling himself Miss Argentina and rushing home from nursery to squeeze into something Liz Hurley would wear for cocktails.I am a liberal-minded parent I dont set rigid boundaries and force my children to conform so I am happy to indulge his cross-dressing in the same way I indulge his need to wrestle me to the ground shouting Whos in charge now?, or his love of football and riding his scooter so fast only Usain Bolt could keep up.To be honest, I didnt question my sons love of a floral shift until I was handed a childrens book called My Princess Boy. Written by Americans Cheryl and Dean Kilodavis, it is about a boy who loves pink and wears tutus. Its based on their five-year-old son Dyson, who wears only dresses. The book has been called groundbreaking, and the authors hope it will be used to encourage acceptance of alternative behaviour and prompt ! schools to debate bullying. This is to be applauded. But at the same time, I cant help but think it is making a mountain out of a sparkly molehill. In fact, the attention Dyson is getting worldwide makes me nervous writing this piece about Henry, whose blurred wardrobe is, by all accounts (and according to every child psychology book Ive consulted), normal to be expected, even.What is to be gained from forcing acceptance of this kind of innocent eccentricity?

More...

• 'We can't afford a second child,' say 60 per cent of parents
• Natural birth zealots make mothers who have Caesareans feel like failures tweets Kirsty Allsopp

You can tell a group of infant school pupils that boys who dress like girls are perfectly normal as often as you like, but theyll still shout derogatory, bullying chants at him in the playground. That is the nature of children when they are confronted with someone who doesnt fit in their tribe.I dont allow Henry who also calls himself Princess Edwina, Susan, Jean or Olive when he slips into his girl clothes to wear a dress in public. I wouldnt take him on national TV, as the Kilodavises did in the U.S., when a subdued Dyson, wearing a tutu, looked bored with the whole affair.

'If your young boy wears a dress now, it does not define his future sexuality, according to the experts'I havent supplied a picture of Henry in a dress for this piece because youd do what I suspect the TV audience did off-camera to Dyson: stare, snigger quietly or go outside and hoot with laughter.Also, what will happen in the future? Henry is a happy-go-lucky four-year-old pre-schooler now, but what if he wants to be Prime Minister one day? A picture of him wearing a dress will not, I feel, be helpful to his future choices. Im happy to embrace Henrys creative dressing at home and often take the role of shop assistant in his imaginary boutique, Slinx, which he sets up in my bedroom, selling my clothes to his sisters aged seven and eight. I have bought him a cash reg! ister, h is own day-dress and a floral headband.

He likes to wear a nightie, which is confusing if I encounter him on the stairs during the night (I do a double-take before realising one of the girls hasnt shrunk). When he made his own avatar character on the childrens interactive website Club Penguin, he dressed it in a Hawaiian skirt and bikini top, with a gold clutch and heels. He is fond of pink nail varnish and Mamma Mia! is his favourite film.But I dont encourage it outside the house because he looks like Ross Kemp in a frock. He is obviously a boy. People will laugh, hell find that hurtful and it will break my heart. This cross-dressing behaviour is confusing for a parent, but according to psychologists it is to be expected. The majority of young boys will do it at some point, especially those with sisters. Have a look on YouTube there are hundreds of boys dressed as Disney princesses.Children dont realise their gender until they are two to three years old, and then they dont know what it means, so they experiment because they havent yet bought into the labels society puts on them. They dont know theyre not conforming.

Attention-seeking: Psychologists says boys with sisters are more likely to dress up to grab the limelight away from their siblingsSome experts argue it is good for boys to explore story-telling and role play in this way. However, there is a checklist of things that may prompt excessive cross-dressing, or an unwillingness to wear gender-appropriate clothes. Its possible a boy with sisters sees them getting more attention and wears a dress to grab the limelight. It may be he has an unhappy relationship with his father and concludes that being a boy isnt great because his mother keeps saying so.One thing is clear it is not about gender confusion, and there are no sexuality issues to be explored with young boys who dress as Martha rather than Arthur. If your young boy ! wears a dress now, it does not define his future sexuality, according to the experts.Henry would never play with a doll, he wont cook with me or enjoy colouring as his sisters do. He just likes girls clothes as much as he likes boys clothes. Perhaps he wants to be his sisters, not because they are girls, but because they are older. Hes certainly recognised that it gets him a lot of female attention when his sisters friends come over on playdates for them, he is a living doll. His ease in female company means he has a harem at the state nursery he attends, where he is referred to as Mr Loverman, often greeting his teachers with a chivalrous kiss on the hand.

POWER OF PLAY

Dressing up is linked to improved vocabulary and social skills, say child experts He doesnt care what people think in the safety of his own home, though visitors are a little unnerved if he makes a sudden appearance in one of his more theatrical numbers, complete with sunglasses.I think his father would rather he didnt wear his Snow White dress after nursery, but, like me, he believes children should be allowed to explore their imagination. His godfather has accused me of enabling behaviour by not refusing to let Henry wear girls outfits. And my father was a little unsure what to make of his grandson changing into his cousins party dress at my sisters wedding. Men find it more unsettling than women, who often see it as cute and amusing. As with all things to do with parenting, its a learning curve and, given the evidence of how normal it is for a boy to dress as a girl, I am inclined to think that making five-year-old Dyson the poster boy for all tutu-wearing pre-schoolers is not a good thing. How will he view this attention in retrospect, and what will he think of the childrens book his mother has written? Surely any quirk he has in the future will be blamed on the exposure he received for wearing a dress to school. And that will have the opposite effect of what his well-intentioned parents are trying to achieve.I read My Princess! Boy to Miss Argentina this week and he looked at me as if I was insane. Boring! he yelled before leaping on me from the top bunk of his bed and demanding I read his favourite bedtime story: Zoo Poo.