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I have a long haired 5yo ds. Thanks to unschooling I have given up a
lot of control, and am still working on letting go of more. I
figured when people started assuming he was a girl at first glance,
he would ask for his hair to be cut. Nope.
My dh has long hair and a good friend of my older son(8) has long hair
(he's 11), so my 5yo has cool role models. He is very confident
about just stating he is a boy, when people mistake him.
I wish I were better at it. I feel uneasy for people when I know
they are confused by his clothes and his "boyness", but also feel
weird about offering the information to them(that's up to my son). I
have heard disparaging comments about my older ds friend and his
hair, when people didn't know I was the mother of my 5yo.
It's a stange thing how much of a lesson this has been for me.
It has been a forced process of letting go of what others think, and
realizing how much it really doesn't matter.


My son Julian has thick curly hair that is cut when he gets around to it.
He's a very "pretty" boy, and when he was a little younger and his hair got
long everyone assumed he was a girl. I was blown away that he would very
casually say, "actually, I'm a boy," with no sense of insult or concern. (The
person making the mistake would often get VERY apologetic.) He didn't see
being mistaken for a girl as a bad thing, and certainly it didn't motivate
him to get more frequent haircuts.

Now he's hit puberty and no one would mistake him for a girl. (He's still
cute though.)

Kathryn


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