How Baby

People who use they/them pronouns have been in Momo’s life since before she could talk, so her awareness of them has sort of come and gone as she tries to decipher the arcane rules of language. For a while she was chill with it, but when she went to school and everything became about ‘girls and boys’ because it’s one of the easy ways to split a class, it seemed to float away again.

Repetition is one of the only weapons in my arsenal that works, and because it’s just us going against deeply entrenched societal patterns, I’ve ended up having conversations with her about singular they a lot. It’s very Abbott and Costello, you know:

Who drew this picture?
Their name is Alex!
What’s the other person’s name?
No, it’s just one person.
Who’s they?
They’re they!

I was kind of despairing it would ever stick, but she surprised me the other day by remembering it all on her own, and I felt my heart grow three sizes. Is there any better feeling than realizing that your child had actually been listening??

Anyway! This is me, throwing small stones at the exposed tip of the buried monolith that is cissexism; acceptance is always age-appropriate! <3