I seriously love the new receptionist at my chiropractor’s office. She’s been here a few months and she is a delight to talk to. Her kids are 18, 12, and 6. So we talk about the insanity of having a third child and the masochism of age gaps. She laughs at me a lot (in a “I did it to myself and now you are doing it to yourself so ha ha ha” sort of way) and she helps me strategize how to cope with some issues.

I had an interesting text conversation with our former neighbor yesterday. The babysitter’s mom who moved out of state. She is just noticing that FMC is nonbinary and she is pushing back on my attempts to inculcate the pronoun usage. She asked if I was upset with her for asking questions. No… that’s not it.

I’m really upset with myself that my child has been adamantly insisting on an identity label for over three years and so many people in our life have… not noticed. That means I’ve failed pretty hard and I’m really glad I sent out the Christmas card.

Oh hey. I just noticed that I did not receive cards back from a few long-term friends who are hard core Christian. I’ve been on their Christmas card list for almost two decades. Hmm.

I’m not happy that I have been such piss poor support that people who spend a lot of time with us have… missed this detail about my child. That’s a huge failure on my part. I fucked up. And I need to do better. I need to jump on every single instance of “How are the girls” and correct people. I need to interrupt every single person who misgenders them.

Or I’m not really doing my job and that’s not cool.

I think this has been muddy for me because I have come into this situation from the POV of having adult friends who transition and they don’t always/usually want me to speak for them. They don’t necessarily want to be outed or put on the spot when people misgender them. Staying out of the business of an adult friend is… a more common or more appropriate tactic.

But this is my damn kid and I have not been doing my job. It’s different. I think I’ve been trying to let FMC set the terms of these interactions and that’s… mixed? I’m good about checking in with them when we go to a new place to meet new people (like getting dropped off at camp: I ask if they want to do introductions or if they want me to handle it. Their opinion varies over time) but I think I have been expecting them to carry the burden of setting reality with the grown ups we see a lot and that’s not fair.

It’s like getting upset when a child doesn’t prevent an adult from abusing them.

“Why didn’t you stop it. I assumed you were ok with it because you didn’t stop it.”

I know my child needs my support on this issue. Abdicating responsibility is a chicken shit action. My kid deserves better.

And that has to entirely come from me.