Reply to transgender son - same chore expectations as any other son?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My daughter came out last year as transgender, changed her name and uses "him, his" type pronouns... so I stopped using the dead name etc.

When I was growing up on Saturdays my dad would always wake me up and say "Son! Time to get to work!"
Then we would spend half the day cutting grass or doing some sort of maintenance/repair around the house.

While previously I was always happy for my transgender son (before he was a son) to do stuff with me (auto repair/maintenance, yard work, house repairs/maintenance) but it was always when and if he wanted to and the level of involvement wasn't necessarily a concern. That is not the conditions I experienced as a boy growing up because gutting grass or digging post holes, for example, was not optional.

[b]My transgender son is spending a lot of time focusing on his transgenderism and not doing anything else. [/b]I've started to see him as effectively avoiding "girl"-type issues through being transgender but simultaneously avoiding the boy's plight which includes expectations of physical labor and performance. Its like he has found a way to spend all his time on social media and chatting on the phone with his friends by saying things like "I don't have the upper body strength for that..." when asked to participate in a male activity or "that triggers me" when asked to participate in things which might be considered a female activity.

I want to say "I don't care if you are transgender but you can't have it both ways!"

I know I'm likely to get slammed and someone is going to misunderstand the above statements and frame it like I'm some sort of overbearing football dad but that isn't want I'm talking about.

[/quote]
I’m the mom of a trans son also.

Everyone is right about chores not having a gender.

Also noting that you should stop referring to him as “my transgender son” and make the switch to “my son.”

It’s fine to encourage him to step out of his bubble and contribute to the family. But remember, this actually is hard for him and parts of the process actually are traumatic for him. Kids aren’t great at sharing their feelings, so he might not lay it all out for you, but he might associate some activities with being female in the past and legitimately need to avoid them for his mental health. And some activities that are more masculine might be intimidating to him, because if he does something traditionally male centric, and he fails or does poorly, he might feel like he’s not being accepted as male. Again, teens aren’t great at sharing their true feelings, so rather than have another trans discussion with his main male role model about his fears that he’s not manly enough, he might just brush it off with a lame excuse. Then what’s he going to do? Social media or spend time with friends, where he can be accepted and with people who seem to be more relatable. He might not be intentionally slacking off to that level, even though that’s what he winds up doing.

What works for us was me making a list of the chores I decided my kids would do, along with how often I needed them done in a week. I made a page with 2 columns (one for dd, one for DS) for each day of the week. I let them pick the ones they wanted, and anything leftover I assigned so the total chore time was pretty even. They got to assign which day to do the weekly tasks, taking their schedules into account. Everyone agreed it was fair, and for the most part, they abide by it [/quote]

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