Not sure how to phrase this, so I’m gonna do a word salad and hope for interpretation. It’s not so much a question as a knot I’ve been working on untying.

I’m heartened at how easily kids can accept things that seem so unfamiliar to their parents (background: I’m an old cis straight married white guy). At my son’s previous school (elementary), he had two trans kids in his class. The school’s one of those schools that really seems to put effort into accepting trans kids, so parents of trans kids move here from all over hoping for a better experience. I didn’t see much sign of stigma or rejection there, trans kids were out and outgoing, other kids corrected their parents on pronoun usage, so that all seemed good. And I was looking for problems, because I have some adult trans friends and this was Not Their Experience Growing Up At All.

And yet… I felt it was all superficial in a way. Nobody likes to talk about charged topics that may cause awkward feelings, even moreso if it comes with a set of vocabulary words. But aside from the “That’s so-and-so. She’s cool. Yeah, that’s right, she’s trans”… that was it. While I felt they accepted the person (which is lovely), I didn’t get any sense that anyone really cared to dig too deep about what trans actually meant. Puberty was right around the corner and I’m not sure anyone knew this might be a particularly big deal for their trans friends. Silence can be a serious problem.

But then again so is overanalysis. Another friend of mine who uses a wheelchair once said “I just want to take a crap for once without it having to be a political statement.” Maybe just being a trans kid with a superficial “Yeah, she’s cool.” level of understanding from her friends is perfectly adequate.

Do you know what I mean when I talk about acceptance without understanding? And do you have any words of wisdom or experience that might… not really solve the dilemma, because I think it’s always there… but maybe just show it in a different light?