How Pediatricians can best support families of youth exploring their gender identity at different ages. A crucial first step to helping families is to consider how children learn about gender. Children as young as 2 years old can start to identify faces as male or female. Preschoolers are usually able to identify their own gender and may prefer to use toys that typically correspond to their gender, such as girls playing with dolls.
However, it is common for young children to experiment with gender expression. By the time children reach 4-6 years of age, they tend to segregate themselves by gender during play and view gender as a constant, nonchanging concept. For some children, their gender identity, or the gender they experience, does not match their birth-assigned sex. When these feelings are persistent, insistent, and consistent, a child may have gender dysphoria or be considered to…
