The Boy with the Girls

In E's class, as in most groups of five year olds, at least the ones I've known, the boys and girls are all friends, but the boys are best friends with and generally aligned with other boys, and the girls are best friends with and generally aligned with other girls. Except for N. N, a sweet, friendly boy with golden curls, is best friends with a girl, hangs out with the girls, likes the same games and toys as the girls, plays with girls in the playground, and, for games of chase and other such gender-based tormenting, is on the "girls team" (which is not completely outlandish because E and her best friend E are on the "boys team," but coupled with the rest it comes to seem more significant).

This week at school--which is really camp in the summer, and we try to remember, because E is very serious about the fact that it is camp, not school, but sometimes it's hard to keep track--they went to see a children's theater production of Snow White. In preparation, they read and then wrote fairy tales. All the fairy tales are up on the wall, with illustrations. I started to read one, which was about a princess and a prince and a kiss and a wedding, and I rolled my eyes at how obsessed these five-year-old girls are with the princess thing--and then I got to the end of the story and it was by N. Actually, most of the other stories, boys' and girls' alike, were about dragons and puppies and magicians and such; I saw the occasional princess, but nary a prince or kiss, except for N's.

The kids in the class are fully aware that N is like a girl, but they also fully accept that fact--and N. The parents are a bit more...well, I'm not quite sure what they (we) are. We're fine with it, but we definitely notice and wonder. I say "we," because I didn't know if anyone else noticed, but then another mom said "of course he's gay." She also said that his parents are very aware of the situation and that his father will be fine if he is gay but his mother will be devastated (she knows them quite well). I don't know if he's gay or transgendered or just a boy who likes to hang out with the girls, but whatever he is, it's different from the other boys (even as they, of course, are different from each other: there's the funny one, and the frighteningly gifted and badly behaved one, and the goofy one, but somehow the one who is like a girl seems more different than the others).

I spent a fair amount of time earlier this year promoting the Town public schools to N's mom, who was teetering on the private-public divide (E's school is fairly expensive, and this year there was a clear division between those of us who were clearly relieved that the expense was finally over, and those for whom the expense was clearly not an issue, that is, those who were unquestionably heading for public school and those who were in a quandary--or were skipping quandary and headed straight for private). I assured her that N would thrive at his local elementary school, which is a lovely school. But lovely or not, it's still a pretty mainstream public school, and now I wonder if I was wrong. Perhaps this is a case where a gentle, progressive private school might be the better choice.