My 7 year old son is crazy lately about playing dress-up with his female friends (most of his friends are girls although he does get on very well with a couple of boys too - his best friend is a boy, they're inseperable when they're together).
To be honest, it worries me a lot as a father to see him running around in dresses and skirts when I go to pic him up from play dates. He's already a nervy, sensitive kid, not into team sports at all and most of his friends are female. On the other hand it's not like he's unsure about whether he's a boy or a girl - he's definitely certain about that fact. I asked him once if he ever wished he was a girl and he said "What for? I just wanna be a boy not a girl", so that seems settled.
The behaviour seems harmless on the surface but then again, the Bible also reads pretty straight on this it seems: “A woman shall not wear a man’s garment, nor shall a man put on a woman’s cloak, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord your God." (Deut. 22:5)
It all seems innocent enough now but I've seen innocent behaviour turn into something much more dangerous. I saw this first-hand in my younger brother who's hopelessly addicted to weed which began with "innocent" experimentation when he was 15.
I don't really know what to do. I don't want to overreact. Some of his friends' parents are pretty liberal too and I don't want them to go "poor kid with his crazy fundie dad". What's the moral thing to do here? Should I stamp out this behaviour and insist on God's word on this or just let it be and hope it's just a passing phase?
Thanks in advance for any advice.
Hi Daniel, thanks for reaching out! .. I see there is a lot of help coming your way lol, so I will add my points briefly for you:
1. You should definitely not try to "stamp" it out - the problem is that you will be tempting him to sin by rebellion. Instead the better approach is to carefully, patiently plant ideas that grow into a genuine sense of awareness of the fact that it is embarrassing for boys to wear girls clothes.
I say this based upon the principle found in Romans 7:7-11: "I was alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came to life and through it, I died."
The reason this happens, is because you would be commanding righteousness to him before it has become his own expression of morality - and therefore what you have done is bypassed the necessary part of growth that The Holy Spirit does in a person (1 Corinthians 3:6), that is to teach them a genuine knowledge of righteousness through direct experience.
You will find as a parent that your role is far more effective by trusting God to do the convicting, which will probably come through kids at school, or maybe through something he hears spoken elsewhere, and if he trusts you, then he will ask you to explain why they make fun of it, and that is when you'll have the perfect opportunity to explain it with grace when it will be well received.
2. He still hasn't "eaten of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil", so to speak. He has no conscience about the abomination it is, he is innocent - just as Adam and Eve did not know they were naked, and as a toddler is unaware of their nakedness, this is his stage of awareness of that degree of civility.
3. It isn't the same as doing drugs or having sex for the first time. To his mind, it is the same as colouring in a girl's picture book. That does naturally become a thing that children grow out of, but they all begin having no awareness of that cultural expectation.
4. Be cautious of those you have called "liberal", because there is a type that is as I am, righteous but gracious, and there is a type that is unrighteous. If they are truly unrighteous, they will be sowing seeds that can grow to drive a wedge between you and your son (Proverbs 29:27).
It is good to recognise that children are 100% pure, an undefiled, clean slate, empty book when they are born, and from that state they may grow into a person who tends to have good virtues, or one who tends to have an attitude against those whose values oppose their desires. "Make a tree good and it's fruit will be good, or make a tree rotten and it's fruit will be rotten" (consider 1 Corinthians 15:33).
