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Another +1 for the "adults are all Last Thursdayists" hypothesis. I get that it's very convenient to model kids as basically unthinking robots but they do have their own motivations and internal reasons for doing things. Those reasons are usually simple enough to be trivially back-propagated but that's naturally difficult when your robot's also giving you lip.
The follow-on comment to that one kind of confirmed my suspicion. Just because he's likely pretty girly already doesn't make him a girl, for various reasons; and there's a productive and unproductive way to handle that fact.
The relevant authority figures have selected the unproductive, destructive, and selfish way to deal with that, and "being too stupid or actively going along with those things for social reasons"... well, that's what molesters do and how they work, and pulling back is likely justified on those grounds.
But it's not the kid, lol.
He's not even that girly, he likes to run fast and he like big trucks and he likes adults to watch him when he does stuff and he likes watching me when I work with tools. The most I've seen prior to this was some painted nails and using backwards pronouns for himself and others. Apparently there was a meltdown at/coming home from/because of? school that had something to do with going with the other boys to the bathroom.
I just don't think the correct response is to let him wear dresses at home, and to wear his hair like a girl at school.
And so his authority figures, on a hair trigger for trans, see trans in every GNC behavior a 4 year old exhibits. They're in a hurry to validate it, partially because they've been told they should be, but also because having a social token is just the greatest, isn't it?
What, did he decide to take a piss sitting down and the other boys made fun of him for doing that? (Or for the more obvious 'being present in the boy's bathroom while looking like a girl'[1]?) You know, opposed to the way you are Supposed to, which is to casually whip that private part out, piss all over yourself and the floor and otherwise make a big mess, and that's assuming you don't have other people actively fucking with you. I don't remember if they mount the pissers low enough to be used by a kid of that height, though maybe it doesn't matter.
And maybe if we didn't spend the last 15 years playing stupid social games about this, this wouldn't trigger that absurd overreaction. Yes, I'm sure a 4 year old doing that means the same thing as it does when a 24 year old does that. He's not even old enough to natively know why writing "yes" or "no such luck" in the form that asks for your "sex" is funny yet.
And yet from your description he has hair long enough to 'wear it like a girl', and is not only patient enough for someone (probably a girl he gets along with) to paint his nails, but not be troubled by what it means. Sounds pretty girly to me, and perhaps more importantly, [1]I bet it probably sounds pretty girly to the average teacher, and the average 5 year old boy.
But then, it's not like that's really a bad thing... until you put him an environment that's actively trying to "encourage him to express his true feminine identity" as a consequence. That's just plain old sexual interference, and his folks really do need to protect him from teachers who insist on doing that, because they are as incapable of policing themselves as the Church was.
There's a difference between 'I think I'll wear [girl clothes] because I feel like it today' and 'I think I'll wear [girl clothes] because it validates my identity as a girl'. (There are some sensory considerations here that will result in boys actively preferring dresses under certain conditions, so that may be less connected with some sense of gender identity than might otherwise be apparent. Of course, I would say that, wouldn't I.)
My impression is that the class was doing a bathroom stop on the way back/to from some out of class activity (PE? Music?), and he was told to line up with the boys. This really upset him, although I'm not sure if it was at the time or he exploded when he got home.
To be fair, I had long hair until this year, and his older brother has even longer hair, never cut down his back, which he never wears like a girl. I figured that was enough to demonstrate that long hair isn't just for girls.
It's his mom who does his nails, I'm not sure there are 4 or 5 year olds I'd trust with nail polish.
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