I knew this probably wasn’t a question of gender identity or sexual orientation. Instead it was two kids who saw colors and the opportunity to decorate and create art — on themselves!

And I should have been totally okay with it. For the past few years, I have been following a Maryland family and their transgender child, who was born a girl but decided at the age of 5 that she was a boy. I admired the parents’ strength in their decision to raise their child this way, but once faced with my own children’s gender diversion? I crumbled like a meringue on the inside. I wigged out.

I warned them that folks might not be very nice about boys with painted toes.