My kid is three. He's really into cooking shows and ballet, and he has zero self-consciousness about it. But I'm watching my in-laws watch him, and I can see the moment - just a micro-expression - where they're cataloging what this means. Is he okay? Is this a phase? Will he be okay?

The assumption that there's something to be worried about is the problem. Not my son's interests. Not ballet. Not cooking. The fact that grown adults are scanning a three-year-old's personality for signs of concern based on arbitrary categories.

Here's what I'm trying: I'm not forbidding him from anything. No "that's not for boys." No steering him toward trucks if he wants dolls. No performance of masculinity. When he asks why some kids say certain things are "for girls" or "for boys," I tell him: someone made that up, and it doesn't mean anything real.

I expect to lose some battles. Family dinners will happen where people gently suggest he might want to try "boy stuff." And my job becomes watching him internalize that some part of himself is wrong. Or fighting for the space where he gets to just... be whoever he's becoming.

The thing nobody talks about is how much energy this costs. It's easier to just follow the rules. Dress him in blue. Buy him action figures. Nod along when people make their assumptions. But the cost is convincing him that whole chunks of human experience aren't for him - that his interests need to fit a category, not the other way around.

I don't know if he'll stay interested in ballet. Probably not. But I want the choice to be his, not inherited from people who decided his options before he could talk.