One of my nieces is three. She has an alter ego named Puppy. Sometimes she is herself, and sometimes

2015-12-27T15:27:32Z

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One of my nieces is three. She has an alter ego named Puppy. Sometimes she is herself, and sometimes she is Puppy. Puppy speaks only by yelling “Bark!”, and crawls on all fours, and pants and licks people.

Puppy, she has specified, is also a girl, like she is. She refers to herself in the third person when she is Puppy, however, and she uses masculine pronouns.

On the one hand, she is three. Her command of spoken language is imperfect.

On the other hand, she keeps reiterating it, so she seems pretty dedicated to these pronouns.

I just thought it was a funny point. We’ve made it a little talking point, or I have anyway, with the kids, about using preferred pronouns and it being about what makes the person being addressed feel right, and it doesn’t cost anything to respect their preferences. It’s mostly been cute and amusing.

If only these things could always be like that. My mother has always had a sort of whatever makes them happy, don’t crush their self-expression kind of attitude toward children, and it would be nice if that were more widespread in the world, and also applied to adults a little bit more…

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dragonlady7

One of my nieces is three. She has an alter ego named Puppy. Sometimes she is herself, and sometimes