My toddler is constantly misgendered. It may be the best thing for him

It’s curious how confidently strangers use ‘she’ or ‘her’ when referring to my son. They clock his wild curls, growing unopposed for a good two years, and they’re immediately certain – long hair must mean girl.

My son is two. He has naturally taken to ball sports, outside play and, oddly, garbage bins – all traditionally masculine pursuits. (Well, maybe not the bins.) I dress him in clothes bought mainly from the boys section and, beyond his curly mane, nothing about him discernibly signifies “girl”.

Of course, I’m not bothered by which pronouns people use when referring to him. At this stage, my son’s gender is largely a classification that he’s been assigned. He has no real connection to what it means to be a boy – this is something he will develop as he grows, based on the stories of gender playing out in front of him.

Growing up in Australia, I was swimming in traditional gender norms from day one. I was painfully aware that, as a girl, my appearance was central to determining my value, and I had male friends for whom dance or art was out of the question, lest they be labelled a “pussy”.

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Now, each time someone compliments my little one’s soft, pretty face, or assigns him terms we generally reserve for describing little girls – such as “sweetie” or “darling” – a small part of me hopes he will internalise these qualities.

I’m not sure about many things as a mum, but I am absolutely set on raising a kind and gentle person.

Of course, going into parenting with preconceived ideas of who your kids will be is unequivocally foolish, though our minds inevitably conjure images and plot lines we think might play out – all ultimately fiction, providing false and fleeting comfort. But while we cannot control our children’s future, I do think that as parents, we can choose to cultivate existing qualities.

Unsurprisingly, it’s not just parents projecting magical thinking onto our unsuspecting offspring. The world around them is constantly making assumptions and predictions based on very little.