Originally Posted by
Rhonda Jean
I still keep up with this site but haven't posted in a long time. I'll break my silence on this one because my opinion is a little different than the others, and I think it's important to get a spectrum of opinions. I'll leave out the details in the interest of brevity.
I'm over 50. I think it's important to note that almost none of us on this board can relate to being 15 and having the information at our disposal (and our mother's) that is available today. I have no idea how that changes the situation, but I'm sure that it does so, dramatically.
When I was 15 I thought that if it was okay with my mother, then it really didn't matter what anyone else thought. I was also sure that whe wouldn't guide me into anything harmful, or that would be negatively percieved by society at large. If you think about it, at least as it relates to cding, these two things can be nearly opposite. In my 15 year-old cding mind, I made them the same. I think it'd be pretty natural for a 15 year old to pick bits of the most satisfactory (for him) ideas and mold them into reality. It's quite a tightrope for a mother.
I think it'd be very difficult for a teenager to differentiate between reluctant acceptance and encouragement. Again, him choosing the most positive, he'd see it as encouragement. Not only for his current object of desire (panties), but for extending his experimentation wht all things feminine. I make no suggestion on exactly how to handle it, only that you do it with this in mind.
For me with my mother, the examples are numerous. Since I'm not writing a book, I'll give one...
Long hair is a good example. My mother reluctantly accepted my long hair as a teenager. Once it was long enough to roller set, she encouraged, if not demanded, that I roller set it. She had done this when I was little, when it was "cute", but eventurally cut my hair and staunchly demanded that I keep it short, until she finally got sick of my crying and complaining about getting a haircut and gave in. As a teenager, most of the time that I was in the house I was in curlers. She rolled it for me until I learned to do it myself, and even then she frequently did it for me. I slept in curlers almost every night, and when school was out and during the summer I stayed in curlers well into the day, sometimes just leaving it up through the next night. She was not secretive about it. A couple of the neighbors knew. I even accompanied her to the grocery store in curlers several times. After we started rolling it, there was no limit placed on (or even talked about) as to the length of my hair. It got longer and longer, and the rollers got bigger and bigger. She went from fighting with me about the lenth of my hair to praising me for my beautiful hair.
This was so accepted/encouraged that it was literally years into early adulthood that I realized how uncommon and unaccepted it was for a boy/man to roll his hair. Even now I don't quite get it. I know it, but I don't quite get it.
There are lots of examples of this kind of stuff in my life. We never sat down and had an open discussion about any of it. It was done in bits, without a lot of discussion. For me, I guess it's worked out okay. If she'd ever given me her full-on support, I have no idea how it would have effected the rest of my life. For most of us, this is a delicate balance. As an adult, I've had many forays into the pink fog. Sometimes way too far, and some of the horrendous results are well documented on this site (divorce). It's often very difficult to keep under wraps, expecially when people you love, and love you, are accepting (or seem to be).
While no one here would even suggest that you forbid all crossdressing, I, for one, would not suggest full-on acceptance or encouragement. You have to provide guidance that somehow strikes a balance between self acceptance and getting along in a less-than-accepting society.
Just my opinion. I know many will disagree. Utimately, that decision is very personally yours.
