So its almost midnight. Louise and I are chillin out in bed, I have breast forms on, the door is locked. You may know that we have a large crew of teenagers. One of my daughters, 16 years old, knocks on the door. Crap, take out the forms, straighten out and open the door. She is looking for some dental floss that is nowhere to be found. Then she leans a bit closer to me at the door and says.."Can I borrow your purple eyeliner... You know the fine tipped one". Her tone was low enough that Louise could not hear.
We just had to laugh after she had gone. She knows about my CDing. Six months ago, she had done enough rummaging through my drawers, and overheard enough - her bedroom is next to ours - to come to a few wrong conclusions and we talked about it at the time. It was necessary to be honest with her and tell her, to which she replied: "Wow - thats cool. I've got cool parents". Not much said since then. She did tell me once that my eye makeup was noticable. She knows where I keep my makeup, and 'borrrows" it and Louises frequently. So she was obvioulsy familiar with that particular piece.
Of the seven at home now, she is the only one that we have talked to about CDing. Her low tone was to make sure that the othe kids did not hear. Our oldest (20, not at home) also knows everything and is pretty cool about it.
All I can say is "Wow, we have cool kids".
We have not talked to the other kids - all of them teenagers - about my crossdressing. Provincial wisdom is that they have enough going on with their own sexuality development and hormones raging. But I am not sure about this as a Carte Blanche rule. Most of our older kids are well grounded in themselves and our family relationships. I think they would benefit from the openness of disclosure, and I believe that my relationship with them would be enhanced rather then damaged.
The objective is not to be able to dress around them. I am not going there. And there are also a couple who are not in a position to be able to deal with this in a healthy manner. But obviously some ofthem can!