On “teaching” gender:
One of the cool things about kids is that they don’t have the pre-formed ideas that have to be changed. Woohoo! This is a fantastic opportunity to share the spectrum of gender identity + expression with your kiddo, rather than having to expand from the binary.
There are a lot of books that do the latter, focus on non-binary or trans-ness (e.g. “look boy can like/do/be girl things!”) but not as many that really just show kids/people being people who reside wherever they feel best on the spectrum of gender. To that end, stories that have diverse representation are important as are inclusive body/sex books (e.g. “people who have uteruses” to describe people with uteruses) to help the kiddo recognize their family members as “just” other family members, regardless of their gender, gender identity and/or expression.
To an 18mo kiddo, their grandparent is their grandparent and that grandparent can decide if/when to talk to their grandchild about their life and journey. As a parent, you get to help your kiddo be prepared for that conversation and others by helping them understand that there are a million and one ways of being YOU and all of them are right.
We loved A House for Everyone, Jo Hirst as a book that does a great job describing people and the value they bring to the group without categorizing them based on gender stereotypes.
One of our favorites for inclusive body books is What Makes a Baby, Silverberg.
Expanding BEYOND the gender binary:
Books like Jack/ie are a no go for us as well at 4yo. Our kiddo actively chooses he as his pronoun, wears dresses exclusively, builds and digs and explores for fun, loves his long hair, and prefers to be called sister, rather than brother. He’s very clear that he’s a boy – and his definition of boy is beautifully expansive.
That book – and many others! – make it seem like you must choose one of the two binary options, rather than allowing each thing that feels right to be right, regardless of how it matches the stereotypes. By saying “it’s ok for a boy to do girl things” we’re actually saying that there ARE girl and boy things.
This book, and others like it, have their place, for sure and I know kiddos and classrooms for whom these books were exactly what they needed. And there is very real criticism for the binary thinking that is their very basis.