#ZANDER STORM BOY GIRL HOW TO#
#ZANDER STORM BOY GIRL TV#

#ZANDER STORM BOY GIRL TV#

Rolling out of the “media hoopla” that followed the Star story (the family received interview and reality TV show pitches from around the world, people would yell “boy” or “girl” at Storm on the street) there was a sense, says Witterick, that people felt sorry for her family because what they were trying to do seemed difficult, and particularly because it came with an onslaught of criticism.

This year, while Stocker is on sabbatical from his teaching job, they wanted to do something different, hence “Strawhaven,” as they call it. Building a cabin out of bales of straw, a low-carbon, environmentally friendly option, taught the kids about measurement and math, says Witterick.

#ZANDER STORM BOY GIRL HOW TO#

Now living off the grid in the forest northeast of Parry Sound, Jazz, Kio (the couple’s middle child, now 5) and Storm, learned about different kinds of trees and how to cook for big groups with no electricity. The offshoot of home-schooling is centred on the belief that learning should be driven by a child’s curiosity. Witterick still “unschools” her children. It was so wonderful,” she says of the rotating door of visitors. We’re in the forest looking at bugs and finding salamanders and seeing turtles hatch out of eggs,” she says, referencing a recent four-month-long adventure where the family lived in tents in the forest and, with the help of extended family and friends, built themselves a straw-bale cabin. “The rest of the world is still talking about it but actually we’re doing something else. “And for now we honour that,” says Witterick.Īs for Storm, “sometimes Storm says ‘I’m a girl,’ and sometimes Storm says ‘I’m a boy,’” says Witterick, emphasizing the point that, contrary to what one might think, the topic of gender doesn’t actually take up a lot of air time in her family. Recently, Jazz requested to go by the pronoun “she.” Jazz’s questions about gender were, in part, what inspired the couple’s controversial decision about Storm. Her eldest son, Jazz, now almost 8, always gravitated to dresses, the colour pink and opted for long hair often fixed into braids. instead of just letting them be?” she asks, rhetorically. “If a young person puts on a tutu, why are we saying they are behaving like a girl.

At the time, I didn’t know it was such a great choice,” she says.įor example, the argument made by California-based academic Jane Ward in Chasing Rainbows that every child has a right to not be “gender diagnosed,” resonates with Witterick more today than ever before. “Now that I have that exposure I realize what a great choice we made. Critics accused Witterick and Stocker of conducting a social experiment on their child, more rabid ones went as far as calling what they were doing child abuse.īut the intense scrutiny and notoriety also connected the family with a community of like-minded activists and academics working on issues around gender and parenting. ( Click here for an excerpt from her chapter in that book, called Chasing Rainbows: Exploring Gender Fluid Parenting Practices.)Īfter the Star ran a May 2011 story about the family’s unconventional choice, it sparked an international debate. “When I made the decision around (not sharing Storm’s sex) it felt right for my family and to my heart,” Witterick tells the Star in an interview prompted by the launch of a book containing a chapter she contributed. Storm - who turns 3 in January - is a busy, chatty, toddler whose current infatuations include peanut butter and playing with sock puppets.įor Halloween, Storm wanted to be a monster, because it provided the best opportunity to roar as loudly as possible. These days, they’re sticking with that plan. The Toronto couple wanted Storm to share his or her gender when the time felt right. ),” parents Kathy Witterick and David Stocker wrote in an email to family and friends after their third child’s birth. “A tribute to freedom and choice in place of limitation, a standup to what the world could become in Storm’s lifetime (a more progressive place?. In an attempt to mitigate at least some of the gendered messages children are blitzed with, only a handful of people knew the baby’s sex. It’s been more than two years since we first met a chubby-cheeked 4-month-old named Storm.īack then, Storm’s parents weren’t saying whether their child was a boy or a girl.

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