Becoming a different gender was not an identity shift I'd had any experience with before it happened to my six-year-old, but I'd certainly have guessed it belonged with becoming a parent in the dramatic-life-change category. To my surprise, though, it was much more like those other identity shifts – a slowbuilding, patient change that, day by day, resulted in a little girl who in many ways was not so different from the little boy she'd been at the beginning of the school year.

Her slow-growing hair was the starkest manifestation of my daughter's transition, and it's the perfect metaphor for it as well. She wore a skirt on her first day at school, but her hair was still short and her name was still male, so everyone assumed she was a boy. She told the other kids that since girls could wear pants, boys could wear skirts, and this made sense to the six-year-old set.

Her hair grew slowly and awkwardly and over eyes that were trying to learn to read, but she was committed to having it long and didn't mind. When it finally reached mid-cheek, after three months or so, waitresses started to say, "Welcome, ladies," when we went out to eat, and baristas would ask, "What are you girls doing today?"

Towards the end of that year, I made her get bangs, so at least she could see, and I wrestled the rest into a ponytail. By the end of the school year, she finally had a graceful bob, just past the bottom of her chin. Half her classmates referred to her with male pronouns out of habit, half with female ones because that's what she so clearly was. None seemed confused or ill at ease with this, and she was patient with either one.

Over the summer, she changed her name and began year 2 as a girl. Everyone uses female pronouns now without thinking about it. Her hair reaches most of the way down her back.