In 2008, Brad Pitt told Oprah Winfrey that his then three-year-old daughter Shiloh preferred the name John, according to In Touch Weekly. "'(I would ask) Shi, do you want ...' But then she would interrupt and say. 'John. I'm John,'" Pitt said, according to The Telegraph.
This month, Pitt and wife Angelina Jolie had no issue allowing their child to wear a suit to the premiere of Jolie's film, "Unbroken," according to In Touch Weekly.
Child psychologist Linda Blair praises the parents for supporting their child's decision, according to The Telegraph. Blair hopes the story of John will teach adults how to address gender exploration instead of just dismissing it as "just a phase."
"She wants to be a boy," Jolie told Vanity Fair in 2010. "So we had to cut her hair. She likes to wear boys' everything. She thinks she's one of the brothers."
Is this gender dysphoria?
"Usually with a child, especially children with older siblings of the opposite gender, it's normal to want to copy them and be like them," Blair, author of "The Happy Child," explained. "That's quite a normal phase for a lot of kids."
"A lot of times kids in the middle of a large family are looking desperately and legitimately for ways to get attention. So they'll do whatever it takes to get it," Blair told The Telegraph.
"To explore what it means to be both genders is also totally normal," Blair also said. "But the problem is we have suppressed it for so many generations, that people are still uncomfortable with it."
The couple's decision to accept John was lauded by the LGBT publication, "The Advocate:"
"Whether the young Jolie-Pitt will grow up to identify anywhere along a gender-nonconforming or LGBT spectrum is impossible to tell, but one thing is certain - having parents that embrace a child's curiosity, independence, and self-direction is sure to make that young person's life easier as they go through the fundamentally human process of discovering who they truly are."
