I think from the standpoint of the age of the child we are having a hard time figuring out exactly what the problem is. I do not have boy toys or girl toys just a playroom. I encourage boys to dress as a princess and a girl to dress as a dragon, etc if it pleases them and they want to try on other roles. PreK/K is when children explore what life is all about and where they fit in.

I have one bathroom and everyone uses it including me. Many K classrooms are the same.

As far as the name goes we have never been given that piece of information. Children don't pick their names parents do. As an adult we can change our name if we want to. So the parent helping the child to change the gender sound of their given name has never been mentioned here. Besides kids don't come to school with a list of boy/girl baby names memorized anyways and will accept any name for any gender and many are interchangeable anyways. Variations of a name have long been acceptable in school as children are named after relatives but given a derivative to distinguish them from the older relatives they are named after. Rarely is a child named Mary after a grandparent and then called Hazel unless that is the given middle name. I am not debating how legitimate the feelings are in the child but what I am opposed to is that the child is being given control over issues that no other child ever has so why should they be allowed. ie fine you want to look like, dress like, act like, be named like the opposite gender fine but parents determines the perameters allowable not the minor child. That is what the teachers were in essence objecting to.

Children in prek/k still often mix up pronouns, genders, etc. and mostly we just let it all slide. So even if the teacher calls the child by the desired gender it is up to the kids to pick up on the fact of what the teacher is doing not for the teacher to sit everyone down and lecture them on calling the child he/she just as the teacher at this age does not correct a child from calling another child with the wrong pronoun unless asked.

That is where we feel this discussion has gone of the rails - just what is expected of the classroom teacher/children. We accept everyone and do not make a spectacle of them which includes not making them the most important centre of attention in the room - just letting them function as one of the group in the way that is meaningful to them.