I'm a non-binary nanny - a four-year-old is my biggest LGBT ally

‘They is my nanny’, four-year-old Ana* pointed to me while proudly declaring my job and pronouns to a church volunteer. 

These words spilled out of Ana’s mouth taking me – and the volunteer – by surprise. 

But this wasn’t Ana’s English lesson and I wasn’t about to correct her grammar.

We were at a community group hosted in a church for parents, carers, and young children to meet and engage in play-based activities – where a volunteer had assumed I was Ana’s mother.

And Ana had decided to use this occasion to show up as one of my biggest allies. 

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I can’t recall how the stranger took it, because at that moment I just looked at Ana with a mix of confusion, pride, and joy. 

She hadnever met a non-binary person before I became her and her baby brother’s nanny. 

I couldn’t get my head around the fact that this little kid stood up for her 31 year old nanny in the sweetest and most confident way, and meanwhile, my dad still refers to me as his daughter. Not out of any malice, he simply puts no effort in.

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It was in 2022, four years ago, when I first tested the waters with she/they pronouns. This awakening was slow and measured, and had been simmering away gently for a year. 

Not long before, I’d fallen in love with two people, Lex* and Jordan*, at once and – after joining a triad with them – I dramatically said goodbye to monogamy. 

And so began the summer of throuple love.

I began to explore what type of relationships I wanted and needed in my life, and I found myself wondering if I really believed in a gender binary.

I had some friends who had been thriving in their non-binary bodies for a while. I’d witnessed them shed heteronormative ideals and explore their identities – and it all made sense to me. I was so proud of them. 

When we would all go to a restaurant and the server referred to us as ‘ladies’, it bugged me. I always thought my irritation at the public and group misgendering was on behalf of my non-binary friends, but turns out I was one of them too.

I related to the fluidity of gender; the way it shifted away from heteronormative and patriarchal concepts of gender. I began to see that I thrive in the plurality of gender – I found that I could sit calmly in it, letting my masculine and feminine energies co-exist together.

When I came out as non-binary to my mostly queer friend group, they responded with ‘this makes so much sense for you’.

However, it hasn’t been as straightforward with my family. I’d already come out as bisexual, and then polyamorous, and now I was trying to explain to my parents that the word ‘daughter’ no longer sat right with me. 

I opted for a message on the group chat. That way I could say everything I needed to, and could give them the time and space to digest. 

I was surprised when so much love and support – and a little confusion – followed. Replies varied from ‘so happy that this is right for you and makes you feel like you’, to ‘it will be harder for older generations to understand’.

It’s an adjustment – using they/them pronouns doesn’t come easily to some people, particularly if you’re not queer or queer-adjacent – so there are still slip-ups, and very binary thinking when it comes to gender. But, for the most part, people were supportive, and they are still trying.

Before then, I’d spent most of my life thinking I didn’t want children, but now that I existed in my gender and sexuality euphoria, I realised that maybe I did want kids. I just didn’t want to be pregnant – it’s an incredible process, but just not for me. 

However, I adore having kids in my life, such as my friends and family’s children who I call my niblings (the gender neutral term for nieces and nephews), who get all my love and attention.

One of my niblings is being raised genderless, by two non-binary parents. Another calls me ‘yifu’ which is a made up term in Cantonese merging aunt and uncle. I’m also called ‘tíe’, the gender neutral term in Spanish.

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While my life was full of children, I changed my career from the charity sector, into childcare in 2025 – I wanted to surround myself with that free and dynamic energy only kids have. 

I first became a nanny for a six-month-old for a brief stint, where the parents once lovingly referred to me as ‘Uncle Henna’. I noticed that nannying very quickly began to scratch that broody itch. 

With a baby, the gender stuff is easy – they can’t talk yet, and they obviously won’t understand gender binaries and trans identities. 

But older kids like Ana are curious beings, always asking any question that pops into their little heads. 

‘Why are you a they?’, was the first gender-related question she asked me. 

She responded by staring at me, running off and carried on playing. Then, out of nowhere she came back with more questions: ‘but you’re not a boy? And you’re not a girl? You’re just…Henna Benna’.

Kids like my niblings and Ana may ask those difficult questions bluntly, but they are always from a place of curiosity rather than hate. 

They are trying to understand the world and communities around them. They are sponges, taking in incredible amounts of new information daily. 

But with this comes an openness that adults – who have preconceived ideas about gender that comes from the patriarchy – have strayed further away from. 

With each new generation, this openness, curiosity, and questioning of the world becomes stronger and seeps into life fluidly. 

The kids may sometimes be a handful, but they are indeed alright.

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