If your 7-year-old son told you that he wanted to wear a skirt—to school, no less—what would you think?

You might think he’s just messing around, as boys do, and ignore him. Or you might encourage him to let his imagination run before explaining why this is something he can’t do. Of course, there are others who would scold the child, “Boys should act like boys. How could you wear a skirt?”

Recently, a boy named Lele expressed this desire. Rather than laughing it off, his dad took it seriously: He let his son wear the skirt to school.

The father recorded the experience and posted it online, attracting significant attention. Many people expressed their approval—what a cool thing to do!—but others questioned Lele’s dad’s actions, saying he “didn’t have the child’s interests at heart,” “would lead him astray,” “would harm the child,” and so on.

Whether boys can wear skirts to school is an issue that extends beyond the parent-child relationship. When some people think differently from the rest, and start to put those ideas into action, how should they deal with other people and themselves? And what attitude should other people have toward those who are different from themselves?

In today’s program, we talk with Lele’s dad, who goes by the online handle “Yangyong de Haixing (Starfish Doing the Backstroke).” He provides us with a full account of Lele’s experience on the day that he wore a skirt to school.

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Skirts are swishy like fans

I am Yangyong de Haixing, and I’m 31 years old. My son Lele is 7 and is in the first grade. I’ve been a stay-at-home dad since he was 3.

One day, when school let out, my son told me very seriously that he wanted to wear a skirt. I asked him why, and he said it’s because skirts were breezy and cool. I said we didn’t have any skirts at home, and need to talk it over with his mom first.

At the time I wasn’t all that surprised; it wasn’t the first time he had asked to wear a skirt. He had already asked me many times when he was in kindergarten. When he saw girls wearing skirts, he thought the way the skirt swished back and forth was like an electric fan, and thought they looked pretty. But he would usually get distracted by something else, and this idea of wearing a skirt never made it into reality.

Actually, his mom and I thought this was all very normal, because he was always bringing up outlandish ideas as we went about our daily lives. When he was little, his dream was to be a tree-climber; later this turned into, “I want to be an old granny who sells ice cream.” I told him, “Selling ice cream should be easy enough, but being an old granny might be more of a challenge.”

One day he wouldn’t stop drinking water, so I asked him why. He said, “Because I want my pee to be really clear.” After some back and forth, it turned out that he wanted to fill up the toilet bowl with pee without anyone noticing, “because the water level in the toilet bowl is always going down, and I really want to fill it up with pee just once.”

Lele is an extremely cheerful, optimistic kid, and he doesn’t care what others think of him. Even if it’s a grown-up he’d just met, as long as they seem friendly to him, he’ll chat with them about his family, his friends, what he did at school… he’ll talk about anything. One time he was telling the doorwoman that he had started playing the piano. She asked him, “How’s practice going? Is it hard?” He said, “The learning curve is pretty steep, it’s tough. I don’t know how long it’ll go on like this—maybe I just have to grit it out for a couple years and then it’ll get better.” That’s just his personality.