Growing Up

Everybody does, one way or another.
Some grow up as little girls, some grow up as little boys.*

Cisgender kids grow in the relative comfort of "their own skins." That is, for the most part, they are mind/body congruent. They are Okay with their body's gender.

Transgender kids grow up stressed with their body/mind incongruence, the wrong teaching for their gender and the wrong responses to their needs. Transgender kids grow up twice. Once in their conflicted body, once in their "accepted" one.

The second growing is forced into a very small amount of time for "late blooming" trans people. I've noticed that I (and every late blooming trans woman I know) go through a little girl phase, adolescent phase, (sometimes an over the top phase) a young adult phase and finally for most of us, life catches up with life. Sometimes these things don't happen in that particular order and any one these phases could last indefinitely.
Getting stuck in a phase is no different for us than than it is for our gender-ungifted counterparts. You see people not acting their age all the time.

The little girl phase - everything is beautiful, everything is new and exciting with near sensory overload. Friendships are quick and many and the sharing of stories bring comfort and release.

The teenager phase - when we think we know it all, when we're gangly, flirtatious and foolish, when we put ourselves on display.

The young adult phase - when relationships are not fleeting, when responsibility leads, when we've unlearned most our masculine teachings.

We finally reach the congruent state (whether there have been body modifications or not) that almost everyone else has had from their beginning. This is when self acceptance is complete.

Of course, this is all my opinion, take it for what it's worth.

*There is talk about a third sex but this article is written in context with the almost universal idea of a Binary gender. Not that I agree with the idea. I believe in a spectrum of gender