A little four year old boy lives as a girl after telling his parents he was a girl. And then some nutty doctor backed him up.

With his blonde pigtails and purple tutu, Zach Avery, now five, has been living as a girl for more than a year – after he first refused to live as a boy when he turned three.

Little Zach was just three when he began refusing to live as a boy, instead choosing to wear pink dresses and ribbons in his long, blonde hair – because he has Gender Identity Disorder (GID).

And the primary school he attends in Essex has even changed the kids’ toilets to gender-neutral Unisex in support of Zach since his official diagnosis last year, aged four.

Zach is one of the youngest in Britain ever to be diagnosed with GID – meaning he feels like he’s a girl trapped in a boy’s body.

Mum Theresa Avery, 32, said Zach used to be a ‘normal’ little boy who loved Thomas the Tank Engine, but suddenly at the end of 2010, he decided he wanted to live as a girl.

He became obsessed with the girly kids’ TV character Dora the Explorer and started dressing in girls clothing.

Parents Theresa and Darren Avery, 41, became worried by Zach’s behaviour and took him to the doctors.

After numerous consultations and observations, he was officially diagnosed by NHS specialists with Gender Identity Disorder (GID), making Zach one of the youngest affected children in the UK.

Mum-of-four Theresa said: “He just turned round to me one day when he was three and said: ‘Mummy, I’m a girl’. I assumed he was just going through a phase and just left it at that.

“But then it got serious and he would become upset if anyone referred to him as a boy.

“He used to cry and try to cut off his willy out of frustration.”

Oh boy. Look, my four year old thought she was Batman for a few months. I didn’t sign her up for the Justice League. She just wore the mask and jumped around on the couch for about a year.

The thing I fear is that something that’s just a faze for the kid is getting cemented into the little boy’s head for the rest of his life. I would just love to know if these doctors ever turn someone away and just say, “He’s just a dopey kid who doesn’t even know how to tie his shoes or cross the street so let’s not take every thought that enters his pretty little head as a symptom of a larger problem.”

I bet at some point the doctors were just darn pleased that they’d get to diagnose the youngest kids with this Gender Identity Disorder. And hey, one last thing. How long until someone sues the doctors to get them to stop calling it a “disorder?”

Wouldn’t that be perfect? This kid grows up and turns around and sues the doctor for hurting his esteem by calling it a “disorder.” That’ll teach ’em.