Children wearing tails?

I'm sorry but this is madness, you may think you're helping her but you're really not.

You need to help her to develop a different coping mechanism. Allowing her to go off to the woods, especially alone, to pretend to be an animal is not healthy or safe.

Actually laughed out load at this 😂

I would not be happy about my teenage daughter going off to the woods like that!!
Can you encourage her to make contact with the local amateur dramatic society to see if she could make some for them?

The schools are in a really difficult position though for fear of doing wrong. It needs to come from the parents.

There was disruption in my son’s class one day when the PE teacher told the class to separate, girls on one side to play netball, boys on the other to play football. The fox stood in the middle and complained there wasn’t a side for them. PE teacher said if you are a girl fox play netball, if you’re a boy fox, play football, quite frankly, don’t care just pick a side. Fox started kicking off saying there should be a separate category. PE teacher had to go and get one of the deputy heads as he has no idea what to do. All this took up the first 15 minutes of a half an hour PE class!

It's not a fetish it's just weird people on the internet. Sure it's a fetish for some people but so are most things.
and its not new.
teenagers are weird, always have been, they'll do a bunch of weird things, then they will grow out of it.

The people saying it's similar to being a goth/emo/skater - just no. I grew up in alternative circles, and I can tell you furries would not have been welcomed. At all. They were seen as creepy and not in a good way.

I remember the fashion for emos wearing ears and saying "rawr/miaow". That was as far as it went. It wasn't anything like this nonsense that goes on with these people.

I went to college with a boy (about 17) who thought he was a wolf. It was entirely sexual, the class found his freewebs page where he was writing about rutting and knotting and all of this completely inappropriate stuff. It's not normal.

One of my children's friends older brothers (13) is into this furry/therian shite. His mother allows it. He turned up to a gathering this summer replete with tail, mask, paw things, and kept growling. It is exactly the same behaviour I saw in the boy I went to college with, and I find it disturbing. Both DH and I have made the decision to cut contact with the family because we don't want our DC around it. Any parent who is allowing this really needs to stop being so naive and put their foot down.

Uh yeah, this happened...

You let your 13 year old child go to the woods, alone, dressed as an animal?

Of course there is no harm in kids playing dress-up, experimenting with clothes -- but this is a bit different, I think you have to consider where it has come from. It seems to be following adults who are 'furries', i.e. they have a paraphilia, a sexual fetish, included in the TQ++ in LGBTQ++ and part of the queer community.
Furries get their kicks from dressing in furry animal costumes and having sex. (And possibly more.)
As a fetish it also seems to have links with BDSM, exhibitionism and even bestiality, judging from recent Pride marches.
I suspect many adult furries would be absolutely delighted if it catches on among kids, even if the kids have no idea what it's actually all about.

Is it only me- If I had worn a tail my siblings & class mates would have 'sent it home in a bag' which although probably not PC better than playing along.

My daughter doesn't think she's a cat or a fox or the demon she made the mask for for Halloween. She loves the craft side - a new mask takes her weeks to make. She has to buy the materials, she dyes a lot of the fur herself, she has to learn new techniques. She will eventually make a mask she is happy with and then pop it in a bag with a tail and her paw gloves and go off into the woods or fields and play in her costume. I know she is alone or sometimes one of her friends (who is also a teenage girl) hangs out with her. She doesn't walk on all fours in Tesco! She is harmlessly enjoying a craft / dress up game. I know most 13 year old girls don't do this but most 13 year old girls aren't so stressed out by school that they can't speak when they get home. I monitor her online access and her liking a clip on tail is the least of my worries about her to be honest!

🦇

I was on wedding outfits...

That's bonkers. I had no idea!

Literally batshit.

What the fuck are Theriens? www.mumsnet.com/Talk/preteens/5126399-what-the-fuck-are-theriens

You might want to have a read of this...

Nothing wrong with kids dressing up but this furry/ therien bollocks is rapidly becoming akin to gender identity...

I have only ever seen this on this site but I think it is ridiculous and definitely shouldn’t be allowed at school, or even at home except for short periods where everyone is in on the game. How schools accept this is just beyond me? The heads need to grow up and remember they are there to lead the children, not be one of them.

Adults should only play along with make believe up to a point. If it is just a game, the fancy dress can be put back in the toy box ahead of dinner, and definitely shouldn’t go to school or a friend’s house unless the friend also wants to play the same game.

I do think adults pandering to a child being an animal is unhealthy and, as others say, it is too close to an adult sexual fetish to feel comfortable.

A private boarding school recently sent out a letter to parents saying that children who identified as cats woukd not be provided with litter trays or treated any differently from other chdren.

To be fair, this actually sound cool. As long as it's not a vampire bat, that could be tricky in the office. Do some people identify as planets? That would be cool too. Cats and wolves are totally lame though.

I don’t think tails etc should be allowed in school though.

That sentence just sums up how batshit the world is at the minute

My son is 30 and manages a team at work. One of that team identifies as a bat. She has a little,dark room to do her work in. She's very autistic but good at her job so she's in a cupboard and happy to be absent from social interactions that she doesn't want. Her partner has built her a hanging frame so she can be upside down sometimes. Son thinks it's " absolute twattery" but she is good at coding and surpasses all her targets.The autism and the furry stuff are entirely intertwined.

Poor pupper imagine getting your bum sniffed by a fake dog 🐶