Children wearing tails?

It’s when I hear things line that im
glad I live in the sticks.

Probably watching a bit too much of the Aristocats. It's a good movie. I can see how some would watch it and think this is a life for me, strolling the Parisian alleyways, sniffing the trash for some leftover fish from Le Petite Blanc, curling up in linens from Marseille, nibbling on Gruyère maybe a touch of caviar and a glass of fine Chablis, but no I don't imagine the earlier posters Uni flatmate entertained any of those things, I'll just shit in a litter tray

No different to wearing headbands with a unicorn horn on really? ( I personally thought they looked like dildos but would never say that out loud! 😅😅😅😅)

Not sure it is a tik tok thing. Could be.

I do remember seeing something about in Edinburgh a few years ago, a couple was out ‘walking’. One was the mistress and one was the dog.

Then there are the pictures of dogs at Pride where children are patting them. And parents looking on laughing. It is really disturbing behaviour. It is about lowering sexual boundaries when these adults are out in public with their kink gear on and really lowering children’s boundaries when parents allow children to ‘pat’ these dogs. Nearly always male people who do this in public.

The entire idea is the thrill of transgressing boundaries and society is allowing it to happen in public.

Obviously though, this is not the motivation for this young children.

no idea why you won't accept this
Because I've been a secondary school teacher for many years. I know how things work.
Because this story would be all over the Daily Mail.

Don't know why you're disagreeing with me. This has happened in my ds school. Instead of telling the child off, it is treated as a mental health issue and they are seen by the school mental health counsellor and returned to class. It is not treated as bad behaviour. Normal day is meowing in response to questions, wearing cat ears. Bad day is on all fours hissing. No idea why you won't accept this.

No, I think you'll find it's not acceptable in any school. Also, what "councillors" (sic)?
That's not how things work, really.

Sadly not. It's treated as a mental health/ "identity"issue and so she's taken out to see councillors etc but she isn't reprimanded/suspended. I think the school is scared to be seen as discriminatory.

Have any of you heard of the TV show Sweet Tooth? Since apparently the only conceivable place a child might pick up the idea of dressing up like an animal is male fetish chatrooms......

They've surely been suspended for persistently disruptive behaviour? That cannot be allowed in any school.

Agreed. Not misinformation. There's one as my ds secondary school too. Identifies as a cat, disrupting lessons meowing on all fours. I wish I was joking.

DD2 (11) is rather fond of cat ear headbands and may occasionally try to miaow while wearing them. She's also got a range of Pikachu hats and will try to get away with speaking like Pikachu as well.

Fine, she likes wearing things she thinks are cute - and she's quite young natured but secure in what she likes (she skipped the unicorn phase when younger based on the logic that "dinosaurs are cooler and could eat unicorns") - but we're very clear that you're just wearing something cute and you communicate with words and remain a bloody human.

I have seen one full-blown adolescent furry in full fursuit at a college. I was more shocked that they must have been melting hot in there on a summer's day than anything else to be fair.

Honestly, it's a kid dressing up. Unless there's a reason to suspect an adult is grooming them in some way, I wouldn't stress about it. It's healthy for dc to engage in play activities far later than many kids do.

I have a friend who spent her teens in psychiatric hospitals. She recalls one patient that thought he was a cat.
The wards would be rammed full nowadays.

Saying that, I used to wear cat ears in my 20s (small ones attached to a headband). I just liked them. Not a furry, and not into anime.

I know the other explanation but how are you so sure?

No, that is not what this is about.

So the adult sexual fetish it derives from isn't a problem?

My 8yo (y4) dd is apparently a "Therian".......Arctic Fox being the theme........I was the same when I was her age (although I was a horse!)..... I'm putting it down to play.......I grew out of it.......

Might not be. Might just be because they went to a festival in the summer. Lots of kids wearing tails there. There is a regular stall that sells tails at the festival we go to. Just fun festi wear along with the vintage clothes and silly hats.

Hardly a whole generation!! These things are unbelievable precisely because they are rare. I mean my DD's secondary went crazy because there was a few faint pink stripes that hadn't quite washed out of her hair after the Summer holidays. There's clearly no way someone would be allowed to pretend they are a fox!

I didn't claim that anywhere. I'm still not claiming it but your assessment of the situation based on your tiny knowledge of a few schools is redundant.

No, furries have been around since at least 2002 which is when I first heard of them.

I actually find the rigid attitudes on this thread about what play is age appropriate sort of disturbing.

There's a whole range of paces that preteens develop at, both socially and mentally. There's people here gloating that their kids are so very grown up at 11, 12 and 13, as if that makes their kids superior to kids who aren't quite there yet. Becoming a teenager is hard. Some 13 year olds still want to play like 11 year olds, others think they're 17. It's all within normal ranges.

Dressing up like this allows a nice comfortable middle ground between fashion and play for the kids who aren't feeling "grown up" yet. I was a kid like this, although in my local culture I dealt with it by leaning into a sort of pseudo-hippy aesthetic, all bright colours, psychedelic patterns, would carry a tarot deck around (couldn't even read tarot). For good measure I mixed this in with what I thought of as Native American fashion: feathery necklaces, howling wolf t shirts, you get the idea. There's a very real sense in which they were pretend clothes, like a costume I could put on and sort of play a character in while I adjusted to being a teenager. I outgrew the faze and emerged as a normal person who could choose clothes that I liked and talk to other teenagers normally (well, in truth via the route of becoming a "scene kid", if anyone remembers those). I had a couple of friends like me who were very into anime and who leant into the cat ear/ Japanese kawaii aesthetic. The furry thing is just this generations iteration of that.

By the way, everyone sitting around wondering where kids get therians from - they get it from the wider culture. Media aimed at kids is overwhelmingly about talking animals. Lion King, Kung Fu panda, all the side kicks to all the princesses, all the storybook characters, Pokémon, all this stuff teaches kids - for years - that animals are just people who look a bit different, and that there's something it is like to feel like these animals. Then they hit a specific age and we want them to just stop watching it, or they're "weird" and "being groomed". Don't swamp your kids with talking animals if you have very specific ideas about when they should stop liking the media you've been feeding them for the last 11 years.