Teaching children to recognise the sex of individuals

A child communicating at that level would have a range of much more important language needs in my experience.

It's not something I've ever been aware of a a pressing need.

I agree I don't understand why this would be particularl concern/ priority for these children.

My 19 yo is autistic and has learning disabilities too. He still gets pronouns wrong - calls his sister "he", said "he's having a baby" about a lady at his school.

He know the differences between males and females, he knows we say she for girls and he for boys etc but he doesn't always get it right. And he still thinks girls have long hair, so he'll call a boy with long hair she even though he knows plenty of boys with long hair.

Due to his learning disabilities it's ongoing, I just gently correct him, or asking him if the person he's talking about is a boy or girl and he'll usually then remember which pronoun to use.

But as the person we're talking about isn't usually there I'm not too worried about him offending people.

Ask him what date something happened or the birthdate of anyone at his school and he'll tell you though!

My son often forgot if she went with a girl or a boy rather than not being able to recognise if someone was a boy or girl.

We just corrected him when necessary. He still sometimes forgets but less frequently.

My son has autism and I find this thread a little odd. Your concern about this specific issue for these children sounds a little unnecessary? If they are functioning at the level of 3 year olds then its not a big deal for them to mix up who is a boy and who is a girl.

I have a 3 year old who's not picking up on shes and hes. So we are working on just close family. I model he copies.

At the same time, if he says "only boys like trucks" (he's picking up bits from nursery) I challenge that; I'm a girl and I like trucks!

Repetition repetition, with people he knows in the moment. He's neurotypical so he'll get it eventually.

Some of he children I teach may not be ready access this level of contextual social language till secondary school, if ever.

I teach children with asd in primary. A wide range of language abilities.

Some of my yr 6 are at the stage of a 1yr old in terms of expressive language and communication and some are reading Harry Potter, and can tell you all about it.

I do agree theres a conflict with how we refer to stereotypes and within the feminist issues with stereotypes.

However, at the lower cognitive levels of communication they and we do rely on stereotypes. Pronouns are an area of language that's much more complex and relies on a high level of social understanding.

Children working at a v low level aren't as aware of wider social implications of stereotypes. They also both tend not to have much interest in stereotypical clothing or styles for their own sex, and parents generally (here) dress them to be as comfortable and actually conforming as possible. Also due to that cognitive level have more freedom to choose toys they like.

A child who is beginning to communicate at a level where they may use he or she (often get it confused as my 3 yr old is at the moment) would have it modelled and would usually naturally learn that modelling. (But you find many avoid pronouns and use names as it is confusing)

I've never said "she is a girl because she has long hair." I've only said "she is a girl. So we say she."

In my experience anatomical differences are directly taught at yr 5 and 6 and the children have generally worked out who is a girl or boy, apart from the "core" groups.. But it can be confusing. A few believed a new TA was a man. We must keep clarifying for them.

We use the stereotypes till they're at an age/ stage where the stereotypes can be challenged and they can understand the difference between males and females. The Rachel Rooney book is perfect for that.

These children's worlds are small though and they usually only need to know/ are able to know the names of a few people familiar and close to them.,

This does however highlight how very vulnerable these children are are twisted language and confusing queer blurring of queer language.

'They will use the name and pronouns the child has been introduced by and are called by everyone else.

Not necessarily. These children are autistic. Some also have learning disabilities.'

For what reasons would they not use the ones used by everybody else?

And in the end, how much does that matter?

Kohlberg demonstrations by James of children's classification and language development stages:

As a parent I'd be very worried if a teacher was trying to get my kids to "sex" people, big red safeguarding flag there! I hope you don't think that is appropriate, sex=/=gender although colloquially they're often used interchangeably.

Enabling children to recognise sex is not a 'big red safeguarding flag', indeed it is arguable that preventing/inhibiting children from correctly recognising sex would be the potential Safeguarding issue.
English third person singular pronouns (she, he, it) are taught to Primary aged children to indicate sex.
It is not age-appropriate to confuse children at this point in their literacy development with multiple gender identity neo-pronouns.

It's not unusual for NT three-year olds to misgender their peers. If a child has long hair, they are assumed to be girls. It's not hateful, and not necesssarily something that has to be explicitly taught, but what I do is gently correct the error, by using the correct pronouns, or even stating, "That's Hamish, he's a boy", It's not a big deal when you're three. they make lots of assumptions, and are often wrong. Nobody minds, as they are little kids, learning to make sense of the world.

This looks interesting, OP.

www.speechandlanguagekids.com/5-steps-to-teach-he-and-she/

I suppose you could use lots of different pictures of people so avoiding the stereotyping?

Interesting question.

Children don't have anything really when they're little to differentiate apart from genitals.

The cues are usually around stereotypical hair clothes likes.

I don't know why you need to teach them this though? Is it on the curriculum?

They will use the name and pronouns the child has been introduced by and are called by everyone else.

Given the age why do you need to go beyond that?

Teaching them that stereotypes are important and universal is not a good thing to do.

Ahh, stickers. Don't you like stickers? ☺️

So their illegal advice to schools was good?

Their advice isn't illegal.

No idea why you think "Transgender Trend" would be good

Transgender trend are an excellent resource.

I recommend you check what you are trying to teach. I think it more likely you are trying to teach grammar rather than human biology.

Children learn to identify sex as they grow and some with sensory process issues might take longer. I don't think you can teach sex recognition other than stereotypes so wouldn't bother.

As for grammar (regardless of what the obvious loons on here say). You don't have to have confirmation of sex. Pronouns are used in the third person. Once the child has decided FOR THEMSELVES the sex of the character then YOU TEACH which pronoun to apply.

Eg is X a girl/boy? How did you decide that? (they used she in text, I can see it, I don't know (can you make a guess)). Once the child has decided on the sex you can teach them the grammar rules.

FYI misgendering is not harrassment, gender theory is not orthodoxy and you shouldn't be teaching any ideology unless it is the govt agreed British values.

Despite the obsessives on this chat believers in gender ideology are a very small sect and don't reflect society.

Rachel Rooney is an experienced, respected educator and SEN specialist and Transgender Trend have very good resources.

My advice - laugh at the looney tunes, don't take them any more seriously than the flat earthers.

It's a great job you are doing.

What a minute @AntiHumbug, the title of the thread is "teaching children to recognise the sex of individuals". I thought this was just about pronouns. As a parent I'd be very worried if a teacher was trying to get my kids to "sex" people, big red safeguarding flag there! I hope you don't think that is appropriate, sex=/=gender although colloquially they're often used interchangeably.

No idea why you think "Transgender Trend" would be good. They're an anti-trans group (one person, an ex-Sculptor with no professional education experience, except as a volunteer in a school poorly rated by Ofsted) - who gave illegal advice to schools to out trans kids, and in their latest booklet suggest teachers misgender trans kids. That would also be illegal harassment, so is shockingly bad advice.

AntiHumbug I don't know the best way to contact her - maybe on Twitter or via her website? Or as you say via Transgender Trend - Stephanie Davies-Arai might be able to help too.

Oh would you feedback here when you get a response please? I would like to know as well.

OP, maybe it would be best to talk to people with training in this area - Rachel Rooney I think is both trained in educating kids with autism and has written beautiful poems that challenge stereotypes, so she might be someone you could ask?

The problem is that the way most people recognise the sex of others is intuitive - we're very very good at it but we're often using fairly subtle cues about physiognomy that are difficult to articulate. To quote Kevin Mitchell:

Male and female faces differ on a wide range of parameters – size of the jaw, prominence of the ridge over the eyebrows, fullness of the lips, size of the bridge of the nose, and others. For each of these parameters, there is not a male form and a female form – there is a distribution, which is shifted one way in males and the other way in females. None of these markers by itself provides the means to accurately classify faces as either male or female. But taking all of them together certainly does. We are all very good at telling whether a face is male or female and computer programs can also very successfully perform this classification. So, “male” faces and “female” faces are clearly real things, even though the differences in specific parameters between them are not dimorphic.