Children protesting at DfE

Well that sounds like most of us as teenagers.

Wish I could find the poster who personified trans rights as stamping it's feet, going to it's room and slamming the door.

Their logo appears to be a pawn with a poor attempt to dress it up as something it isn't. I find that's possibly more appropriate than they realise.

I agree with them that their identities should not be subject to external validation! I presume this means they are cool with not being allowed in spaces, services and sports which are not for their sex, and they accept people may correctly sex them?

oh! I might be able to fit a night in as well. Or maybe we can sing our teachings in a lullaby so that they might be more gentle to their ears? Perhaps we can get just the right riff to overwrite the mantras.

I would think this is part of parenting, yes.

Well, yes, but there’s a lot of not very good parents out there.

But I don’t think it’s just screens anymore. It’s in schools and friendship groups. You see it on here. Posters (maybe not in good faith) telling parents there kids will cut them off (even though they’re only 14 and still don’t know how to use a washing machine) and leave home.

I think Gaspode’s post gets a lot of it right.

A pity I don't live in London. I'd be up for a couple of hours between, say, 1 and 4 a.m. giving them a comprehensive lecture.

Why don't they just go home? Presumably there aren't any DfE staff there in the middle of the night to actually notice them.

So I am not talking about the critical thinking skills necessary to compare one Shakespeare production of Hamlet with another. Perhaps “common sense judgment” might be better. So I’d hope that most parents have the common sense to see that their 13 year old son or daughter is spending hours online and to ask himself or herself:
What are they looking at?
What’s it about?
Perhaps it’s time to get them off the screen and do something else? Play football or make a cake or help me with the shopping?
Why are they talking so much about their identity? What’s this all about? Where are they learning about this?

And to have some conversations with their child. Isn’t this just part of parenting your child?

So Grin was also given testosterone by a GP at 14? They are 17 now

From the Guardian article

"He has now been on puberty blockers, bought from abroad, for four years and, through his GP, has been taking the masculinising hormone testosterone for three years"

This. Plus the toxic adults behind all this, pushing the young to discard their parents and families.

Isn't that what Prevent is essentially supposed to be all about... ?

I'm sure we've all met parents who don't set and enforce consistent boundaries for their children, and seem to struggle with saying no or upsetting their children in any way. I expect they are well represented in the cohort of parents of trans-identified 'kiddos'.

I think that the parents of these kids know where they are and what they are doing. They may not all be happy about it but they've allowed it. The grim focus these kids have on suicide and self-harm will be scaring their parents into compliance with the risky behaviour on show at this protest.

Yup - maybe the kids need more time learning critical thinking?

Francesca - I’m not sure it’s infantilising to recognise not all adults have developed critical thinking skills (and I certainly don’t think mine are that sharp, so I’m not judging anyone). I’m not even sure it’s right to assume we (as a society) have always all had that ability. There’s always been received wisdom and blind acceptance.

Look at how things like “we only use 10% of our brain” or “drink a hot cuppa on a hot day to cool down” are trotted out as fact. A lot of people just accept what people tell them without asking questions.

Why wouldn’t parents be able to do this? I’m not being goady, I’m genuinely interested in your perspective. I try not to infantilise people who choose to have children: don’t most of us put some effort and thought into how we raise our children? Of course we all make mistakes that we beat ourselves up about but that list of demands posted by @McLeodIsPronouncedMcloud comes from children who live in la-la land and who are overly obsessed with their “identity”. Perhaps an adult has never stepped in to provide a neutral or realistic perspective.

Parents who buy their daughter's drugs from GenderGP and then encourage them to keep climbing/bouldering probably don't do much critical thinking (or saying No)

I suppose that assumes parents are able to do that? As a generalisation these are skills that are being lost.

But resilience is probably more important than kindness (which should not be confused with fairness)* and I think it’s probably more acceptable to men for boys to be resilient than kind so I’m not sure it would be misused in the same way “be kind” is.

I think there’s plenty of men don’t think kindness is important in boys/men but they do see the importance of grit.

(*Im not suggesting you’ve confused them, btw, it’s a general comment.)

Products of a childhood spent sitting in front of a computer screen for hours on end without an adult monitoring their viewing. Why didn’t their parents pass on some healthy habits or encourage critical thinking?

Except that resilience should not mean accepting a situation that can be reasonably be said to be unsafe. Based on historical precedence and observation.

The problem is ‘resilience’ can be another version of ‘be kind’; girls objecting to boys in their changing room? They should be more resilient!

Only if applied unequally. Obviously those boys need more resilience to be gender nonconforming within their own sex; more resilience to 'misgendering' etc.

Everytime I see adolescents like this protesting and handing out leaflets with such gaslighting statements that don’t really even say what they want the statements to say, I am reminded who is behind this.

The adults who have indoctrinated these children with the thoughts that some people ‘don’t want them to exist’ and that some people ‘want them to die without treatment’ and so on. The hyperbole we see rolled out on threads on MN and social media is pervasive and persuasive to this group of children. And then they grow up and perpetuate this.

The problem is ‘resilience’ can be another version of ‘be kind’; girls objecting to boys in their changing room? They should be more resilient!