How to talk about 'trans-girl' in my son's class.

In Ireland in 2025 with no plage no famine no war or death trotting about good children dont tell lies.

So why has the OPs 7 year old got to care about the other childs feeling?

Absolutely.

This is the responsibility of adults.

Telling children they can change sex is a lie.

Demanding other children to also lie about this is abuse.

It needs to stop.

(It is not the same as politely ignoring that a kid is overweight. It is like demanding that a kid refers to an overweight kid as slim in all conversations. Ridiculous.)

There is that emotional manipulation.

'Good people care if they upset others or not.'

It only goes one way for some people, doesn't it. It doesn't matter that any other child might be upset at having to use female descriptors and pronouns for a boy. It is poor safeguarding for a child to be trained to deny something that is true to make a schoolmate happy. It could be said that 'good people' don't put that burden on children.

No. Not being right. For people having equal rights in having their philosophical beliefs acknowledged.

Can you tell us which other group's philosophical belief, one that doesn't reflect material reality, gets to change a population's language to suit themselves and to use emotional manipulation and even policy to dictate that people deny their own philosophical belief in this way? What other group has been prioritised like this please?

The adults should not have lied to this boy who identifies as a girl. They are the ones who have set this poor boy up for 'hurt feelings'.

The boy cannot change sex.
The boy will find out that you cannot make everyone pretend that he has.
The law (EA2010) does not pretend that he has.
Puberty is going to come along and show him that he is male.
Truth and biology will out.

Why should anyone care about anyone else's feelings?

Because we are a social species that literally relies on caring about eachother to survive. Good people care if they upset others or not.

And you have only centred your need to be right over other people's feelings.

We certainly won't agree.

@user1471471849 Please watch ‘Petite Fille’

No. We will not agree on this.

You have only centred one child here in your posts and that is the child making linguistic demands on others. And all you have support your point is emotional manipulation and false comparisons.

As we all know ‘identity’ is not the same as sex.

OPs DS is allowed to refer to the sex of the boy in question. It hasn’t changed.

Can you explain why dont caring = not nice ?

Why has the OPs 7 year old got to care about the other childs feeling?

Call it what you like. If this boy got on with the trans child it's unlikely he would be making comments about him being a boy isn't it. Or it wouldn't need to be mentioned they don't like eachother.

If you don't think comments you know will hurt someone's feelings made off the back of not liking someone are nasty we will never agree on this and should just leave it there.

Making a comment that a boy is actually … a boy is not ‘nasty’ or ‘bullying’. HTH.

The bad behaviour is coming from the adults that are putting two young children in this position. No one can change sex.

These situations are not comparative.

There is not a need to use demanded language changes for those reasons. There is just no need to mention those descriptive characteristics of people. They are also potentially highly subjective.

However, it is highly relevant to acknowledge someone’s sex for use of pronouns and maybe other aspects of daily school life to have to use specified language to accommodate a person’s philosophical belief that doesn’t reflect material reality. There is no subjectivity to a person’s sex.

It is emotionally manipulative to describe the typical use of English language to accurately describe someone’s sex as ‘nasty’ and ‘intended to hurt’.

It is true that some people are fat. It is true that some people are ugly. Making comments about these things is cruel.

It's not the disagreeing with someone else's world view that makes comments nasty, it's knowing they will hurt someone's feelings, then saying it anyway. It can only be concluded that you either don't care about their feelings, or actually want to hurt them. Neither are nice are they?

We had this situation but reverse the sexes. IMO the confused child benefitted ultimately from the gentle ribbing from classmates who wouldn’t or couldn’t go along with the lie and luckily her parents accepted it when she desisted before the end of primary school. Also, there were enough parents who, although always respectful of the child, her privacy etc, gently made the parents aware that not everyone in the community believed in trans ideology and that they would be well supported if they started entertaining any doubts of their own. A few parents went as far as to express that the child was always welcome for play dates but in their homes, sex based pronouns would be used. Some parents now feel the child was ‘bullied’ when she thought she was a boy, but my impression was that the sane members of the community gently helped to bring her back to reality. She is now very settled in her body, excels at sport, with a large group of friends, where before she was floundering, and everyone around her was tiptoeing.

I hope that with gentle resistance from his community, the child in your son’s class will experience the same. The key is gentleness and subtlety so that the parents and the child don’t get too entrenched and feel under attack. That said I do think that parents of female children in this case need to be brave enough to stand up for their daughters and refuse consent if the bathroom and changing facilities do not afford them single sex privacy, especially after this boy turns 8.

With your poor wee boy I think you are doing well so far, just keep going. I always reminded my kids, this poor child is confused and suffering, and their parents are confused too. My young son was very confused about the situation and my heart broke for him when he would ask me questions like ‘but how can she be a boy and a girl?’ with genuine pain in his eyes. It’s a cruel trick to play on these kids and the people who have caused this to get into our schools are truly evil. See it as an early lesson for the kids in staying strong in what you know to be true whilst not letting the ‘mad crowd’ alienate you for this. A complex tightrope we all face eventually in life. Wishing you strength from another small country where GI has totally engulfed the officialdom.

You are not 7 years old.

It is not reasonable to expect people, child or adult, to act as if they believe another’s philosophical belief about themselves when that belief that does not reflect material reality. A person who believes that no one can change sex and that the English language is based on that sex has the right to their own beliefs and to act accordingly.

The intention might be simply to maintain the truth. Your absolutism that the only positioning is ‘nasty’ means that a child has no right to their own belief and must act in support of another person’s philosophical belief even when it contradicts their own.

What other group’s language demands based on philosophical belief, one that doesn’t reflect material reality, is affirmed by society in this way?

Yes, it is.

Deliberately calling someone something that you know will upset them and invalidates their identity and the way they see themselves is nasty.

Calling a person who is happy as a woman, a woman is not nasty. Calling a man who is happy to be a man is not nasty. But deliberately ignoring someone's identity and point out something you know will upset them is nasty. Because your intention is to upset them.

Exactly.

The number of people making out it fine to deliberate hurt someone because you don't like them is astounding.

I don't think there is any evidence that the 7 year old son of the OP has been " deliberately cruel". And as already stated, we don't know the attitudes and behaviour of the. 'trans' child towards the other children, or towards the son of the OP in particular.

We are talking about 6 and 7 year olds.....and you must know from your own experienece the level at which they typically operate. Children fall out with each other all of the time.

I'm replying in kind because I think there's an additional issue here, that posters like you are willfully ignoring. I wouldn't speak to a child like that, whatever their confusion ('trans' child) or behaviour (OP's child). I've already (weeks ago) acknowledged that this child is clearly struggling and needs adult support.

I just also happen to think that deliberately being cruel to someone you don't get on with at school and need not speak to if you find them strange or unusual (and who, from an adult's point of view is likely vulnerable and needs support) shows a distinct lack of manners or decency.

If they take after you they must be delightful.

Yeah, and they ought to know (and usually do) they don't need to behave like a dick towards people they come across in life.