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

It's also emotional abuse as defined in KCSIE. It's imposing developmentally inappropriate expectations on children and imposing a belief system on them, not allowing them to express themselves naturally. All of these things are very specifically identified as forms of emotional abuse (if persistent which imposition of wrong sex pronouns and expectations that children pretend they can't see sex is)..

Adults who are full on into genderwoo can't stop themselves using sex-based pronouns as has been shown in many open justice court cases where the TRAs desperate to harm women who spoke up about reality couldn't themselves do it.

If they can't do it when they're trying their best in court, expecting a primary age child to is not just unreasonable it's abusive.

Also, sex is important for safeguarding, training children out of the instinctive ability to accurately sex people is not kind. Sex matters for safeguarding.

In addition, if you teach children that their perceptions don't matter, and the feelings of other people must always come above their feelings then they will not be able to disclose abuse.

It's all so unhealthily one way - unhealthy for ALL children involved. As PP has noted, respect needs to be a two way thing and friendship relies on MUTUAL respect. That means accepting, if you're trans, that other people see sex and respecting their right to express themselves naturally just as they respect your right to change your name, dress as you wish and consider yourself the opposite sex. Expecting that the other children spend all their time pretending around one child is abusive.

It's fine to ask children not to constantly state that a child is fat and be sensitive to that child's feelings, however it's also not ok for adults to expect them to pretend the child is thin when they're not. It's fine to ask children not to tease or bully a child if they're not very good at maths, however it's also not ok to expect all the other children to pretend they come top in every maths test and are a child genius.

All the people saying this poor child should subvert their observations for the sake of an ideology should read this: Four year old boy joins Church of England primary school as a girl

It's not kind to the trans child - as who will want to be friends with someone where you can't speak the truth about something as fundamental as sex, where the accommodation is always and only one way? That's not friendship, that's an abusive dynamic being enabled by adults.

You cannot force children to be friends with other children and they won't want to participate in 'friendship' which is so woefully unbalanced because the other children matter too, their observations about the world matter too, and children are - in my experience - finely tuned to injustice, which this is.

Wonder how the head explains the idea of the non binary child. What sort of brain do they have?

Can we stop using terminology like ‘girls clothes’ and ‘dress like a girl’ please. Clothes are clothes, and wearing a skirt doesn’t make you a girl.

And even if it were true, the main reason for separate toilets, changing rooms and other facilities is based on biology and not feelings.

Even just going on averages, what percentage of your body consists of your brain? Well under 5%. Why would you assume that the 5% would dictate which facility you should use over the 95%?

I think this is one of many situations where you have your own family beliefs, but are conscious of how that may land out in the school yard. I'd use the Santa analogy as a good one, we'd expect families who don't believe in Santa to tell their kids not to go around ruining Christmas for the kids who do believe. So you don't need to hold back at home but explain that it's very distressing for the child if they call them a boy. I think it's obviously harmful bullshit for this poor kid, but it doesn't make that kid's life better if your kid calls it out in the yard.
The Educate Together schools are all-in on the T of LGBT. I say that as a parent whos son goes to an ET secondary school. It's otherwise the best school for him.

I find the school’s line ‘male body, female brain’ important in all this.
They are making it sound like a biological fact. I came across an adult transwoman account on threads recently and he was saying he is absolutely a cis woman, and adult human female, because he always had 100% female brain.
Is anybody aware of a female brain vs male brain research? Is that something provable and real? Where did the school get it from?

Thanks for the correction Cailleach - I got it entirely arseways.

Most of the schools in ireland are private and Faith schools. Most of the old stock are under RC control (small number Jewish, C of I etc) so single sex would be the norm and parents in these schools can go to the faith leaders in control if its an ethos issue.

The ET were set up for parents who did not want a faith education so are more likely to be into gender as its a "fashionable" social issue.
There is also a history of child sex abuse ( in schools and child organistions) so all teachers should be aware of the need to be responsible and respect child safeguarding.

However almost all schools are run independently by the local BOM and staff so how genderism is managed is mostly down to who has social power and is willing to be on the BOM. And social downgrading to be a girl will be seen by some as stunning and brave.....

In the OPs case she needs to focus on how the school will accept her childs belief and ensure that he will not be bullied for them. At 6 its going to be about how the school manage supervision and not allowing either child to get into verbal arguments in the class room or on the playground.

Its likely the other childs parents will say their child is being bullied as her child refuses to say the other child is a girl. However because the other child is a special "different" the school will not want to be seen as unsupportive and may even have policy in place which discriminates against her son. The government was fine with putting a male child rapist into the the womens prison which has a mother and baby unit and is pushing for selfID for children so the OP needs to ask for all written documentation on how the school will manage the issue and point out where the policy puts her child at a disadvantage.

Yes, this - very much so.

It would be like raising your child in an English-speaking country and grounding them in grammar with only one word for 'the' - and then suddenly insisting to them that, sometimes (and you won't often know when), you have to use German grammar instead; because some people in English-speaking countries get upset when people there use English, so you are a bad and unkind person if you don't inherently know and then remember when (still supposedly speaking English) you have to use der/die/das etc.

So, at first many though ‘Citizens Assemblies’ would be a good thing. However, there has been concern how those appointed to the assemblies are selected. It is not just a wide group of citizens to give balanced representation of Irish society across the board.

The public didn’t get any vote on the Gender Recognition Act 2015. There was a citizens Assembly (with activists, including chair) who made a recommendation to the Oireachtas/Dáil (can’t remember). Even their recommendation of medical diagnosis was then rejected. No discussion of impact on the rights of women and girls. Because of all that, women in prison now have aggressive and violent men threatening to rape them, women have been assaulted in supposed women refuges, men can physically tackle women in LGFA (and management have tried to shut down any talk of women’s rights by even local parents in this). I suppose the full chilling effect is a cascade across the board.

Oh, I forgot the fellow (dad of 3) who is lauded when he puts on the wig to be on the NCWI, but said he went for a job interview dressed as a man because he actually wanted the job. He wasn’t doing his playing for that (my words).

I agree with the first part of this. However, I don't think it's reasonable to expect a seven year old to avoid pronouns.

I know a number of parents with trans identifying children who frequently have to correct themselves mid-sentence to replace accurate pronouns with preferred ones. These parents are trying and none are gender critical. It's just much more difficult than it seems. Applying such an expectation to the OP's son would be setting him up to fail.

In some ways I'm very glad I grew up in the 60s and 70s (in many other ways not!) I was desperate to be a boy when I was 5 to about 7 - boys clothes, football, hated dolls etc.. I know that it was a phase and was for many complicated reasons, but I grew out of it and have been quite content with who I am for the past 50 years!
It's scary.

I must admit, I am aghast that the school claimed that he is a boy below the neck and a girl above the neck.

That reminds me of the people who avowedly don't eat any meat except for fish on a Friday for religious reasons - but then re-classify other meats as fish as well, so that they're still "only eating fish".

There's nothing wrong if you choose to eat chicken or beef on a Friday (or indeed if you choose to only eat fish, or if you choose to eat no meat at all); it's just when people make rules and then desperately search for any kind of way around reality in order to supposedly still keep within those self-imposed rules - however illogically.

I wasn't living in Ireland when the Gender recognition issue piggybacked on the Marriage Equality referendum so didn't vote - I'm fuming about the roll back of women's rights in Ireland. At least now in the UK (thanks to a group of Scottish women), the Equality Act has been clarified to mean biological women.

Genderwoo is another form of belief and its adherents every bit as dogmatic as hardline believers in other belief systems. They are completely illiberal.

Also, it may not be a given that this child will be left to develop naturally and undergo puberty. Ireland are sending such children to ‘clinics’ in Belgium now. After ‘corrective’ medicalisation to such children in the UK was ended.

I must admit, I am aghast that the school claimed that he is a boy below the neck and a girl above the neck. Surely, that would mean he will have to use the boys changing room and toilets when addressing anything below the neck. Any sport played with the body below the neck also would appropriately play on boys teams.

OP I don’t want to say too much on here but I have a lot of experience with this and bringing my (older) kids through ET schools. Feel free to get in touch - you are in for a difficult ride if you don’t follow the script.

Interesting that some posters have assumed my son is bullying him just because he is trans, like it makes him automatically a victim.

This is the foundation (by design) for a great deal of rhetoric around this issue.

I was going to say that ‘Educate Together’ do very much follow a religious ideology. A very damaging, misogynistic, and anti scientific religious ideology.

I suspect the inquiries of the future will wonder how so many were complicit in, or looked the other way, this abuse of children as much as the recent inquiries into the historic sex abuse scandals. The state itself, and TDs/Taoisigh will not be able to wriggle out of taking responsibility, and solely blaming churches this time.

The crucial difference is that in your scenario the overweight child isn’t expecting the rest of the class to pretend he is thin.

Just because you believe something about someone it doesn't mean you need to say it to them. If there's an overweight child in the class should her or your child go around telling them they're fat? Hey, it's true right, so who cares by your logic.

Any boy who is lied to has to deal with the fact they aren't a girl when they hit puberty.

Lining up expectations and social conditioning of others to be out of step with this, is cruel and unkind. It is not in the best interests of that child.

That child is being set up for medicalisation from an age before they can possibly understand the implications. They are in a situation where it is incredibly difficult to detransition. Especially if the parents are fully on woo and everyone else has been woo trained.

It's appalling.

The language is always interesting.

You must be 'respectful' (and play along)
You can't 'interfere' (and must play along)
It's not your place (so play along)

But all of this is one way. The social contract doesn't work like that. It is not 'respectful' to require a young child or indeed anyone to pretend the illusions of another when there is no 'respect' for their autonomy, perceptions and own right to have other recognise their reality and feelings.

It is 'interfering' to require a child to play a game of compelled speech and pretend for another child who is being set as more important and powerful than them and to whom they owe obedience.

'It's not your place' makes it very clear who owes obedience and is lower caste, and may not resist the will of their betters.

If these words are not reciprocal then all you mean by them is 'you must be obedient and submissive and expect nothing in return because this person is higher caste than you and you are lesser than them'. Fuck this, it's not the bloody 1860s, we're not raising children to go and work in service for the privileged, this is wrong. And that's before you even start considering the ethics of enabling a vulnerable child to get lost in this fantasy and believe an entitlement of others indulging and enabling it, and the path ahead of him. It is not 'kind' to keep from this child that other people have rights and perceptions too, and are entirely equal to him in all ways.

Bear in mind too, this awful stuff about 'respect' and so on to enforce compliance is the exact same stuff used to coerce girls into submitting to taking their clothes off and validating boys with their body when those children involved are a few years older than this one. How do you explain to this boy five years down the line that yes you've made everyone pretend to this point but now he's reached a point where you can't make the girls pretend and get in a shower with him because that bit of the pretence is going too far? And all this is about adults acting out their own political hobbyhorses using children.

It is morally and ethically wrong. To put it mildly.