Teacher upset with my child questioning about trans child

Misgendering? My four-year-old, who has just started Reception, still makes mistakes with “her” and “him”. She says “her” instead of “she” and often “misgenders” the dog by saying “him”—not because she thinks the dog is a boy, but because she’s still perfecting her grammar.

On board with what, for goodness’ sake? If the boy has long hair and wears dresses, I’m surprised your daughter even noticed he’s not a girl. This feels like a completely teacher-manufactured problem.

What’s that got to do with pretending that a boy is a girl, lying to them and lying to everybody else about them?

The good old “genital inspections” bollocks still being rolled out. Bless. It’s all they’ve got.

That’s all great stuff, no one has a problem
with boys can have long hair etc.

But that is very different to telling a child that a boy with long hair is a girl. And that he should be referred to as “she”.

Children of this age and developmental stage are starting to understand sex permanence ie being male or female doesn’t depend on clothes or hair.

So I wouldn’t be surprised at a child asking questions; it’s their job at this age to be making sense of this. Made more difficult if we start telling them that sex isn’t a permanent physical attribute but some sort of state of mind.

Not surprised to see which "side" brought up the genitals aspect first on this thread. Grim.

Thankfully my sons friendship group and the whole school respected Elliot and didn’t feel inclined to go around calling them a liar.

Nothing to see. Just a bunch of people who get along.

Tell her you don't believe in gender ideology and your DD is not to be indoctrinated in this rubbish. The transgirl is a boy and should not be encouraged in this nonsense either. Then find another school, I suspect.

But you are teaching children not to use the evidence of their eyes, which is a massive safeguarding issue.

And that we get to choose what sex we are. We don’t.
Jenny can like whatever he chooses, but he’s not a little girl.

What? The OP's DC has seen that a boy is dressing like a girl (presumably) and is called by a girls' name and she wants to know what is going on. She doesn't need gender woo explained to her with crayons wanting to be pink not blue and the appalling story of Jazz Jennings (poor boy/young man) but to have it explained that x thinks he's a girl, so call him by his girls' name. Pronouns are up to DC - one cannot tell someone what pronouns to use in your absence, when not addressing you. The school is not behaving properly - Cass said that social transing was not a neutral act - and asking all the DC in the class to lie. Not a good look and not safe, either. What about when this trans child get older, is he to change with girls? By the time he is eleven the girls will be going through puberty and he will be too, and he is watching girls undress - the school cannot allow this.

What if the child had been a boy who wanted to use the girl’s changing rooms? Firstly, after the age of 8 thats against the law, and secondly it’s not just about that one child, is it? I’m sure you think you’re very kind and progressive but “Elliott” isn’t a boy and safeguarding means there will be times “Elliott” won’t be able to be with the boys. So pretending that “Elliott” is the opposite sex in fact opens up a big can of worms. Best not to lie in the first place, IMO.

Well exactly.

In fact, they don't because they move differently, run differently etc because of the way hip joints are arranged in males and females. This doesn't just appear at puberty. Saying that I have mistaken a girl for a boy once - she was wearing a turban.

What’s the difference apart from genitals?

Since Jazz Jennings is being pushed as a "transgirl" role model, perhaps show the teacher this video of Jazz undergoing regression therapy to find out why he was binge eating and had other issues. He basically admits he's a gay man and terrified that his family will find out and will reject him for being gay. It's almost as though his parents transed him to trans the gay away.

Also point out to the teacher that it's despicable to suggest that children that they were born in the wrong body and that their body is a problem.

If Elliot is a boy then you are misgendering him by referring to him as "them".

Hormonal, skeletal, difference in organs, muscle mass, bone density, propensity towards certain diseases and health issues, fat distribution, gait, pheromones.

Is that enough to be getting along with?

Only replying to your posts this once, as the repeated focus on the same thing, above, makes me wonder if you're in earnest. It certainly doesn't come across well in the context of other detailed, thoughtful responses above.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3532859/

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/growing-friendships/201108/can-boys-and-girls-be-friends?st_source=ai_overview

https://theconversation.com/nature-and-nurture-why-do-boys-and-girls-behave-differently-2920

For whatever reasons, the above ultimately evolves into males committing 98+% of sexual crime.

Females have a right to clear boundaries, and we have a duty to bring up children to be secure in this right.

A few extracts.

Boys had higher levels of activity level and lower levels of shyness and inhibitory control than girls across all methods of assessment. (NLM)

Boys are more likely than girls to do pretend aggression and rough-and-tumble play... Boys spend more time competing whereas girls spend more time talking. (Psychology Today)

Between the age two and three, the boys displayed a higher rate of behavioural problems than the girls. Boys were around 10% more likely to show what we call “externalising behaviours” such as destructiveness and aggressiveness. (The Conversation)

They are.

One of the many problems of this kind of early social transitioning is that it forecloses the child’s identity before they’ve had a chance to develop one.

Another is that a child that has been living the lie of being the other sex from when they were so young they were more likely to “pass” is pretty much guaranteed to become dysphoric as their body begins to change & become sexually unambiguous.

The terror of their friends finding out, the paranoia about being revealed to have been deceiving those around them, the isolation of being the secret-bearer: these are terrible things to impose on a child.

I’d just add to anyone who thinks OP’s kid is asking about genitals, I remember a 6 year old boy I used to babysit in the 1970s who announced to his family that there were 12 boys in his class but “one of them’s a girl”.

Turns out one of his classmates was a Sikh boy who had his uncut hair in a plait tied up on his head. My babysittee had never seen a boy with long hair before.

Totally completely, You simply don't get to say how someone else should feel about their body at any age unless it really directly affects you. It's a good skill to learn that you don't have to be vocal about everything you don't agree with.

This is a genuinely unhinged take.

You should probably read about child development and the process by which children gradually work out that sex is permanent (and not to do with clothing and hair). Age 2-3 they think that the outer appearance is what makes someone a girl or a boy. By 6-7 they know that boys become men, girls become women and wearing opposite gendered clothes doesn’t change someone’s sex. Age 4-5 is a prime age for asking questions and working this out. Sex is not invisible to children of those age, it is quite central to them making sense of the world.

The problem is that it directly affects this child, because the child is expected to use preferred pronouns I assume. Rights are in conflict here.

It does directly affect you when you are expected to lie, pretend that reality does not exist, disregard safeguarding, and put yourself and others at risk.