Transgender 4 year old wanting to join girls only group

[Helpwithdivorce]

So I’ll preface this by saying im very much a live your life however you please as long as you’re not hurting anybody kind of person. However I run a group, which is just for girls aged 4-7.

I’ve had a request from a parent for their child to join. The child is 4 and the parent said they are transgender. Now here is my predicament, which may be rightly or wrongly.

Firstly I feel like this mother is just out to cause drama, there are other very similar mixed gender groups, there is no reason this child needs to join a group only for girls.

Secondly I simply do not believe that a 3/4 year old child knows that they are transgender. I feel this is being peddled by the mother, again feeding the drama.

What would you do? I really don’t want this mother in my group, but the group is ‘inclusive’ so I can’t say no you can’t join.
Currently I’ve just ignored the request.

So boys can't go if they identify as a girl and girls can't go if they identify as a boy. Talk about have your cake and eat it.

At four you'd take a boy into the ladies, we did at beavers and nobody died.

I suspect OP has a point in that the child probably doesn’t identify as anything and this is parent led. It puts OP in the unenviable position of balancing out reality and ideaology for four year olds. No matter what she does someone will be annoyed. Its the equivalent of being handed a poison chalice.

Id want to dodge/ duck ou too.

I don't think kids would be interested, it's the adults who get worked up about it.

I remember dropping GS at his school, a boys school. A girl was walking in wearing the shirt tie and school blazer with a skirt. I asked if there were girls at the school. GS thought about it and said "I think they are trans something, not sure if they are a trans boy or a trans girl ". Total non issue.

It's vastly different for your son to have a girl at his school than for a girl to have a boy at an all-girls' school. Pretending you don't understand the differences or needs of girls doesn't cover you in the glory you think you're gaining by acting non-plussed.

I think the son has a boy at his school who wears a skirt.

Total non-issue to you, you mean. But presumably given it was a boys school and they were wearing a skirt, they were a trans-identified boy. A boy who was sharing that ‘girls’ are just a stereotype, an identity to be claimed and a school that was supporting that perception in an environment where there were no girls to contradict it. Many of those boys would leave that school with that misogynistic attitude to women.

I think kids are interested they are interested in absolutely everything else but they are taught very early on that it’s unkind to question other children’s beliefs,

I don’t think it does children any favours, they grow up in bubbles of awkwardly polite kindness and affirmation then hit puberty and adulthood.

The difference is that adults in positions of authority do need to think about whether they are transmitting sexist messages to young girls, and whether they are being co-opted into harming a child.

Well my GS who actually knew the child couldn't remember if it was a boy identifying as a girl or a girl identifying as a boy so I don't think you can presume anything about it.

I don't think any of the boys were interested anymore than my GS was. Maybe those boys will leave school being tolerant rather than misogynists.

I actually know my GS and his friends and they weren't bothered one way or the other. If you ever heard them discussing the merits of their favourite football teams you wouldn't notice any polite kindness as they swap insults.

I know the reality doesn't suit your narrative but I don't think GS and his mates would be worried about that. Awkward polite kindness wouldn't change that.

Boys, and many men, ime aren’t bothered about the trans issue.

because it doesn’t affect them. They can live their lives with their male privilege and not engaging their brains about how women and girls feel.

i met a friends son who was keen to enlighten us about how TW using women’s toilets wasn’t an issue. Women should be kind, allow them to pee in peace etc. they only want to be included in sport and we shouldn’t be horrible and force them out.

i described an occasion where I, late at night at work in a public building walked out the women’s toilet to wash my hands, to find a 6’3 man in a wig and skirt blocking my way out. The visceral fear, the knowledge there was no help, and the automatic flight response looking for a way out and realising there was none.

i asked them how would they feel if they were cornered in that way, or their girlfriend, or their mum. If a strange adult male was in his private school boys toilet between him and the door, no one else around, would he be scared and wonder what they were doing there, or think oh this big strong bloke has walked in off the street to pee in a school toilet, he doesn’t mean any harm.

watching it dawn on him why women don’t want men in female toilets wasn’t very interesting. He’d clearly never had to think about things like being alone in a tube carriage, walking home from the pub, even getting in an uber are all risks for women.

boys just don’t get it. Because privilege.

I am not surprised that a teenage boy isn’t particularly interested or knowledgable about feminism or the latest reports on ‘gender affirming’ medical treatment for children.

I think you are assuming tolerance and insight when he (in many ways understandably) just lacks interest in things that don’t affect him.

Or not that bright...

I was leaving those out of the equation since they are an extremely rare exception. Some people are born with more than two sex chromosomes, for instance, or can be born intersex or with atypical genitalia, but this thread isn't about people with those conditions, is it?

The cultural environment that people are raising kids in is toxic. It's all over the media that kids can change sex. It's to be celebrated, you are a bigot if you don't affirm and socially transition, it's in school, NHS, social services, the BBC kids channels, parents are told the kids will kill themselves... Society has become more gendered with more pink toys or blue toys pushchairs, gender stereotypes. It's hardly surprising parents are transitioning kids thinking they are doing the best for them because they are not told of the harms of transitioning only potential harm's (often false) of not affirming.

It's easy to see from the outside what to do. When you are in it it is more difficult to see. I suspect that some parents genuinely believe they are doing what's best as they have been sold a lie by people with an agenda.

It is going to be really hard to step back from and see you have done your kid harm even though you thought you were doing the right thing at the time.

Explain more please.

Beavers are 6 plus, should be more than capable of going to toilets themselves.

Trans just shouldn't be a thing for 4 year old kids. Kids shouldn't be defined by their likes and dislikes.

But I wouldn't want to try to explain trans to little kids, I don't believe anyone is "born in the wrong body", your body is you!

I don't know what "living as a woman/man/boy/girl" actually means because it's a piece of nonsense i wouldn't want to try to explain in a child like appropriate way.

But ultimately I wouldn't want to tell children Thomas is really a girl but wants you to call her him.
I couldn't be arsed with the tell-taling Wendy called Thomas her, every 5mins
I couldn't be arsed with the Mother moaning at every session because some kid got it wrong.

If we were out and about we wouldn't send a six year old to the loo by themselves, boy or girl. When you are responsible for six year olds it just isn't something you'd do however capable they are. My own sons came into the ladies with me at that age, why would I be less careful with other people's children I'm caring for?

Huge difference between being vaguely aware of a child being trans and actually having to manage that and the drama that goes with it.

I've had Beavers at multi group events and waited outside the toilets for them.

I don't even know what toilets to send a trans kid into, the boys because they are a boy or the girls because that's where they want to be.

Honestly I think I'd walk away if someone rocked up with a trans kid a Beavers.

Having more than two sex chromosomes doesn’t make you some sort of “inbetween’ sex: you are still male or female. Having a disorder of sexual development doesn’t make you ‘inbetween’ either: you are still male of female.

’Intersex’ is an archaic term for disorders of sexual development that are either male or female. It is a term many with DSD find offensive. It is also a term adopted by transactivists, several of whom have taken to self identifying as ‘intersex’ despite their narrative making it clear they are no such thing (eg one claimed doctors didn’t know if they were male or female despite being pregnant).

As I have mentioned it is force-teaming to push the arguments of a specific online autistic (or self ID autistic) community. Who, when push comes to shove (like a consultation for a neurodiversity Bill) drop all those others and state it should be just about autism (and more specifically, their presentation of it). For non-autistic ND individuals it is the equivalent of being L in LGBTQIA+.

The poor child needs social services, not joining girls only groups

No 4 year old is transgender.it's parents wishing they'd had a different sex child.

Bloody ridiculous

I'd cite the recent court ruling and say it's a female only group but point the mother to the mixed sex groups. Don't let a boy invade a single sex female group.

Oh for crying out loud, all I was trying to do was to leave those people out of the discussion because it is highly unlikely that the kid in question in the OP has any such rare condition. If I hadn't mentioned that some people are born with such differences, some other poster would have been on my case and had a go at me about it, and I was trying to avoid that situation.

FFS.

I wish I hadn't bothered posting on the sodding thread at all now.