Transing a 4 year old

[ShadowChancellor]

On Monday, all the children at my kids school were taught about being transgender because the parent of a reception kid have decided that X is actually Y and are now sending their kid in as the opposite sex and have changed their name.

According to my kid they were shown a video that was all about how if you were a boy and liked girl things and girl clothes you were a girl and it was all very positive.

No parents were told before this happened. We only found out when the kids came out of school on Monday and told us.

AIBU to a) think that transing a kid at 4 years old is more to do with the parents not liking the fact that their kid prefers girls toys to boys toys and b) that the other parents should've been told before they showed our kids this film and promoted it all in school.

Its caused a lot of confusion with the younger kids who think you can change whether you are a boy or girl just by wishing it and didn't mention at all all of the problems that it can cause.

Tinkly love the education at your child's school and how she is being allowed to just get on with it- fantastic to hear it- thank you!

Assassinated the advice we were given was to acknowledge her feelings - 'you feel like you are a girl', etc. rather than telling her she is a girl, because it's obviously not that simple but that's a difficult concept for a 4/5yo to understand. So we acknowledge that she feels like a girl but try to stay away from telling her that she definitively is one, IYSWIM?

We have been for a CAMHS assessment (DD's school helped with the referral) and are now waiting for an appointment at the Tavistock Clinic. I don't really know what that entails but I hope they will be able to offer more advice and support if this continues long term. CAMHS were very good - the psychologist met DD, me, and DH and said that she had no concerns about DD's mental health and wellbeing. She said that they are generally only involved if there are mental health concerns, so she just made the referral to the Tavistock. We can get in touch with her at any time if we feel the need to though.

The reasonable concern from a parental perspective is that the video shown conflated interests and behaviour with gender identity

I'm a 30 year old, intelligent (if I do say so myself) woman who had read up as much as I can on gender identity. What is it if not these things, as I have no idea? I have no gender identity. I have heard, "it's an inner sense of being male or female", which really makes little sense. What do they mean here? Being male or female is a fact. Someone is male or female because of their biology, aside from a few intersex people - and being intersex is not the same as being transgender. It's a physical thing, like having a heart or a liver or a respiratory system.

A person may feel that you align with attributes that society has deemed to be feminine, or masculine. But those are stereotypes and claiming that they are inherently part of being male or female is sexist.

So, we spend significant time and effort trying to teach our children that boys and girls can like what they want irrespective of their sex, i.e. of course you can play football DD, of course you can be a mechanic/astronaut/firefighter when you grow up etc. Only for it to now be changed to "of course you can do x/y/z, but you do realise that this means that you're trans".

What will the outcome of this be? Children consciously conforming to their gender stereotype for fear of being informed that if they're a girl that doesn't like dolls/ballet etc. they aren't, in actual fact, a girl.

Utterly.Fucking.Ridiculous.

Ragamuffin As at as I am concerned you are doing your child a disservice if you are not grounding them in the reality of their biological sex, which is male. You are not helping him to understand that playing with dolls and dressing in dresses etc is ok for a boy to do. You are separating him from himself and pandering to gender stereotypes.

If the video was shown to my child without my consent or without consulting me and allowing me to watch the video beforehand, I would be absolutely livid. I teach my children to be tolerant and kind, I don't agree with a school telling me that my child needs to know certain information (not on the curriculum) before they are ready for it. I decide that.

Ragamuffin
Your child, who you tell us has male anatomy, has told you they are a girl and is 'living as a girl'.

How does that differ from living as a boy?
What characteristics, traits, behaviour does your child manifest that you feel are definitive evidence of femaleness?

I don't understand why you associate wanting to wear dresses with being a girl.
I don't understand why an adult hearing a child saying "I am a girl" cannot respond with "and what do you think a girl is?" and then gently correcting any answer that is a learned stereotype.
"No, girls aren't prettier"
"No, not only girls get to wear dresses"
"No, a girl is not someone who likes dolls"
The answer to every statement about what girls are is going to be wrong.

Unless that answer is "girls have this type of body"

Gah DD has never said she must be a girl because she likes dresses/dolls/drawing pretty pictures. She just says she is one. We're a pretty gender neutral family and her siblings are both boys so she hasn't really been influenced by anyone or anything at home.

We have talked about how it is possible to live as a girl, even if you're born a boy (because I believe it is, even if others don't), but she is aware that she was born a boy. She often says things like 'when I was a boy, before I was me'. Her identity as a girl is very strong but it doesn't seem to be because she thinks she can't play with dolls or wear dresses if she isn't one. She grew up seeing her older brother (who is very much a 'boy' boy) with long hair and wearing dresses when he felt like it, so she was fully aware that boys could do those things too.

Barracker if you read my posts I have clearly said it is nothing to do with wearing dresses. DD lives as a girl (as in, we refer to her as one) because that's how she feels. It's nothing to do with clothing or toys, as I have stated already.

But what is living as a girl?

Boney the only way i think it will change back to sanity is when peolle, as another poster mentioned, start challenging these things and threatening to sue for sex discrimination or even just challenging schools when they pul stunts like this.

im making a start on Monday. am going to find out if anything like this is to be taught to my children so i can withdraw them from those lessons. im slightly concerned though that this singles them out in some way, maybe i should arm them with some facts instead and just correct them if they come out with any rubbish. i want to make a stand somehow though.

ProfessorFlead is clearly a journalist repeatedly asking the OP to publicly name the school involved at the beginning of the thread.

Perhaps I should say 'known as a girl' instead of 'living as', does that clear up some of the confusion?

DD is definitely aware that she could do exactly the same things as a boy or a girl. She still says she's a girl.

How is it possible to live as a girl if you are a boy Ragamuffin? And why would you want to encourage that lie as a real possibility for your child?

Why would you say things that confuse your child? Who will always be male. Unless he was born with an ambivalent biological profile, which I am assuming is not the case.

We all have male and female energy- the yin and the yang and freely express both as children- we are genderless. Why not just leave out telling your child lies?

I never read such tripe in my life!! Totally unbelievable! You must have made this up?!

Except, I absolutely think it's true. The world has gone mad

So Ragamuffin what does your child do now, living as a girl, that they didnt do before?

How did your child handle it when you told them they arent a girl? I pointed to DS's willy and said "dont be daft son, youre a boy, see that? Boy" and being a typical 4 yo he forgot about it and carried on pretending his Barbie was the evil overlord of the Toybox

Ragamuffin what you are doing is giving your child the message that its ok to reject/deny his maleness, which is part of him, when you say that it is possible for a boy to live as a girl.

Transgender people are a real thing joy - there are people who don't match up on the inside to how their outside looks, essentially. Do you know for sure that my DD isn't one of these people? Because I don't. We have no way of knowing. And I see nothing wrong with allowing my small child to feel comfortable and secure in the knowledge that she will always have my support to be whoever and whatever she (or he, if it comes to that) wants to be.

I also find your deliberate misuse of pronouns to be quite offensive. I have repeatedly referred to my DD as such, your use of 'he' is deliberately rude and goady.

Ragamuffin, I don't mean to be rude in any way, but you seem to be saying that you don't tell your child that he is a girl, while simultaneously calling him your dd and using female pronouns? You must be aware that he will pick up on this and it will reinforce his (wrong) belief that he is a girl?

Ragamuffin but why do you refer to your child as a girl? You know that they are male. This is you endorsing that 'girl' is a feeling. There is no way to feel like a girl. Your child is too young to articulate clearly but surely you as an adult can find words to validate all their feelings without agreeing that they are girl-feelings?

There is no way to feel like you have a vulva and ovaries if you are born with testicles and a penis. That's all there is to being a girl.

There are 3.5 billion women and girls in the world, and 3.5 billion different ways that we each feel. We have the same body type. But we have different feelings, different identities, individual personalities.

When your child says they feel like a girl they are telling you that they are associating the word 'girl' with certain feelings. That association is wrong, and should be broken for your child's sake. They can have any feelings they wish, but none of them have any relevance to being a girl.

X post re the pronouns that wasn't deliberate but your child is male 🤷‍♀️

Gah I don't remember the conversation word for word but I remember DD saying she didn't want her willy because it wasn't meant to be there. She has asked why she looks like a boy (in terms of genitals) when she's actually a girl. This is the sort of stuff that I hope the clinic can help with because I actually haven't got a fucking clue what I'm doing, I'm basically making it up as I go along.

Again, I don't mean to be rude, but why didn't you tell him that wasn't true? What if he'd said he was a dog or something?

My four year old (son) meets six of those eight criteria, that is fucking disgusting - that not being a stereotype would make child healthcare "professionals" think he has a disorder that is in no way quantifiable or based in reality.

He goes to school in pigtails most days, because he wants to. Because I've raised him to believe that there are no such thing as boys things and girls things. I've had so many well-meaning parents suggest that he is transgender
If he did go into school one day having decided he was a girl, there would be no change, so I don't buy the "the school had to tell the kids something to explain it" angle.

And should he get to rename himself as a four year old, he would probably go with something like elsa or rapunzel, not a sensible girls name. Which suggests to me that the parents definitely had more input than they are letting on.

It must be really difficult for you though