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AIBU?

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Original poster

Transing a 4 year old

818 replies

ShadowChancellor · 24/02/2017 09:10

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.

OP posts:
BarrackerBarma · 24/02/2017 13:24

People are not meant to have matching insides and outsides.

I have a female outside body (and female reproductive organs). As do 3.5 billion other females.

What on earth would be the "matching" inside you are referring to?

Question this stuff. Question it!

RagamuffinAndFidget · 24/02/2017 13:24

To be honest, if she'd said she was a dog and had clear reasons for feeling that way I'd probably have gone with that too.

RagamuffinAndFidget · 24/02/2017 13:26

Barracker what I mean by that is that she is aware that her genitals are male but she doesn't want them. She says she is a girl and that doesn't 'match' with how she looks on the outside.

nottinghamgal · 24/02/2017 13:27

My sister wanted to be a witch at that age. Insisted we called her by her new witch name and that was that.

Guess what she didn't grow up to be a witch !

GahBuggerit · 24/02/2017 13:29

Really?

southall · 24/02/2017 13:29

"I have heard, "it's an inner sense of being male or female", which really makes little sense."

A more objective way would be to look at brain structure and chemistry.
You could be born with particular sex organs but your brain more like someone of the opposite sex:

Just one example:
"Females often have a larger hippocampus, our human memory center. Females also often have a higher density of neural connections into the hippocampus. As a result, girls and women tend to input or absorb more sensorial and emotive information than males do."

Scientists have discovered approximately 100 gender differences in the brain, and the importance of these differences cannot be overstated. Understanding gender differences from a neurological perspective not only opens the door to greater appreciation of the different genders, it also calls into question how we parent, educate, and support our children from a young age. "

www.psychologytoday.com/blog/hope-relationships/201402/brain-differences-between-genders

TinklyLittleLaugh · 24/02/2017 13:31

Rag do you not worry that going to a clinic may put you on some kind of conveyor belt? Might it not be best to carry on as you are giving your child lots of opportunities to change his mind?

ItsAllGoingToBeFine · 24/02/2017 13:32

You could be born with particular sex organs but your brain more like someone of the opposite sex

That quote has an awful lot of "often" in it...

If you took say 10 brains out of the bodies and lined them up, scientists would not be able to identify which brains came from males, and which from females...

ageingrunner · 24/02/2017 13:33

You would have put her on a lead and fed dog food? The scary thing is that your ds may be starting down a path to blockers/hormones. Pretending to be a dog doesn't have the same lifelong medical patient implications. Hopefully it won't get that far, but as you're taking him to the Tavistock, who knows?

ItsAllGoingToBeFine · 24/02/2017 13:33

She says she is a girl and that doesn't 'match' with how she looks on the outside

And you are deliberately reinforcing that, by renaming your child etc you are making it very hard for them to tell you that they have changed their mind.

ninenicknames · 24/02/2017 13:34

To be honest, if she'd said she was a dog and had clear reasons for feeling that way I'd probably have gone with that too

Hmm
RagamuffinAndFidget · 24/02/2017 13:34

Tinkly I've heard that the Tavistock is quite good when it comes to young kids - no talk of hormone therapy or anything like that, just gentle assessments and support for families if needed.

RagamuffinAndFidget · 24/02/2017 13:36

She knows she can change her mind. And she chose to change her name. We've told her she can change back if ever she feels like it and we reinforce this regularly.

Xenophile · 24/02/2017 13:36

First off... Brain Sex is no more a thing than Liver Sex is.

Not understanding the plasticity of the brain is no excuse for this.

ageingrunner · 24/02/2017 13:36

Support with what though? Just introduce him to reality. I actually can't believe that you're entirely serious, after the dog comment. What would happen if you just told him that he is a boy? He might be upset/disappointed for a while, but then presumably he'd accept it if he knows his parents support him.

RagamuffinAndFidget · 24/02/2017 13:38

Like I said before, I don't claim to have all the answers or to know that I'm doing exactly the right things all the time, but I also don't believe that a bunch of strangers on a forum know my child or what is better for her than I do either. CAMHS confirmed that DD isn't showing any signs of mental distress so I assume I haven't damaged her too much!

GahBuggerit · 24/02/2017 13:39

Ragamuffin I do think you should say that when you go for one of your referrals, that you would have gone along with it if your chikd insisted they were a dog. Being totally truthful will ensure you are given the right support, not the 'right on' support.

parenting is hard but im not sure allowing our very young kids to believe something they are not is doing them any favours even though it may feel supportive and nurturing, especially if we start calling them dd, she, Fido etc.

I really do hope you do mention the dog thing as i do think that may change the type of support you get to the right kind.

BarrackerBarma · 24/02/2017 13:40

Ragamuffin I do think you are brave to come on here and this may seem overwhelming.
Posters here are encouraging you to question, think through, challenge. Does it make sense? Does anything you have been told to accept fly in the face of what you actually believe about what it means to be a boy or a girl? Are you having to push back thoughts which contradict what you've been told is the right thing to do?

If what you have been taught to do is right, then you will be able to challenge every aspect of what you've been told and nothing will shake your stance. And when it's our children's lives at stake, we don't just accept what we are told we should do, especially if there is any chance it might be wrong.

Challenge everything. If you are right then it will all continue to stack up. A theory which demands unquestioning acceptance and isn't open to being challenged is one which probably risks falling apart when examined closely.

You can't afford to get this wrong.

ItsAllGoingToBeFine · 24/02/2017 13:40

She knows she can change her mind. And she chose to change her name. We've told her she can change back if ever she feels like it and we reinforce this regularly.

80% of children desist after puberty. How easy is it going to be found your child to desist when you have encouraged them to see themselves as the opposite sex, when they have gone through primary school and the start of secondary as the opposite sex?

Social transition may seem harmless but it's really really not. Your child wants most of all to please you and take guidance from you. You are setting yourself and your child up for a very hard road, when the likelihood is that it is nothing more than a phase.

SpringerS · 24/02/2017 13:41

I'd be quite pissed off by this because I work really hard to prevent 4yo DS from thinking that there are girl things and boy things. Something that is really, really fucking hard in a world where there is great profit to be made in gendered items. As a result his favourite things are stereotypically male like cars and superheroes but he also loves Equestria Girls, Frozen, Shimmer and Shine, etc. I dread the day that he starts feeling he shouldn't enjoy many of the stories, games and tv shows that he genuinely loves because society tells him they aren't for him. I expect that at some point he'll start hearing it in the school yard from his classmates. If he heard it from the teachers/admin I'd be livid.

Interestingly, I have noticed in the last couple of months that despite my DS loving a wide variety of genres, he is starting to become more and more drawn to the male characters. Recently we watched a few She-ra episodes and he was so very excited anytime Bow (the only male Rebellion leader) did something heroic. He enjoyed all the characters and will give a glowing description of She-ra's skills and powers but he was clearly most interested in Bow. I think that's fairly typical, when I was a child I loved superheroes more than anything and while, for example, I'd happily watch the Batman tv show, I was overjoyed when Batgirl showed up and kicked ass. I grew up having 'boy interests' but identifying with the female characters in the genre because they were the characters I could most see myself in. And as I grew older this became more pronounced, at 3 or 4 I just really loved superheroes. By 8-9 I found I wasn't as interested in male only teams. As a pre-teen and teen I just really wanted to read comics with female characters as a driving force in the story.

So if I had a child who beyond the pre-school years was consistently more drawn to characters of the opposite gender, I'd be keeping an open mind about whether they might possibly consider gender re-assignment as they grow older. But I certainly wouldn't push them toward that idea.

SailAwayWithMeHoney · 24/02/2017 13:42

Okay please don't shoot me how is claiming to be the wrong sex not regarded as mental distress Confused

southall · 24/02/2017 13:42

That quote has an awful lot of "often" in it...

Thats the whole point, its a not binary.

But men/female more often have trait than another.

There are at least 100 brain differences between men and women.

Not all men have 100 of each trait that defines being male, but in general most men do have majority of them.

If you have female brain traits but were born with a penis, you will identify as a female in a male body and vice versa.

ItsAllGoingToBeFine · 24/02/2017 13:43

If you have female brain traits but were born with a penis, you will identify as a female in a male body and vice versa

Bollocks.

BarrackerBarma · 24/02/2017 13:45

Southall, you need to read up a bit more on brain sex differences and cognitive traits and how to work out which is innate and which is as a result of social conditioning.

You're wrong. Sorry for the bluntness, but well, you're wrong.

Bardolino · 24/02/2017 13:46

So what are female brain traits?