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.

I would have gone ballistic! Just cos one set of parents decides to do this (and let there be no mistake this was the parents) all the rest of the parents have to cope with the fall out!

On what basis has X decided he is now a girl? My 4 year old would never have such absolute views on his gender without some heavy parental intervention! His favorite colour is pink and he love football and power rangers/play fighting. maybe I should suggest to him hes now gender fluid???

Not the only identical twins this has happened to either, Tinkly. It also knocks on the head the "I got washed in the wrong hormones in utero" theory too.

It's almost like people have individual personalities that get shaped by the environment around them.

Ragamuffin. Just a suggestion , based on my experience with one of my sons.
Do you think he might be identifying as a girl because he wants to be like his mother? (I'm assuming thats you). One of my sons used to literally worship the ground I walked on and that lead him to want to be as much like me as possible.It was nothing to do with feeling like a girl, he just wanted to be like the person he loved the most, who was the most beautiful and perfect person in the world in his eyes.

Interesting video but it can't be that version that was shown to 4 year olds. Presumably there is a version with a voice over?

at that video, no wonder the kids in the school were confused

Maybe the teachers read it out for them?

Ffs. Amazing how many parents of "trans" kids manage to show up just in time to stop little Jimmy from chopping his willy off 🙄

Yes, it is. So many lucky misses, and people who are careless with scissors.

And the Fail headline is "Inspiring story of one family and their transgender child Lily"

If only more stories of children who resolved their issues with gender were shared in mainstream media, but I don't suppose " boy thought he was a girl but was then gently guided to accept his body and personality" makes a dramatic enough headline.

This happened in my children's elementary/middle school a couple of years ago (we are in the US). The child was 5 (in pre-K).

The school reached out to the parents in the child's grade and also to the 8th grade parents (8th graders are paired up with pre-K kids). The information was simply that X was now preferring to be a girl and would be called Y from now on. There was nothing about gendered roles and likes and dislikes etc. Nobody really batted an eyelid to be honest - the kids just called him/her whatever he/she wanted and the 8th graders were fine with it. The kid is not a particularly "girly" girl.

I agree with previous posters about the difficulty around social transition but I think trans is becoming so prevalent that it might become easier to move back in the future.

I also find it hard to judge parents who are dealing with something like this - I have changed my mind on many things based on actually having that experience with my own children.

A young child expressing that he is a different gender is baffling but personally I think the trans thing in teenagers is a new language and way for them to express emotions etc. My daughter's school has a lot of trans fluid/neutral etc kids. I doubt any of them are doing any physical or medical interventions. It is part of them trying to figure out who the hell they are and how they live in the world.

All you parents of 'transgender' children- how would you respond if your child was equally convinced that they needed to remove a limb because it really didn't belong to them and was causing them distress?

I would treat my child no differently to how I do now. Accept how my child wishes to present themselves if it alleviates distress in the short term and desperately get them the mental health help they need while not making any changes that cannot be reversed.

Thanks empress. Things are still rough but there are more and more glimmers of hope now thankfully. This time next year I'm hoping things will be as they should be.

No way should that video have been shown to 4 year olds in reception. How the hell would they explain self harming and suicide attempts to 4 year olds? Is that a suitable topic for 4 & 5 year olds? Never mind that the "almost half" stat is bunkum. The language used in the video is way too complex for reception age children.

And the video is awash with the pink/princess/dolls stuff. Apparently soft toys are girls toys?!

I have to say watching that video raises a lot of questions and it's far from something that should be shown to small children. Not because there is anything wrong with a child learning about tran-gender people but because of the stereotypes in reenforces. My even at it's shortest, my son's hair is longer than that child's was at the end of the video. (Though it's curly so doesn't look overly girly.) My son also loves princesses and has an Elsa costume. He will happily tell you that Princess Twilight Sparkle is his favourite My Little Pony. He goes by a common abbreviation of his name that is also a common abbreviation of a girl's name, though more usual for boys; think Gerry and Geri.

But he's still a boy and very happy to be a boy because he's never been given reason to think that having a penis means that many of the things he likes aren't for him. Whenever he has overheard some comment about girls/boys not liking/doing certain things due to their gender I've explained to him that boys and girls can like all the same things and certainly as children, do all the same things. Tbh, up until he was nearly 3 he didn't really have any clear idea about boys and girls at all. If a 2 year old identifies as a gender, it's because they have been given very, very clear ideas about gender and gender roles.

I've talked to the mums in the playground and have also shown the video to my kids now we're home. Its the exact video that was shown to all of the children.

I've talked to the mums in the playground and have also shown the video to my kids now we're home. Its the exact video that was shown to all of the children.

noeffing

^Do you think he might be identifying as a girl because he wants to be like his mother?"

That is an excellent point. When my dds were younger they wanted to mary me rather than their daddy. They are both heterosexual adults . We did not make them believe that they were gay just because they wanted to marry mummy (not a problem if they were in fact gay).

These are children ffs. They go through phases, their brains are differently wired, they are developing making sense of the world. Help them ,don't act like a child yourself by letting your child lead. Guide them responsibly and responsively.

"Apparently soft toys are girls toys?!"

That bit alone is going to be massively problematic in four year olds. How many of even the "boy-est" boys will still have a cuddly toy in their bed :(

Apparently soft toys are girls toys?!

Oh i take it back about what i said about ds1

Maybe he is a girl...he still has loads of soft toys, he is 18

gwynneth as posted earlier, I used the word 'transing' because as far as I am concerned this is something being done to the child.

The more I think about this issue, the more I have come to believe that what we have here is a colossal knowledge failure in wider culture about gender and gender performance

Werkz I'm with you on that; as an historian, the one thing I'm sure of is that our ways of thinking about "subjectivity" - what it is to be human - are historically & culturally specific.

Wasn't it you who suggested sometime ago in here that you suspect some of this is driven by bog pharma? That with Western women being increasingly reluctant to spend their whole lifetime taking synthetic hormones (contraception, then menopause), big pharma is looking to other life-long markets?

I would be furious that:

a) they are encouraging gender stereotypes ie "girls'" and "boys'" toys
b) they clearly have no idea what being transgender is

Why this is happening is simple in my mind. There is money in it. Lots of people are making lots of money reassigning genders. And of course that means lots of tax si it is going to be encouraged.

This is insane, what the fuck are the parents playing at?

I'm the only girl out of 4 siblings. I loved playing football with my brothers, playing with their toy cars etc. I was actually stronger than they were (probably had something to do with the tag team wrestling fights and being on the bottom of the pile ons ) that during one game of Bulldogs charge in school I was picked for the rugby team - being the only girl to have ever been picked.

I remember crying to my mum that I hated being a girl and wished I had been born a boy.

The reason?

Because I was in agony with heavy periods that were so bad that I couldn't stand up properly. I developed big boobs at a young age and that resulted in boys at my school thinking it was an invitation to grab them (painfully) when I was passing.

Although I loved rugby, football and rolling around in the mud and climbing trees with my brothers, I loved to play with my barbies and dress up in my mums clothes/shoes with my female cousins.
I was also in the girls netball team and the mixed sex athletics team.

At no point was I ever considered to be the wrong gender. I am most definitely a woman.

Thank fuck my own parents were sane enough to let me grow up doing what I enjoyed doing without making some damaging decision on my behalf and making me live as the opposite gender because I wasn't 'girly' enough.

My daughter went through a phase when she was about 5 years old that lasted for a few months where she wanted to be a puppy. She would crawl around on her hands and knees, would only bark at us and wanted to drink from a bowl. she loved puppies so she wanted to be one.

A 4 year old has no idea about what they're supposed to be, they're just a child FFS.

I'm catching on this and I have to reply to ragamuffin about this

My 5.5yo DD was born my DS. Aged 3 she asked to wear dresses. Aged 4 she said she actually was a girl and has been living as one ever since. She has changed her name and refers to herself as a girl. We have not encouraged this beyond telling her that everyone has a right to be happy and express themselves as they wish, so long as they're not hurting anyone else in the process.

If that was really true, then how do you explain your involvement with CAHMS and the Tavistock referral?
There is absolutely nothing wrong with how you are behaving does not = intervention from a Gender Identity Clinic.
That says you think there's a problem with them liking girls stuff and girls names etc as if it genuinely didn't bother you, you'd not be going down the route of transitioning them, surely?