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.

Blossom - RTFT.

Op regardless of any info the school have given your child, I think that you are best dealing only with your own child rather than tackling the school. As long as your child understands things in basic terms and is not upset or confused, id leave it at that. Make sure they know to come back to you if confused/have questions.

It's a difficult issue. Some (already grown up) people who are trans knew from a very very young age and so did their parents so it's not inconceivable that this child falls into that category. On the other hand, it may be a judgement that turns out not to be the case. The best you can do is Make sure your dc is ok.

I feel like gender equality and transawareness are at odds despite the fact they're both striving towards the same goal.

Essentially, a transperson wants to be treated as someone of their identified sex. We've tried for a long time in education to send the message that we treat both boys and girls the same. The issue is, we don't treat boys and girls the same. But I do feel a bit like this (and so restrict this to the difficulties in educating young children) is still too nebulous to be teaching.

Actually no. Think about why you believe it must be a wind up. Because you don't think that anyone would declare their 4 year old to be transgender because they've always liked dresses and girls toys, or because you don't believe that a school would run with it and tell all of the kids about it without first speaking to their parents?

I wouldn't have believed either were true till it happened to us at our school.

Shadow I actually felt ill when I read the child's reports. As a child and adult psychotherapist myself I would no more try to transition a 4 year old who enjoyed 'girl's toys' as I would try to cure someone of homosexuality.

It's abuse, no more, no less. I wanted to adopt him to fight on his behalf.

Joystir in a therapeutic context that would be my route of exploration too. Why does someone feel the way they do - it's connected with their environment and culture as well as their own psychological processes.

I am much older than most Mumsnetters, so my childhood was the 40s/50s, which is probably relevant to my background. I wanted to be a boy when I was little, had my hair cut short and dressed in cords (hardly any little boys wore jeans then!). I was often mistaken for a boy.

Why did I want to be a boy? Because boys got more freedom (then), had the sort of life and experiences and playing that appealed to me: dolls, kitchen sets etc. , frilly clothes did not.

But, did I really want to be a boy or was it that I simply liked the things boys got to do? It was my preferences of course, nothing with gender dysphoria, blue brain crap. And no, I did not grow up to be lesbian either, but a perfectly straight, married, mum of two, who in my advanced years still likes sport, cars etc.

I dread to think what might have happened to me if I had been little today.

There is a tiny proportion of people who are intersex, a tiny proportion who have true gender dysphoria problems who deserve protection and help. That is not what is going on now.

This is an Orwellian nightmare. I dread to think what the upshot of this madness will be 20, 30+ years from now.

Sorry. I'm off roading. But yes, I'd be cross, given that parental consultation should ideally be sought in any development of sex and relationship curriculum. In fact, most schools seek consent re this.

whoputthecatout fantastic post

if you were a boy and liked girl things and girl clothes you were a girl

Astonishing.

I'm a kid of the 80s - I loved He-Man and Ghostbusters and Transformers just as much as My Little Pony and Barbie. And I'd scream blue murder if anyone tried to put me in a skirt. I've never considered myself remotely male but if I'd been subject to that kind of propaganda as a child I might be stuffed full of testosterone now...

Are readers of this post aware that it is now a reality that using the terms for female genitalia are regarded as transphobic: heatst.com/culture-wars/people-are-calling-the-womans-marches-transphobic-because-of-all-the-references-to-psy/
This is indeed dangerous territory ShadowChancellor . The only reason that transitioning has been mainstreamed is because it supports the patriarchy.

I was the same in the 70s whoputfhecatout. Being a boy looked more fun and I was a big fan of the A Team . I also dread to think what would have become of me if I was born 20 yrs later.
Do all those who are saying tra sing kids is fine realise that puberty blockers followed by cross sex hormones mean that the person's gametes are unable to mature, which results in sterility? So essentially the child is making a decision at the age of approx 10 yrs about whether they will be able to have biological children in the future?
And natal puberty is a big factor in whether the child continues to think they are trans or not because ~ 80% of those who are allowed natural puberty will not be trans anymore.
But apparently very few on blockers don't then go on to cross sex hormones, so either the diagnostic process is perfect, or blockers are a guaranteed route to sterility for life.
This is the kind of stuff all us moaning, hater uptight feminists are concerned about. We don't care if men wear dresses or not, we do care when it starts to encroach on women's and children's human rights.

I would think CAMH's is under a lot of pressure too, any suggestion that a child might not actually be trans and just experiencing what is a normal part of childhood for many is being shouted down as bigoted and transphobic. Look at the vitriol the trans documentary who knows best got and in typical modern fashion of silencing the subsequent petition for it not even be broadcast.

As a child I would have felt singled out by that video, I had short hair, mainly played football, was obsessed with power rangers, tmnt and only really had male friends, I didn't have a problem with my gender, I didn't think any of those things made me a boy or a girl and it would have been very upsetting to be told I was probably a boy deep down.

On another thread about children and trans issues I mentioned a social media post I saw from a young woman connected to my family who calls herself non-binary and cut her hair short a few months before.

"Not being heterosexual is self-care"

I think a lot of this from teenage girls is just about signalling to their male peers that they do not want to 'send nudes' and do the things some boys see in porn films now and want to act out. I can see a lot of young women wanting to set themselves apart from the overtly aggressive sexuality which is currently considered normal.

I have a daughter in Reception and she doesn't care much for dolls, princesses and girly things and her friends are mainly boys. I would be FURIOUS if school promoted the message that not liking girly things meant that you were a boy.

It should be illegal to trans a child. By all means, indulge their fantasy, but don't lead them down a very public and difficult-to-reverse path of making it official in all areas of life. Why would parent DO that? Attention seeking? Virtue signalling?

No doubt the child mentioned by the OP will have changed their mind in a few months.

It seems that parents and schools are too keen to label children as "different" in various ways these days. At the age of 4, they're children. They don't grasp the finer nuances of things like transgender, or gay, or how racism affects others. My DS, at that age, was rather startled when he was told by a TA that his best friend wasn't remarkably tanned, but from a different ethnic group to him. It had simply not occured to him that his friend was racially "different" to him and their other friends at all. He was simply, his best friend. He still is.

Although, as my son was also playing with stereotypically girl toys (his favourite toy at that age was the Barbie Mermaid, Nikki), wore his older sister's sparkly pink and purple tops, and would sit still for hours whilst she "did his makeup and hair", when he was 5... perhaps I should have changed his name to Grace and insisted that he was actually a girl trapped inside a boy's body! He's 12 now and quite contented as a boy (although still quite obsessed with his hair!). I suspect that the child at the centre of the OP's post will do likewise... but I worry that the parents of such young children being told that although they have the genitals of one sex, they're actually the other are simply creating a lot of misery and confusion in their own child(ren).

It is abusive.

It's also not the parents choice to make, but that of their child. Who may well spend years being bullied as a direct result of their parents deciding that they'd rather have a daughter than a son, or vice versa.

I'm all for supporting the Trans community (I had a relative who was Trans, way back when it wasn't the current trend), but children should be allowed/able to be precisely that. Children. Not puppets for their parents to make themselves the talk of the playground and be applauded for how progressive they are. Because they're not.

They're abusive.

I think a lot of this from teenage girls is just about signalling to their male peers that they do not want to 'send nudes' and do the things some boys see in porn films now and want to act out

That's interesting and I think you may be onto something. Seems that there are epidemics of girls calling themselves transgender in schools right now. Clearly, there's a lot about the young female experienxe that they feel like rejecting, and in many respects I don't blame them for feeling that way. But declaring yourself trans because it's trendy isn't the way to go about it.

joy those terms are regarded as 'transphobic' by a very small minority of transactivists/Sjw's. The majority ie 'normal' people will carry on using the correct terms and talking about periods, etc. Which came as a shock to some people, to find out there is a world outside their little bubble.
Having said that, it is a bit worrying that supposedly intelligent educated people ie teachers and social workers are actually pretending to believe this nonsense. I'm relieved my children are done with school.

I've never really thought about why I wanted to be a boy, but I guess I got the message somewhere that being girly was somehow not as fun. For example, I never wanted to join brownies as I thought they were "too girly" despite the fact I'd never been, and didn't actually know what they got up. But I must have got the idea from somewhere?

And my favourite programmes, the A team, Knight Rider, Bond films. Men, with the women there to look nice and fall in love with the hero. Not exactly a good advert for a girl who wants to be the one having the adventures!

So despite the fact my parents were fine with me choosing to have short hair, wear trousers, play with lego, Star Wars toys, etc, the message was still out there that boys were the heroes, girls were there to swoon at the heroes.

As for a 4 year old attempting to cut off their penis, my first move would be to hide the scissors.
Sometimes a bit of common sense doesn't go amiss.

Wow, my son is 4 and a half and he can't make up his mind about anything, let alone something life changing. I would question whether it's the child's best interests that are being taken into consideration. If my son wants to wear pink or play with 'girl's' toys, I couldn't care less but no way on earth would he be in a position at his age to think that he is the wrong gender. I don't even think that 4 year old's are even old enough to need these kind of lessons are they?

It's evidently the trend of the moment. Op, the school are being ridiculous.

Late to the party, but here are the DSM criteria for GID in children (and by these criteria, as a serious tom boy when I was young, I'd have been diagnosed with this, indeed I was 'misgendered' until I was 14, nobody died, including me, and I'm a happy, well adjusted (feminist) woman, and no I'm not gay either, I just HATED feminine social conditioning, and quite right too).

Can someone please tell me WTF in these criteria, are NOT sex stereotypes?? Plus a profound disgust with your own body can a) be the results of sexism and b) is often a sign of childhood sexual abuse.

302.6 Gender Identity Disorder in Children
Gender Incongruence (in children) [1]

A. A marked incongruence between one’s experienced/expressed gender and assigned gender, of at least 6 months duration, as manifested by at least 6* of the following indicators (including A1): [2, 3, 4]

1. a strong desire to be of the other gender or an insistence that he or she is the other gender [5]

1. in boys, a strong preference for cross-dressing or simulating female attire; in girls, a strong preference for wearing only typical masculine clothing and a strong resistance to the wearing of typical feminine clothing [6]

1. a strong preference for cross-gender roles in make-believe or fantasy play [7]

1. a strong preference for the toys, games, or activities typical of the other gender [8]

1. a strong preference for playmates of the other gender [9]

1. in boys, a strong rejection of typically masculine toys, games, and activities and a strong avoidance of rough-and-tumble play; in girls, a strong rejection of typically feminine toys, games, and activities [10]

1. a strong dislike of one’s sexual anatomy [11]

1. a strong desire for the primary and/or secondary sex characteristics that match one’s experienced gender [12]

And I CANNOT believe, medical professionals are touting the idea that our sex is 'assigned' at birth.

I'm so sick of this misogyny.

No doubt the child mentioned by the OP will have changed their mind in a few months.

It might be quite difficult for the child to express their change of mind if the parents are keen on transing them. Also children trust their parents so if those parents are telling the child they're in the wrong body, the child will believe them, sadly

Same here whoputthecatout except I was born in the 80's. I came from a boy heavy family with one female girly cousin and absorbed the idea that boys were better and more fun. They had more freedom, could play more sports and didn't have to wear pretty dresses.
Now I'm an adult who works in a male heavy industry and I'm perfectly happy to be a straight woman.

I can sadly believe the OP is true. Though friends, I know of a conservative religious family who prefer to have a trans child than one who doesn't fit gender stereotypes and might be, shock, horror gay...

Well according to those criteria I would have been diagnosed as trans as a child, if those guidelines had been around then.