DD friend is a furry/therian. Trying to encourage (strongly) my DD to be the same.

[Sockmate123]

What would you do in this situation? Child in class is 'recruiting' other children (mainly very quiet children) to be furries. She says she is a therian and presents as a wolf. School has banned her wearing wolf items to school but she still does on party days/world book day/non uniform etc
Parents seem to do littke about it
Quite older parents. Children are 10. My DD has so far not engaged but likes the child involved but is being pressured. It was her birthday recently and friend bought her a tail 🙄

I think this is completely weird. Child digs holes at lunch time, barks at people etc cute/acceptable up until age 5 or 6 but not girls that are on the cusp of puberty!

AIBU?
Yes- she's only a kid, will spon grow out of it.
No - its weird, school and parents should do more to address it

If more than one class per year I would ask for my dc to be moved, or look at moving school.

Christ this is so weird.Theres pretend play and then there’s this. Utterly bizarre.

O have absolutely no time.e for this nonsense.
I have had several children who i work with telling me they are felines. They soon change their tune when I tell them that cats aren't allowed to do the activities we have planned.
One child was absadamant she was feline and meowed evertime me or other staff spoke to her. I told her she would have e to stay behind and have some dreamiest while th other children went to an ice cream parlour. Again she cha get her mind.
It's always been girls that have been felines or furies or whatever they call the.selves

Tell your daughter if her friend wants to be daft that's on her but you will not put up with such daftness.

I’d definitely be returning the tail to the parents and asking them what on earth they thought they were doing.

Pretending to be an animal as a child is one thing. It’s a little odd, but ultimately it’s a sign of a rich imagination and harming nobody but their own social life. A girl I was at primary school with was adamant that she was a dog and would bark at anyone who tried to talk to her. She wasn’t the first on the list for party invites, poor love.

However, children claiming to be furries is something completely different. Google ‘Furries at Pride’ and see what comes up. See if you think that’s a group of people you’d want guiding your child.

This is not normal behaviour , they shouldn't know what a therian is and this child at 10 will soon be at high school, I would speak to the school re recruiting quiet children and return this tail to the parents as well

One of my mates said he was a wolf in high school 25 years ago, and would sniff behind your ear and stuff (not a werewolf, an actual wolf). Kept trying to recruit to his ‘pack’. I played along a bit…fancied myself something out of Buffy, thought it was cool. Swear I thought I was a witch too.

Spoiler alert - we all grew out of it, we have good jobs, friends, relationships, mortgages, families of our own. I’d just leave them to it. It’s hardly going to have a massive impact on her future. And it’s fun to make believe, even at that age!

Absolutely bonkers and school should be nipping it in the bud. Imaginative play is one thing but disruptive stuff and kids expecting to be treated differently is not on.

Is this real? A 10 yr old would only know the word ‘therian’ if they’d accessed stuff online or if their indulgent parents encouraged their behaviour and named it for them. Both are bad.

She’d be laughed at at many schools, and, that’s probably best, along with avoiding her. She clearly wants attention.

It’s true though. If your child wants to pretend they are a wolf with a tail, and you want to allow this nonsense; whatever.

But do not try to encourage others to join in your mental illness. Leave people alone.

The parents clearly bought the tail; give this family an immediate wide berth. They are going to be the kind of indulgent parents who have no boundaries; the exact people you want to avoid your kids being around in their teen years.

Leave them alone to their madness and ignore.

Unpopular opinion but it's much safer to allow a child on the cusp of puberty to be therian as opposed to trans. Therian and furry fandom have a lot of overlap with neurodivergence. ND children experience higher levels of stress of due to constant masking and navigating social rules so they are more likely to identify as something else as a coping mechanism and form of escape. Both therianism and trans are popular pipelines to go down. Instead of attempting to look for a boyfriend or girlfriend and facing inevitable rejection and social humiliation, it's much easier to believe that you identify as non-binary, aroace (aromantic asexual) or an animal which takes away a huge chunk of societal gender-normative expectations.

However out of all those options, being an animal is the easiest to return to normal. The majority of kids dabble in therianism, furrydom or otherkin purely as a phase (no different to emo, goth, punk or scene) then grow out of it and go on to lead pretty normal lives. It's less risky and damaging than the gender ideologies and personal identity that gets sacrificed in the process of being trans or non binary. Therianism has very little to do with bestiality or deviancy. ND individuals tend to connect stronger to animals because they feel it's a pure bond that's not complicated by human social rules. Identifying as an animal is a mental form of escape and coping mechanism. The major difference is that being therian doesn't immediately affect sexuality. Most individuals are still attracted to the opposite sex and identify as their own sex. Being therian is essentially a way of deferring social and gender responsibilities until they feel mature enough to cope.

I would tell my child to avoid any interaction and say that friendship should never involve pressure or be uncomfortable in any way so this is clearly not a friend worth having. Depending on the maturity of your child I would explain that this kid is mentally not well and is not normal. That's just me though I'm quite hard line against weird shit like this.

It's bloody weird and no child should be pressuring another into anything. Buying "a tail" along with that is really overstepping boundaries. I would be discouraging the friendship as much as possible.

I agree with this. There was a child in my daughter’s class who decided they were non binary aged about 10. The girls obviously had some discussions around this and as well as them all being totally militant about supporting them, a few others decided they were too. My daughter said at the time she thought she might be. I told her she was a bit young to pigeonhole herself with labels and she didn’t have to decide anything like that right now but she could talk to me about any kinds of feelings she might have about it. I pointed out that statistically it was unlikely there was a cluster of children all being that way. I was respectful of her thoughts and didn’t push her one way or the other because it was more important to me that she felt she could talk to me about those kinds of subjects.

Fast forward 5 years, the initial child is still presenting as non binary, they do have a range of MH issues which may or may not be related. They are still very militant about the whole thing, being influenced online and by older kids. One other has now decided to be a boy, this was a child who was always seeking attention for one thing or another, it’s no surprise this was the outcome. I suspect it isn’t a life long change.

My daughter is now highly sceptical about the kids who are “choosing this” and the reasons why and doesn’t spend any time with those kids any more. Her views on the subject generally are balanced. The thing she says often is, she remembers how I first dealt with it and that really helped her. She’s glad I didn’t just jump on her and tell her she was ridiculous. We can talk about any subject at all and when she has an issue she comes to me first. That’s the most important thing to me in this whole situation.

DD was telling me the other day about some kids in her school who are ‘furries’. Didn’t realise it was such a common thing.
Funnily enough these are the same kids that have been allowed TikTok and other social media platforms from a young age where they obviously get these weird ideas from..

My child would be removed from the school.

Honestly there's so much drama from these responses. We're talking about a ten year old girl playing. When I was 10 I was still very much a child. I lived in my own head and in the stories that I read, they were more real than the real world to me. But I was still a perfectly normal child who grew up into a normal teenager and then a normal adult.

Your DD has been given a dress up item for her birthday, appropriate for a child. If she doesn't want to play the game then of course she shouldn't be pressured, but there's nothing weird about this game in particular.

What is worrying is that the friend knows the term "therian" - that would make me question her internet access.

Poor child has probably been left unsupervised on the intenet for hours a day, extremely damaging to a child.

We had a similar situation. I pitied the child and their obviously neglectful upbringing, but they were a lost cause and their behaviour was affecting dd (last straw was when dd told us she was trying to show her 'naked furry things' on her phone. Dd isn't allowed one, but the child was sneaking theirs into school. I purposefully cut off the friendship, notified the teachers about the porn/phone and stopped all invites/visits.

It worked, dd had a new best friend within a few weeks. The poor girls behaviour worsened and the last I heard the family had moved. I hope the government steps in to protect children when the parents can't be bothered to.

They are also usually ND. They’ve been targeted on SM to think that the reason they don’t ’fit in’ is because they are actually an animal (or trans).

I think all you can do is find a good way to explain to your child that this other child has got a bit carried away with pretend play and the attention and not to take it seriously.

I know a couple of 10 year old therians (part time 😄) - it's just kids playing?! They run around on all fours playing cat games at the park.

Difficult situation, I have a 10 year old girl too - I think if this were me I would keep talking to my DD about how it’s fine to like animals and pretend to be one at playtime but she can’t “be” an animal and she can’t pretend to be one during lessons! Also that if her friend is trying to persuade her to do things that she’s not comfortable with then she should keep saying no and tell you/a teacher if it’s getting too much

100% this.

Furries is something to be wary of for these reasons - exposure to and influence by inappropriate content online.

This is really interesting. I have an ND child who isn't allowed online yet but we have 2 cats and my child often says they wish they were a cat because life would be easier. What you've written here makes perfect sense thinking about my kid.

She is not a “furry”. She is a 10-year-old child and this is imaginative play.

It may be nonsense to you but it certainly isn’t inappropriate.

It's not just kids playing though. The terminology and movement is extremely sexualised online, and groups/ childrens online games catering to 'furries' are extremely predatory.

I won't go into details, but circumstances have shown me much of the darker side of the intenet, in particular the dangers to children. I'm fairly convinced most parents wouldn't let their children on roblox if what goes on in those furry themed games was widely known.

If a bunch of children were calling themselves gimps and running around in rubber suits alarm bells would ring. But because most normal people don't understand the 'furry' community, it's laughed off.