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

Lord if I’d tried this crap with my mum she’d have never stopped laughing. Tell your DD that everyone is allowed to have their own hobbies and no one should be pressured to join in. If her friend wants to do whatever then that is on her. This is an important lesson in independent thinking and the perils of peer pressure, useful to have before secondary school. However, if DD wants to join in, tell her she has to sleep in the garden and she won’t be able to eat chocolate or sweets. Real wolves don’t sleep in beds or watch TV. I expect it will last for less than 24 hours.

If DD is being pressured, inform the school that the friend is pressuring other kids to do things they aren’t comfortable with. Hopefully they can talk to the child and make it clear that they are not to browbeat their peers into doing anything they don’t want to do. This applies to anything, not just this furry nonsense.

Tell your child there is no such thing as a therian/furry and her friend will soon be out of this odd phase. Do not give it any air time as it’s bloody ridiculous. That child is being failed by her parents.

oh come on this is made up drama - this is a kid playing and being playful and adults (including the OP_ ) making a nonsense out of it.

School holiday has started then.

I would be worried about what she has seen on the internet and social media. Kids are growing up faster and exposed to so much more today before they even get to double digits. My 10yr old self has nothing in common with today's kids and I'm only 37yrs. It would be the specific language she is using that would raise red flags to me. Your not wrong being worried OP! Don't be a cool mum friend, be a parent!

yes I swear every school had a horse girl!!

Anyone who thinks this is just imaginative play are very naive. This comes from social media, and yet again a child having access to the internet which their parents are clueless about

Children playing games and children believing they are feline aren’t the same thing.

We pretended we were all sorts of things when playing.

We didn’t assume those lifestyles and insist on eating from cat bowls or meowed at teachers .

It’s not even a fine line of difference.

I encourage imaginative play. But dressing up is entirely different. Assuming a role for a game is entirely different.

all behaviour is communication so I’d want to be exploring why the child isn’t happy with who they are and want to be a cat and hide behind a mask.

I spent a lot of breaks at Primary School being an otter, whilst my friends were being chimpanzees. I'd read Ring of Bright Water slightly too early, and Daktari (safari in Kenya type programme) was on TV. The main differences were that it was only during breaks, and we absolutely knew that we were only playing. I also think that we were a couple of years younger than the child mentioned here. However, some neurodiverse children are emotionally a bit behind their peers, so that might be a factor??

Well put.

The kindest way of putting it to your child not to join would be to explain that she will become the subject of ridicule or worse, especially when moving to secondary school.

Better still be more blunt.

When I was in year 11 my best friend started going out with a lad who thought he was a wolf. Twilight had just come out at the cinema so we think that inspired him.

He used to howl at the moon and try and transform into a wolf doing these weird barking grunting sounds.

Fuck knows what he’s doing with his life these days but I’m pretty sure he doesn’t howl at the moon anymore 😂

What's your objection to people discussing it though? Why so defensive and cynical? It IS a thing. We all know it's a thing. It's becoming a more and more of problem because of impressionable kids and tiktok. You'd prefer it if we just ignored it, pretend it wasn't happening, or what?

How does she even know that word?

Quite. And if you look into it properly, it’s horrific filth.

I would discourage my child from playing with anyone who pressured them to conform in a way that made them feel uncomfortable, whether that was a wolf’s tail or the ridiculously overpriced and unnecessary skincare some children that age are into. I’m not sure which one of those options I would prefer, to be honest.

I would teach my child ways of saying no, and standing their ground. If they continued to feel pressured by the other child I would ask the teacher to monitor the friendship and keep them apart and tell my child to stay away from them where possible.

I'm a teacher. Had a parent contact me (not a child at my school) to complain that children at school had made fun of their daughter and friends for being therian. At the weekend. These are twelve year olds with the tail and the ears etc.
I thought.... WTF!!!!!
This is down to parents not having a clue what their children are accessing online.

I would tell your daughter that this girl is weird and everyone else will be thinking she is weird too, and she should be kind to her in the same way she should be kind to everyone, but find other children who don't pretend to be animals to be friends with.

I only know of one furry, a girl from my village. She has always been a bit odd but I think is ultimately harmless. I've seen her a few times in her furry costume and I didn't get sexual vibes from her. My DD thought it was just a person in a costume.

I do know that she runs quite a successful side business sewing furry costumes.

I think it’s something that some kids her age go through a phase of. My DD at 11 had a friend who was a furry/therian, DD was a therian for a bit, bought a tail, even wore a tail and a mask for World Book Day, but grew out of it in a couple of months. I doubt it will last.

We were hippo girls. But only at break time.

Because this stuff is targeted at autistic / ND tweens and social contagion is a thing especially among ND girls who can be very suggestible.

My DD does not have access to any social media or to youtube. She learned the term therian off another ND tween who persuaded her that she was a therian, and a few weeks later a whole bunch of them were prancing round on all fours claiming to be therians.

The best way I can describe it is - if you like me were a teenager in the 90s you will remember all the scandal about teenage magazines doing "position of the week" and "how to give blow jobs"? My parents didn't let me have those magazines, nor did most of the parents of my friends, but because Sarah Smith*'s mum bought her More and Just17 and Smash Hits every week, and she brought them into school even though she wasn't meant to, we ALL either read them or were told in gleeful graphic detail about them. It's like that.

*names changed to protect the guilty

Why? Are other forms of imaginary games inappropriate too?

A Therian is different to a Furry. A Therian identifies as the animal, whereas a Furry is just someone who likes the whole art/dressing up/persona side of things. It absolutely is not a sexual thing, but as in all communities, there are people who have made it sexual.

One of my DCs and a couple of his friends love Furry art. They draw characters and make the costumes. Much the same as someone creating a Dungeons and Dragons character. It's just a character. Some of the stuff they design is awesome - they're all really talented. Now and again they'll go to a Comicon and wear their costumes. That's it - it's just a hobby. They don't believe they are animals, behave like animals, or anything as inane as that. I will also add that to the person who suggested children who do this are mentally challenged, two of the friend group have been accepted at Cambridge and one to Oxford, so they can't be that thick.

Exactly! I had not heard of it until I read this article!

A lot of people are saying this isn't a problem. It is. It may seem harmless enough, but it just serves as a signal for how much your DD can be influenced by what she's seen online. If she can think she's a wolf, other people could make her think/do other things.

You need a serious discussion with her, tell her the behaviour has to stop, and take away whatever she's seen this crap on.

I can understand young people feeling like they're a different gender, but fuck me, this? No.