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

A step too far to buy an 8 year old a dressing up item? Really?

There’s a bunch of girls who do this at my dd’s senior school (all girls grammar). It’s fucking weird.

Surely she has watched a fair bit of YouTube , and not just about animal crafts, if you're all of the understanding that being a therian is about understanding your soul, and see it as a spiritual thing. You say she's 8- when did you start watching these videos? My DD is 7 and is not allowed YouTube so I can't understand how you've got to a point where your child identifies as, well, anything!

@Backtotheback a dressing up item fine, but why then build it up and research Therian.,Did you want to be the cool parents?

I'd actually take them to a festival for a bit and show them all the weird fat men who dress up in leather ears and weird gloves who stand around sweating all day and faux panting.
I doubt they'd want to be one after seeing the real thing.

Yes. It’s not their child! It’s inappropriate. And, as others have pointed out, a minority of people don’t see it as just dressing up. Sadly, this is the world we live in.

But @User8935245 , and I say this as a mother of a same-sex attracted autistic teen, whose social circle includes all manner of 'identifies as' peers: the furry fandom does overlap not only with transgender identification, but also with some seriously off stuff like transageism, adult babies and sissies. It's no secret that there is both grooming and sexualisation occurring in those communities. (This sits cheek-by-jowl with dodgy anime and pro-ana content too.)

What OP's classmate is doing is spreading a social contagion through her peer group; OP is using the word 'recruiting' and I think she should trust her gut. The girl has been recruited and now she's recruiting.

I've a desperate, anxious, depressed, wheelchair-bound, chronically ill with autoimmune disease, incontinent, autistic DNephew, formerly DNiece, whose body is wrecked and riddled with pain following years on cross-sex hormones and surgical procedures, who, along with a group of girls in her class fell down a trans rabbithole in Year 8. It was social contagion on a severe scale, and the group did encourage recruit peers to socially transition, and although most of that cohort 'dropped out', a few, like my lovely DN got stuck and is now too worried about potential backlash from their online community to think about detransitioning.

When kids align with any kind of 'identity' online, I'm so worried for them.

Do you have a receipt for the tail please? We'd like to exchange it for something DD would like. Thanks 😉

The age of 10? It’s very weird indeed. How many kids did this when you were at school?

People can have fetishes about literally anything. Should we be banning our children from wearing sandals because some people have a foot fetish? It's an animal tail and these are children.

I saw one walking along in a massively touristy area of London yesterday. He was absolutely trying to see who was checking him out, but he was being utterly ignored, the perfect antidote to this nonsense.

He was the same as you describe.

If you think she's being influenced by this child at school, it's fine to talk to the teacher about this and ask them to be kept apart more.

This

10 year olds today are different to the 10 year olds in my day - we wouldn’t have suffered fools like this. I couldn’t take a 10 year old that believed they were an animal seriously - and I’d take a dim view of a parent who entertains it. If you buy my child a tail, you won’t be having a fun conversation with me. Either talk to the parents or encourage your child to stay well away from this nonsense.

What is your job? How come the young people were allowed to dress like this?
I support vulnerable families. Part if the role is spending time with the children.
We've only had a handful of children behaving like this. They have come to us straight from home or school with their collars tails and cat ears on.

We do not encourage it.

I’m as liberal as they come but posts like this make me despair for humanity. Why don’t parents do something as draconian and cruel as to tell their child that they’re not a bloody wolf and to go and put their uniform on?

She’s not a child though is she; she’s a furry apparently. If she’s in, she needs to be all in. Invite her for a play date, throw sticks for her and just feed her kitty kibble.

Totally deranged and part of a very weird adult fetish if you look in to it. It’s not cute.

Can't find anything, although this is Mumsnet and you can call a spade a spade. I did find an article where someone was convicted of raping a young boy and his boyfriend was convicted of possession of CSA images.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx28yj34zgpo

Who has told her she is a therian? That's adult language attributed to common childhood behaviour in my opinion

Ok, it's extra tricky with the challenges in their background.

@Backtotheback and did you look up sandal fetishes at the same time you looked up animal ones?

Are you for real? Like you seriously sound like YOU are the one with mental health problems. It is very very concerning the amount of anger you have towards a 10 year old child. Please get help.

Bet thats a sentence you never thought you’d type!!

My DC choose their friends' presents or at least have some say in it. Unless it's problematic I got along with it.

Where is the line though? On age and on what elements are appropriate/not appropriate. My child was a cat for world book day. One from a book. She had a tail, a tutu and a bow tie. She's six.

My other daughter was a chicken from the book chicken Nuggett. She's 4. At what point does it stop being imaginative play?