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

FFS she’s not ‘playing make believe’!! 🤦‍♀️

This is completely inappropriate, but as other posters have already said, it’s much more about the parents than the child.

This is all so odd and I’ll be flamed for this but it makes me think that the likes of Vladimir Putin, JD Vance have a point when they say liberalism and identity politics have gone too far for some of our young people. How can it possibly benefit someone to indulge a fantasy about being some animal and build their social life around it ? At a crucial formative point of their life? Especially when they never had that fantasy in the first place but are going along with it because of peer pressure. For goodness sake nip this is the bud even if it means some kind of diplomatic backlash with the girls parent, your kids development is more important.

I've been to festivals where loads of kids have had those animal tails - possibly a bit younger than 10, but they aren't automatically fetish material. Stuff like this:

https://telltails.co.uk/collections/kids-tails?srsltid=AfmBOooY6_Rr5GlzoMRO8-C6MhURaREjSdq03Z9ZPC6zb2GAEstSRvbt

I wonder if the girl has PDA as it's common that children pretend they're an animal or another character to avoid demands or on their human selves.

When they call themselves therians, for a start.

When they call themselves a “furry” or “therian” thereby aligning with an online community and start saying that’s their “identity” and how they will be referred to from now on.

Look this child is not simply involved in wholesome imaginative play and people are naive to think otherwise. I remember my teenager once telling me to never ever google furries as it was absolute fillth. I'd be doing everything possible to distance my child from this girl and her so inappropiate tail buying parents. Yes, that may isolate the other girl but she is trying to drag others into her twisted view of reality and your primary responsibility is to your daughter.

My kid learned the term 'therian' from her friends, I'm guessing one of them has seen it on Youtube.
Little kids making animal masks and wearing tails isn't a fetish!

Kids grow up way too fast these days.

I still played with dolls at 10. My best friend pretended to be a horse.

Adults seem to want to jump on everything being a trans issue.

It’s not sexual, it’s a kid with imagination.

I would never teach my kid to ostracize another child for this.

When you agree with Putin and Vance about things you might want to give your head a shake.

This is a child.

It’s gross that some of you are being so cruel about a child.

This..... Why are we indulging this nonsense ?

Kids say furries as in pretending to be animals not for sexual intercourse.

Your interpretation of a child playing is frankly perverse.

It feels like those against Trans people for targeting children and sexualizing them do the exact
same thing.

You are not as different as you think.

Indeed there is a difference and in my experience these furries / kids are engaging in imaginative play, and don’t believe they are an animal - that would be a delusional disorder - let’s not get over excited / diagnose imaginative play !!
better than being in a screen, no ??

It is ver very worrying the level of naivety on this thread. 10 year old pretending to be a cat is not that worrying and certainly shouldn’t be called filth…BUT there is an incredibly dark and disturbing side to the furry community so if your child is flirting with this please please be very vigilant as to where they are getting it from and do not let them on the internet to find our more. OP you are already aware and concerned for you dd please talk to her about not being forced to partake in things she doesn’t want to.

Little kids making animal masks and wearing tails isn't a fetish!
Maybe not.
However when they only meow at you when you talk to them and refuse to go to school because they are not allowed to wear their ears ,collar and tails you have a problem.
There is also the mocking and bullying from the other kids and it can get quite nasty.
The parents of children that I have worked with that do this have allowed their children to do it. However they ( the parents) are also involved with social services for their own vulnerabilities.
To be fair, I haven't dealt with a child like this since last September.

I was undiagnosed ND myself and have a daughter who is most certainly also ND. She also loves cat stuff although she's still young enough where it doesn't really matter. I'm happy to support it as I feel it gives her an outlet from the pressures of masking and being able to explore a new identity. I remember from my own teen years, I had a phase of dressing androgynously and having very masculine hobbies, which by today's standards could have easily tipped into the non-binary pipeline. But since there was zero terminology for that back then, I was just deemed a tomboy for a couple of years and by the time I was 18, I was basically fully back to being female. I went on to have a perfectly normal life, career and family. Looking back, it felt very much like a coping mechanism or form of rebellion during puberty.

Knowing this, I'm very wary of how to parent DD. ND children tend to drawn into "tribes" or subcultures whether you like it or not. It's like they have a deeply ingrained need to find a community or ideology to help them navigate the transition into adulthood. Based on my own experience, I really don't want her going down the gender pipeline. Also based on experience, the furry/therian subculture is very much harmless. Of course, the fringes of ANY subculture is problematic but you don't go into there expecting the worst to happen. The fringe of mainstream drinking culture produces countless sexual assaults. This doesn't mean you must ban your children from ever dressing provocatively and talking to strangers at bars or parties.

As many PP's have said, a lot of furries are simply people who dress in a costume at an event or party, enjoy the feeling of taking on a new identity and are quite lovely otherwise. The people who do end up in the deep end with very problematic behaviour or trauma are those who have multiple other factors to begin with (abuse, neglect, poor MH, terrible home environment etc). However the average furry fan or therian is usually a perfectly normal, middle class neurodivergent kid. They are not deviants or criminals like many posters here are clutching their pearls about.

Obviously it's not everyone's cup of tea but neither is anything else. I would hate my daughter hanging out with a friend who encourages her to inject excessive amounts of filler in her lips or go on weight loss injections.

You might need to learn a bit more about the 'furry community', while bearing in mind that girls commonly reach puberty around 10 yrs.

@Bumdrops they have learnt it from a screen though. This is very much internet based

This is so gross.

A 10 yo girl who has started puberty is NOT the same as a sexually active teenager or adult.

Stop sexualizing children.

Exactly, thats my concern. She is sharing a book on Therians and trying to 'recruit' others. This isn't just a game. If we meet this child outside of school 9 times out of 10 she is in her wolf suit.

It’s the furry community that is sexualising children and if parents are letting their children watch you tube videos etc on this then they need to be wary of what they are watching and who they are talking to. Do not be as naive as many posters on here seem to be

This child is doing this already 5 full years. Its not a 'phase'.

Kids engaging in imaginative play is innate,
In years gone by, kids were inspired by the books they read, Disney movies. TV characters, adverts !!
this being expressed in play
my sibling and I spent a whole summer playing at being pirates …
so these kids may be inspired by seeing something online, hearing their peers talk about it, the youth group I help out at has a few kids turning up in tail and ears, running around, quite happy,
they clearly don’t believe they are an animal
/ born into the wrong body ! And these kids quickly forget their ears / tails when they get in the way, they engage in other stuff, it’s really not that that deep as the youth would wisely tell us 😂😂

I think you are missing the point of this thread!

Id have a look at the OP’s update posts if you haven’t already.

This is on the school and the parents.

How will this child survive in the real world ? Can you imagine turning up for almost any job dressed as a cat and asking for a litter box as a reasonable adjustment ?

Are the parents in the subculture? It really just sounds to me like the ND child of ND parents doing ND things. Most likely she'll grow out of it and find some other way of being weird.

Meanwhile, if your daughter thinks she's being pressured into adopting any random identity by anyone else, she needs to explain to them that acceptance works both ways, and her friend needs to respect her identity as a human. Maybe point out that if everyone became a furry she wouldn't be special any more?