AIBU to not force DD5 to use other child's preferred pronouns?

[Craziesareoutinfullforce]

So today I picked up DD5 from school and her teacher told me that my DD had asked a little boy in the playground why he was wearing a dress. He said it's because he is a girl, and my DD, confused, disputed this and said "but you are a boy", which has of course upset him and now my DD is in trouble. Apparently he went to the teacher and she pulled my DD aside and said what she said was unkind and she needs to respect how other people describe themselves.

My DD has ASD and has only recently become verbal, school are well aware of this and she has an EHCP outlining her communication difficulties, with her mental age being approx 3 years old (in terms of where she is with development). My argument was that she has additional needs and has zero concept of transgenderism so she was not to know, and was also in no way unkind as she was asking a genuine question and not trying to be nasty. I imagine any 5 year old would be confused by this? I think if you asked a NT 5yo to use preferred pronouns they likely would, but still don't feel anybody should be forced into doing this or face punishment.

I did also say to the teacher that this is not something that is encouraged at home and we have never spoken about it. She told me that they are an inclusive school and everybody is to be accepted, and that from now on DD must use his preferred pronouns and call this boy 'she/her', she had said this to my DD at the time and she got upset because "that's not right" (my DDs words). I told her that I will not be enforcing this and will contact the LA regarding the matter should they pursue it in future, given that they are point blank disregarding DD's ND and EHCP, essentially.

Aibu here? I expect to get hate for this, and I'm really not trying to encourage any phobia regarding trans people, it is just not something I accept or feel comfortable with or encourage. I would never attack someone for being this way etc., but just feel nobody should be forced into calling a boy a girl and vice versa when they are clearly not. It feels really unfair and frankly bizarre that my 5 year old with ND is being penalised for calling a boy a boy. I don't think I need to take this any further but unsure what to do if anything happens regarding this in future? I did mention above I would contact LA but would they take the same stance as the school? I have emailed the headteacher about it but he has not yet replied. Please help, feeling stuck and idk if I'm in the wrong or not.

The desperate peer-bonding of the unhappy and the mentally ill, becoming, eventually, a social contagion that was fanned by social media and fuelled by misery.

This is absolutely wicked of your daughter's school. Elsewhere on here (what used to be called Feminism & Women's Rights) there is a thread about a 'This Isn't Working' podcast with Tanya de Grunwald and Dr P, who is a clinical psychologist. I recommed a listen.

As Dr. P says, it's a very basic part of our human nature to recognise sex, that newborn babies prefer to look at female faces, that this has been our normal for hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of years. It is impossible to dampen down this ability. Older people in fear of their jobs will often try their hardest to do so, at great cost to themselves, but your DD is only 5, not even a very grown up 5 (nor should she be) and will simply speak the truth. The school is all shades of wrong in telling her to lie.

This makes me livid. Look after your daughter's best interests, whatever it takes.

Jesus, I thought the Supreme Court ruling had put all this nonsense to bed.

I'd bet money that they are letting him use the girls toilets.

The school are out of order by treating your DD like that.

If clothing is not gendered, why does the boy wear a dress when he wants to be a girl?

I would say you are teaching them to be disrespectful if you tell them they can ignore what other people wish to be called. It is possible to agree to call John Joanna and at the same time disagree with their decision.

This is the latest government safeguarding guidance - issued last month - post Cass, the Supreme Court judgment and the new EHRC guidance.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6aba40e0fceb6fb3a650127d/Keeping_children_safe_in_education_2026.pdf

These debates always seem to reveal such black and white thinking from people who should be adults.

My common sense take:

DD should not be punished for not knowing the new pronouns, she's a young child, and she shouldn't be told she's being unkind as there was nothing deliberate about it. It's ridiculous for anyone to expect any child to always get this right and to have no compassion when they make a mistake or don't understand.

That said, you now have the opportunity to explain to DD that not everyone will look how you might expect a girl or boy looks in life (as has always been the case) and that if someone asks you to refer to them as he, she or they, that you should try to do so, just as you would learn someone's name. Your child might not always understand it and might be frustrated if it doesn't fit within what they have learned as a boy or girl.

You of course tell DD that she will slip up and that she will never be punished by you for making an innocent mistake.

I think we can live in a grey world where people can tell us what they'd like to be referred as and we do our best. Compassion towards their identity and compassion for mistakes.

The world has become so polarising and nobody wants to be slightly uncomfortable.

It's not really a case of what you do or don't think is right. It's just showing respect and not being deliberately cruel. I read on here people who encourage their kids to deliberately use the wrong pronouns because they can't possibly have any flexibility.

Within my job I work with all walks of life and I get documents telling me someone is she/her with a very feminine chosen name, and they turn up with bad makeup, a full beard and a deep voice. It is absolutely confusing but I'm not there to make a judgement, I just go with it, regardless of whether it seems odd to me. Just as I do when people give their kids ridiculous names. In my head I might think what a stupid name, but out my mouth I say "thank you Triangle, have a nice day".

@ApronSprings That's not common sense, its gaslighting.

You don't know what gaslighting means. Please stop using words you don't understand, it's deeply offensive to people who have experienced being gaslit, for example DV survivors.

If you want to sound smart then start with using apostrophes.

Sorry your daughter has had this experience OP.
Ask for their policies around gender questioning children.
Ask for copies of their teaching materials on the subject, see if it is compliant. Ask if they are signed up to any schemes such as Mermaids or Stonewall.
That boy should not be in the girls toilets.
When they start changing separately he must not change with the girls.
You are gender critical, that is a belief woriads. It's the school's job to manage different beliefs, as they have to with different religions and high school do with politicalbeliefs. It could be argued your daughter is also gender critical. If a school can accept a child is trans they should also accept a child can be gender critical.
This would be a despicable enough situation for any child, the fact your child is ND and does not have the capacity to lie makes it all the worse. But the crux of it is that school should not ask her to lie and punish her for not doing so.

Good luck, I hope you are not kept waiting for responses.

The child was born male and so that is what he is.
He is also very young. Your daughter is also young. Both children are around unsafe adults. I would kick up a huge stink over multiple aspects of this and would involve and officially complain to multiple agencies and media over this.

Telling a kid that they need to pretend boys are girls, and that society will expect them uphold this pretence, sounds like an example of making them doubt reality and their own senses to me. But if my use of gaslighting was arguably a bit wide of the mark, yours of 'common sense' was wider.

Those of you referring to it as a "lie", do you always say to people who are religious that there is no God and that it is a lie? Or do you just let them be and believe what they like?

I've got too much going on in my own life to decide I'm going to ignore someone's choice.

Toilets and changing facilities is an entirely different conversation.

If a child told me they were a dog I would say ok you are a dog woof. I wouldn't then feed them tripe and let them poo in the streets, but I'd happily call them their dog name if it made them happy.

Yes you would play along in the short term until the pretend game was over. You wouldn't accommodate it long term or expect others to.

What world do you live in that 5 year olds don't engage in playing pretend?

Maybe they're playing pretend, it's not a hill I'm going to die on, they're a child.

Maybe they are born in the wrong body - lots of peer reviewed scientific studies have shown examples of this, where the brain of someone who is trans shows up on scans as being female or male in line with what they're saying to be true for them. What I mean by this is someone with a penis who says they are a woman, have sometimes been shown to have a female brain on scans. This is possible because sex in the brain and in their privates develops at different times during gestation. So to say it's always a lie is simply not true.

What's more, it makes very little difference to me whether they really are or are just pretending, if it's simply using a different name and pronoun.

I would advise you to take the time to read scientific journals on the subject before speaking so strongly on the subject.

To me, a more equivalent comparison is if someone tried to tell me a table was a chair. Or that the earth is flat. I would say that’s a lie.

If you’ve bothered to read the thread, you’ll know exactly how it hurts the OP’s daughter. Your comment is obtuse.

That is unscientific codswallop. If a brain is in a male body then it’s a male brain.

People are free to believe what they like. However there is no compulsion for anyone else to pretend they also believe when they don’t.

Exactly the same approach should be applied here.

If people want to believe in some sort of inner gender identity, then of course that is up to them.

However what we base society around are objective, verifiable, scientific facts. Sex is binary and immutable.

That's because science supports that the world is a globe.

Science also supports that some people really are trans. If you didn't know that then you should definitely take the time to do a little bit of research into it.

Lots of studies absolutely do not show this.
(What studies in this area tend to show is male & female brains having a lot of overlap, there being no definitive male or female brain structure, and the trans brains being shifted slightly towards the opposite sex averages but overall being more consistent with their own sex). But clearly you have swallowed the activists' pseudoscience hook, line and sinker

This is nonsense. The study you are referencing doesn’t even actually conclude that trans identifying people’s brains are closer to the opposite sex. It’s been misrepresented.

It’s also a pretty poor piece of research, but that’s by the by.

As there isn’t even a working definition of what gender actually is, no it is not accurate to say that science supports that some people are ‘really trans’.

It's not codswallop in the slightest.

You’d tell a child that a boy is really a girl? Blimey. You’ve not really thought that through have you!