Worried for daughter starting high school

[Sailthisshipalone]

So my 12 year old daughter who is transgender is starting high school on monday and im so worried for her.

She also has a diagnosis of autism.

She doesnt find it easy to make friends and shes left a lot of her younger friends behind in primary school.

She keeps saying she doesnt want to go and shes scared and ive been trying to be really positive for her but deep down im petrified.

She transitioned socially around 3 years ago so all the children moving up with her know she is transgender and im so worried about kids gossiping and her being potentially outed to any new friends she makes.

She is also starting to go through puberty so i know tje next few years wont be easy with that.

Im hoping maybe someone reading can relate or is going through this now also

Thanks

Surely they'll all know she is biologically male as she's be getting changed and doing PE with the boys? It will probably be easier when they know and isn't hiding anything, and children are more accepting nowadays.

Once again Mumsnet, there is more to the UK than England and in fact the OP might live somewhere else entirely. I grew up in the UK, but not England, and started secondary school age 12 in the correct year for my age.

I can't say which is better, but I have experience of teaching 3 trans kids. However, they were all FTM.

Two were open; one was stealth (transferred in from another school in S3/Y10).

The two who were open used girls' facilities all the time. [ETA That was their choice.] The one who was stealth used disabled facilities and asked to be excused from P.E.

In the end, one girl desisted at school; one desisted after leaving school.

The pupil who was stealth eventually told the boys that she was trans. (They were genuinely surprised: she was quite a big girl and wore baggy clothes.) She desisted after leaving school.

My impression was that, with the girls who were open, the other kids were more invested in their trans identity than they were.

Speaking as a teacher, it's a practical matter that has to be addressed. The OP has already answered.

In my area, the pupils are given the choice to use the toilets aligning with their sex or the accessible toilets in the school. ISTR that (in the last school where I worked) these had signs which stipulated that they were gender neutral: they were set up as private accommodation, given that they were much larger than normal cubicles (because of the need to be accessible).

Re my previous comment about facilities: I've only been aware of one complaint from a child who identified as transgender. (It's a small local authority and the pupil went to the local papers.)

Said pupil was a girl who identified as non-binary. They wanted all the toilets to be declared unisex because using the girls' toilets made them feel dysphoric, and using boys' toilets would trigger their dysphoria even more, according to them. I'm not quite sure why sharing with both boys and girls would alleviate their dysphoria. (The single sex toilets had private cubicles but sinks that were open to the corridors. Not a great design, to be honest and not one that could readily be altered into private cubicles with sinks.)

Before anyone asks how I know about the toilet design in schools where I don't work: all the new builds in my area were built by BAM and all to the same basic template. Even the carpets are the same, the classroom layouts are the same and the same bleacher set-up has been used in the assembly halls.

I believe that BAM have used the same template for new builds all over the UK. In our area, the LA decided to make the sinks open plan because they felt that it would discourage bullying and vandalism. It doesn't.

Of course it doesn’t 🙄

Responding like that makes you sound like you don't understand safeguarding.

Just saying.

Or put it another way. It could be that a parent of a female is concerned that a male is given free access to female toilets and changing rooms where their daughter might be changing and vulnerable.
There is more than 1 reason why a male might want free access to female single sex spaces as we all know.

Well, at least that answers whether it was unsupervised access to the Internet or adults that pushed this on to a 9 year old child.

This poor young child who deserved someone sensible to protect them from a damaging ideology, it should be treated as psychological and emotional abuse.

It seems that you really haven't given much thought to your child's future if your child continues on this path. You really need to read the Cass review to understand the link between autism and identifying as transgender. In particular, have you really thought about how you are going to support your child through puberty and beyond? This is very sad.

Ahhhh, "be kind" now.

I really think a child of that age is too young to make huge decisions like this. I’m very surprised a parent would allow this kind of thing to happen when a child is so young.

That said, I think kids are generally far more accepting nowadays. When I was at school, you’d have got your head flushed.

I’m afraid you aren’t going to get much support here. Male to Female trans are ‘deciding’ to transition only so they can abuse women/girls apparently.
I maybe struggle to understand some of it, and I think there are some genuine concerns about women’s safe spaces, but I also think the majority of trans people just want to be left alone to live their lives, and are not a danger to women/girls.

Hold on now,please remember the 'be kind' is a one way system...

For anyone who struggles to understand the harm this ideology does to children, there is an enormous amount of reading material available. In particular, the Cass review. Or try " Time to Think" by Hannah Barnes.

This is an autistic child, not an adult

Is your child receiving any kind of counselling? Tbh people are going to notice that your child is male, it’s pretty unavoidable when puberty starts. Do you know your schools policy on things like bullying (which I sincerely hope will not be relevant).

Have you spoken to the school already about access to the disabled facilities? You will also have to have a discussion around changing rooms for sports etc I’m going to be frank and I don’t mean to be hurtful but as the mother of a daughter I wouldn’t want a male in my Dd’s changing rooms or in her sports. She has a right to dignity and privacy and fairness in competition and I would fight tooth and nail for that. you may find that other parents feel this way too.

There are a lot of questions around autism and trans identities and I think you should look into that.

No it doesn’t, it makes the poster concerned about the rights of the actual girls in the school who are entitled to single sec facilities.

Males thinking they can go in female only spaces is abusive though. It’s eroding boundaries, it’s walking roughshod over females’ feelings, it’s so arrogant!
Abuse takes many forms, it doesn’t necessarily mean sexual abuse or physical abuse.
Where a parent is presented with their son saying he wants to be seen as a girl, that parent should be saying that’s fine, but you do know you can’t change sex and can’t use many opposite sex spaces.

…I also think the majority of trans people just want to be left alone to live their lives, and are not a danger to women/girls.

True, but how do we know which are a danger and which just want to live their lives? The dangerous ones don’t carry a placard saying ‘I’m dangerous to women and girls’

Poor kid. He’s a boy, and will grow into a man no matter what you promise him or everyone pretends.

Accessible toilets are not there to provide privacy for boys who don’t want to get changed in front of other boys.