Increase in transgender children.

[mumtoaninja]

Don't shoot me if this is in the wrong section...I'm fairly new and still trying to navigate my way around!
Anyway, I watched an item on the news today about an increase in the number of transgender children being referred by gps.
My very first thought was is this generational? These days, parents are much more relaxed about what their darling offspring play with. Boys are happily playing with dolls and other 'pink' stuff and girls are playing more rough and tumble 'boys' games than they did maybe 50 years ago. Don't get me wrong, I've never encouraged my children (girl & boy) to play with gender specific toys, however they have both steered towards such toys. DS is mad on action figures/cars/gross stuff whereas my DD loves anything pink and sparkly. Each has had ample opportunity to play with the others toys, also at nursery and play dates but they choose not to. I do know several parents who push dolls and such on boys because 'why shouldn't their boy have a baby doll' etc.
Genuine question - is our new found open-mindedness causing children to grow up feeling confused about their gender?

Floundeing so many assumptions in your post. Transactivists are appropriating opposition to gay conversion therapies just like they appropriate racism, intersex, other gay/lesbian issues and, of course, misogyny.

Transition is actually preferred to homosexuality among some Christian conservative groups, including Mormons.

I do know about the ghastly "pray away the gay" stuff, Floundering, and would be opposed to the same for anything, including dysphoria.

But what a significant number of transactivists are saying is that any kind of counselling is effectively Conversion Therapy - and Paris knows this very well, and her article is one of many which seem intended to entrench this view. It is both willfully dishonest and very dangerous. In this new approach to being trans, just saying you are trans is enough to make you trans, and any attempt to explore this is oppressive and transphobic. I cannot support this, and I cannot imagine you would, either.

hobNong, off the top of my head, I've found these blogs by gender-critical trans women below really interesting and useful. I don't necessarily agree with everything they say (and they don't necessarily agree with each other), but the few I've directly interacted with have been really open and willing to explore ideas in good faith, which believe me is a breath of fresh air.

(NB: a few of them are tumblr blogs, and I find tumblr quite difficult to navigate conversations in.)

snowflakeespecial.tumblr.com/

www.morningstaronline.co.uk/a-cb92-The-conflict-between-feminism-and-the-transgender-movement#.VSrpm5OPb6o

queenthingy.tumblr.com/post/96373170535/being-a-gender-critical-trans-woman-what-it

ommadusk.tumblr.com/

aoifeschatology.com/about/

retransition.org/2015/04/conversion-therapy-fundamental-confusion/#sthash.8T7chgVp.dpbs

Thank you for posting those ArcheryAnnie.

My daughter began transitioning (m/f) last year at the age of 30. She grew up playing with boys toys, had a large group of friends, went off to uni, was one of the lads. At the time of her decision last year she had been with her girlfriend for nine years. Her announcement was a huge shock, to us her parents, her girlfriend, her friends. I get asked "were there any signs" well no. I knew she wasn't a terribly confident person, but I'm not so I just thought she took after me. There were times in her teens when she would be moody and shut herself away and I couldn't get her to open up however hard I tried. Remembering her older brother at that age, I mistakenly thought it was just teenage angst.

Now, I know from her that it was much more, she has felt her whole life that she didn't "fit in" and has desperately been concealing her true feelings. Apparently when she was 5 or 6 she told my ex-husband that she wanted to be a girl when she grew up. By the time she was 15 she knew she identified as female. It took another agonizing 15 years before she could find the courage to tell anyone.

Today, exactly one year after her announcement, I am happy to tell you that my daughter is happy, confident and beautiful. She began hormone therapy last year and is on a waiting list for gender reassignment surgery. She has gone back to college to study psychology and is excelling. She wants to help other transgender children in the future. She has remained good friends with her ex-girlfriend and all of her friends have stood by her. I have a daughter and she is confident, happy and healthy.

I don't think that being the parent of a transgender person makes me an expert, but I really cannot believe that it's about what toys you give children, or a "psychological" condition.

Let's just celebrate the fact that we live in a more accepting age now when people who have struggled perhaps a whole lifetime can emerge as the people the feel they were truly meant to be and live happy lives, without being judged or questioned. After all, we all deserve happiness don't we?

umm... i would just like to say that it doesnt matter if a kid is transgender, chooses to play differently to their peers etc we r
all human, and as fAr as we know, we only live once so cant u all stop being pathetic over gender labels and you kids (may they be a girl boy or somewhere inbetween) live their lives?? You go round sticking your head into other people buisness, act like you know their kids and their situation, and tbh its just messed up. Of course people know if they r born in the wrong body, and you cant really talk because your obviously not transgender. life is going to be hard on these kids as they grow and go through puberty, the least you can do is be supportive 👍🏻

This gender identity ideology is getting into law. There is a petition to stop it.

www.citizengo.org/en-gb/pc/41304-say-not-dangerous-gender-identity-bill?m=5&tcid=33078820

See also www.transgendertrend.com/gender-identity-rights-of-the-child/

My just gone 17yr old daughter has come out as trans
Only about a year
Also Aspergers
Scary place to be in for both parent+child
And yes I've cried, stressed out so much about it but not to my now son
It is a very slow process because they have to be perfectly sure that the child really wants this
Counselling sessions and so forth

You might get more support and more traffic in Feminism Chat, Dysongirl. Are you aware of the bloggers in your position? There's 4th Wave Now a community of parents whose kids are caught up in the gender cult. There's Gender Critical Dad whose daughter is going through the same as yours. There's Youth Trans Critical Professionals. All these may prove useful. Gender Critical Dad says it was only feminist analysis that made sense of it all to him and I'm proud to say that a regular poster with a trans child says the support she's had on the Feminist board has been invaluable.

The effects of testosterone on female bodies appears to be far more damaging than the effects of female hormones on men. Some changes may be irreversible. As you no doubt know Aspergers is far more common among trans individuals than the general population. Have you shown your DD any of the detransition videos put up by young women. She may identify with what they say.

I haven't got time to read the whole thread, but had a quick skim.

I think it's lovely that for those children who biologically have got the 'wrong' body, there is now support out there for them, and their families. I do recall as a child (teenager) being told about a baby who had just been born to friends of my parents, and they're weren't sure if he were male or female (confusion over genitals etc) and it was up to the parents to 'choose'

I would imagine in those types of situations, help and support is obviously needed and yes, it's obvious that mistakes can be made.

However. In the main, I do think there is too much 'focus' on this now. My DD dresses in pink because she wants to. She plays with dolls because she wants to. DS has gravitated towards the likes of Star Wars and Spiderman. Neither of which has ever been shown in this house. I have never pushed any type of toy or any colour of clothing. But my two have naturally gravitated towards the 'norm' . I might add, we don't actually buy clothes or toys in the shops (all from charity shops) so they haven't been exposed to that 'all girls stuff is pink etc'

Why is that wrong?

In much the same way as teenagers are highly sexualised young now (because they are overexposed) I think there is a danger (small one) that by introducing gender confusion as an 'option' , some of these teens will decide that must be what their 'problem' is (when in fact their problem is just being a teenager in a difficult world)

I do worry that we sometimes make things 'trendy' and that some vulnerable people could be affected. I think back to my teenage days (early 90's) and some of the kids who obviously had issues - I guarantee now that at least half of those would now be making out they're transgender, when in fact they were just going through a difficult teenage phase.

I would hesitate to support a child of mine too early on with anything other than emotional support. Tricky one though. It's a bit like how lesbianism was 'trendy ' for a while - lots and lots of my 20 something female friends at the time went out and experimented. And all freely admitted that they weren't a lesbian but it was the cool thing to do right now. If they hadn't really have known about lesbians (so not in media a lot etc) i doubt any of them would have looked up from their male pin ups. I also remember some real lesbians I met in a gay club telling me how pissed off they were with 'fake' lesbians, but hey, mores the merrier lol. Almost undermines people who are actually like that?

Shut down the internet. That would really show whether things are 'real' or implemented into our heads without us knowing!

Puberty blockers comes with LOTS of medical issues. I am surprised the NHS is prescribing them to any child.

Does anyone have any experience of using the Tavistock Clinic in London to address their child's transgender self-diagnosis? I have suddenly been propelled into this world by my 15 year old who has decided, out of the blue, that she wants to become a boy. The whole thing screams social media contagion, and so far the GP, CAMHS psychiatrist and family psychologist have gone along with diagnosis, they say it is all 'part of a journey'. I am dumbfounded. And when I have raised with them the fact that there are stories of girls regretting their decision, they simply respond with 'oh that only happens in the very rarest of cases'. So, now we have a Tavistock Clinic referral and I need to know if they also follow the trans ideology and fail to see there could be a myriad of other issues going on here. Has anyone been through the process of this clinic? My fear is they will ask leading questions, to which my daughter will know the answers, and they will simply affirm her self-diagnosis with no consideration of parental concerns. I've read a lot of stories of detransitioning girls, but these are mostly US based, and I have not heard any stories of the Tavistock experience.

I think they choose to play as either a boy or girl and the parents just let them do as they want and as they get older they realize they enjoy living as the opposite. The reason behind my comment is my brother at age 5 became very curious about how it was to wear my dresses and my mom let him wear them. As he got older that all he wanted to wear. And today he lives as a female even tho he is still a guy.