Should I buy my daughter a therian mask and tail?

[pombearmum]

Hi there.

my daughter who is nearly 11 has recently declared that she is a therian. She believes she is half human half cat in fact she’s even got a name for her cat self. Luna. She is so desperate to wear a mask and tail. I really don’t mind but she recently did and was horribly ridiculed by some teenagers. Who shouted at her in the park. She said she didn’t care because you shouldn’t pick on peoples beliefs.

she’s asked me for a new mask and tail for her birthday. I don’t know if I’m being a bad parent buying it for her or a bad parent trying to steer her away from it. Am I opening her up to being massively bullied? She can be whoever she wants to be in front of me and in my opinion there’s far worse things she could do or be then wearing a mask. But the outside world isn’t as supportive.

is anyone else’s child also like mine and how do you deal with the whole not being sure what’s right or wrong thing? Advice would be great please. Sometimes I just don’t know what’s best.

100% agree

@AliceMcK can you name this fictitious school? Or even just the area it is in so we can google it and read about it? As I am sure there will be articles on how inclusive it is

She’s 10 for goodness sake OP…. Where on earth is your daughter getting these ideas from…. I’d be really worried and talking to her school.

Allowing a primary school aged kid to have a phone, an iPad, a Nintendo switch and a play station isn’t the great parenting you think it is @TimeDoesntStandStill. Mine weren’t allowed those things until they were much older. Staring at screens is really bad for young kids.

And what do you think woke means? Doesn’t it mean treating people kindly, fairly and with respect? Why are you teaching your kid that that’s a bad thing?

I'm not a fan of the nanny state, but I can understand why there are moves to legally reduce internet access for children. Pretending to be a cat when you are 3-4 is normal, healthy, imaginary play, but where does a 10 year old legitimately learn about being a therian? And think it's a real thing to go out wearing a mask and tail believing you are half cat? Answer, nowhere, it's something they have come across on the internet, or their friends have, but same difference. If parents can't / won't control it, I can see why governments feel the need to step in and do so.

But, in answer to your question @pombearmum , no, do not buy her a mask and tail and put an end to this nonsense now before her mental health is really affected. I'm all for kids being themselves and becoming independent thinkers and following their own, quirky path, but this is not a harmless game of innocent dress up, it's a mentally damaging path of perversion that she is possiblt heading down. Yes, she might absolutely grow out of it, as other posters have seen, but she may also not. It's not a risk I would take.

I think we're talking at cross purposes here. Thinking you can 'be' something you are not is what I'm talking about - it's socially engineered 'fashion' or social contagion. That has absolutely nothing to do with autism.

No that's not what 'woke' means. It's performance, 'virtue' signalling, adopting the latest thing that 'authority' says is 'kind' - quite often stuff that is actually hugely divisive and destructive. And the 'Be Kind!' people are often anything but kind.

Your daughter sounds just like mine and your response to it seems the same as mine too.

My daughter started making her own stuff and it turns out she has a natural talent for costume making. Like a real talent that I can't ignore.

She now progressing into the LARP world which makes me feel a bit better.

Parenting is so hard.

This is an interesting read
https://www.sacpa.org.uk/2023/06/22/how-schools-are-allowing-kids-to-identify-as-cats-horses-and-dinosaurs/

Autism's a spectrum. Can people please stop the generalisations about autism? As an autistic child, I was well aware, even hyper aware, about dangers.

I’d be really careful here as you don’t want to make this a hill to die on. Part of the therian thing is being persecuted by those that ‘don’t understand’ the identity. By making this a thing you will be playing right into that lovely teenage feeling of being tragically misunderstood, making it even more appealing! My daughter went through this phase, i let her dress up and just replied non committedly to any talk of spirit animals. She got bored and it’s over now. You also need to think about what kind of relationship you want with your child- do you want her to share her vulnerable feelings and emerging identity as she becomes a teenager- or hide it from you?

1 I’m not telling you where I live
2 I have never looked at the schools website but I doubt they advertise this shit, no pun intended.
3 I told you I thought it was a rumour until speaking to an actual parent of the school, but again I’m still hearing it through the grapevine.

It has nothing to do with my critical thinking, more to do with the fact I’m not blind or dumb enough to think this shit can’t possibly happen, if the last few years of the world going crazy, as well as growing up in a town where I watched authorities and “educated adults” blame children for being raped by grooming gangs has taught me anything, is that it dosnt matter how bat shit crazy something is there are idiots out there who will allow this stuff to happen just to not rock the boat.

No,no,no,no
have you got the message?
NO

@AliceMcK
The litter tray thing as a well-known urban myth. If you listen to the things fell apart podcast about it, it all started from primary schools who had to find some way of having toilet arrangements if they were in a lockdown because of a gun shooting incident.
This turned into vicious Chinese whispers about the kids using litter where is actually it was a rather sad tragic response to gun crime in the United States.
your post is a really lame one propagating absolute nonsense

Here you are

https://podcasts.musixmatch.com/podcast/things-fell-apart-01fzdp9w90y6sjfc6rsyxmqrba/episode/s2-ep-5-things-werent-going-back-to-normal-01hkpngbzbfptc3mhettwhzn9x

Absolutely not! She’s 11. She can have a rich imaginative life but it is quite harmful to condone the idea that she is not a human female child.

Absolutely hard NO. This needs therapy not a new tail.

100% do not indulge this crap. She is not half cat, nobody is!

I have a cat called Luna second name Tic

Absolutely not. This sort of nonsense needs knocking on the head.

If there was any truth in this, the media would have got hold of it

"The litter boxes in schools hoax was an urban legend spread in 2021 and 2022 that schools were installing litter boxes in bathrooms to be used by students who "identify as cats" or with the furry or otherkin subculture. The belief in and spread of the hoax has been described as "furry panic". Wiki

Good for you, it’s great that you were hyper aware of danger signs. But you’ve completely missed the point.

This is a potentially dangerous thing to be involved in. And it attracts a disproportionate number of neurodiverse girls. If these girls were able to identify the risks that an adult could identify, they wouldn’t be getting involved with them, would they? And not just because of the link with neuro diversity, but also because they are children, who are not a group known for sound and well thought out decision making, or for their abilities to recognise skilled groomers when they come along.

I understand that it’s frustrating for a group of individuals on a spectrum to be bundled together and assessed as being the same as everyone else on that spectrum. I fully understand that you’re individuals. But I’m not talking about individuals. I’m talking about the very specific group of girls (and boys too, I’m sure) who are very clearly not hyper aware of danger, who are not fully aware of the sexual element of such groups due to their age, and who are most definitely at risk from the predators involved in these groups.

I think it’s a group of adult fetishists who have been emboldened by the concept of ‘kink shaming’ and men wandering about on dog leads at Pride events billed as family friendly, to come out of the shadows, some of whom are grooming children and young teens into thinking it’s all completely innocent and just a bit of fun.

It’s absolutely nothing to do with low intelligence because these are children. Children who are being groomed.

This is clearly a wind up.....!

It is hard - and particularly so when you look around for help and grown adults are sneering that children like ours are "thick" or a "luna...tic" or "mental" or a "wack job" or "need to be horribly ridiculed".

And yet on a thread a while ago on the same topic, where a parent of a ND child referenced the sneery children as "netball girls" ye gods did the netball girls' mothers fall to pieces over it. Can you imagine how those mums would cope with their children being castigated in the same terms as people refer to ours. "Netball girls" is a positive compliment compared to the things our kids are called.

Supporting my child through this feels a lot like my experience of being bullied at school. And just like being bullied at school, the bullies will say it's our fault - and our children's fault - because we're weirdoes and we deserve it.

I wanted to be Luke Skywalker.

I bloody well knew that I wasn't though.

Edit to add: i stand by my earlier comment that if you don't teach your child about critical thinking and about what is material reality and what is just make believe, you're setting them up for a lot of trouble.

Yes. I used the term wack job to underline that it is not a normal part of growing up to identify as something you're patently not, and the sooner society stops entertaining this bollocks, the better for all of our children.

It was not a comment about serious mental illness. Please don't misquote me. It was referring to people who have been encouraged to have silly, unexaminedl beliefs that are likely to leave them open to ridicule if not actually harm them.

And yes I do judge people who encourage their children in this kind of nonsense.