I just can't even right now - "trans" toddler

[aidelmaidel]

NC for this because very un-PC

Acquaintance has a three-year-old girl, who has decided that she is a boy. Has picked a different name, a different birthday (?) and Mum is extremely vigilant about defending this child's New Identity in all directions. Nursery, grandparents, colleagues have all been told, and parenting support group (mostly academics) are terribly supportive whenever anyone refers to this child as "she." She's even posted links to those weird sites that sell fake penises for small children (so that they can have an authentic bulge in their nappies?) so I assume the kid is packing one of those.

This has been going on for a good few months now.

Recently the mum posted that the child regularly has epic two-hour tantrums.

I can't help but think well, you're letting the kid insist that their name, their physical makeup, and their birthday can be altered at will and every adult around them must bow down accordingly, does it really surprise you that the kid can't cope with life when other things aren't treated the same?

Venting here because this sort of thinking is verboten in real life. Is this one of those things where once you have a toddler of your own you get a totally different perspective?

For those who are insinuating the OP is lying, what is this the detail in the OP's posts that makes you go "well, that clearly cannot be true"?

Because what they're reporting does actually happen in the real world. So I can't see why the OP's account must be untrue.

Whilst I don't know if the OP is true (it does sound a bit 'friend of a friend) I can confirm that the ' packers' are a thing. 'For kids under 5'.

Prepare to be horrified.

transkids.biz/products/extra-small-silicone-packers

You misunderstand, red (I keep forgetting I NCd recently - I've been here years).

I am saying that this madness is everywhere, and the post was aimed at exwife saying Yeah, This Happened. I'm saying that the delusion of having a trans child is everywhere, so the fact that the OP is true is not hard for me to believe. Just to be clear: the articles I linked are examples of things that I believe are terrible injustices to gender non conforming children who are being badly let down (or worse) by adults around them.

I’ve re-read my post and can see how it could be read the opposite way than i intended, though!

My DD had a phase of saying she wanted to be a boy at 3. Remember one time she had a huge tantrum and cried about it.
Got to the bottom of it and it turned out to be because her favourite PJ masks character was a boy and she wanted to be the same, and because she has curly hair and thought it would be straight and not tangly if she had 'boy' hair.

Shes now 6, wants her hair to be longer than it is, loves 'girly' things and hasn't mentioned wanting to be a boy since those few months.
God knows how shed be emotionally now if I'd gone down the path of trying to pretend she was a boy rather than getting to the bottom of the issue and explaining that you don't need to be a boy to have short hair/l or pretend to be superheroes.

There needs to be focus on breaking down stereotypes, not telling children that the solution is to pretend to be the other sex if they prefer stereotypes of the other sex.

Some of the comments on this thread remind me of the disbelief I've heard from people when they're told that some trans people have not made a physical (surgical) transition and are unlikely to, or that they don't have gender dysphoria.

Usually when someone says prepare to be shocked I am deliberately not-shocked. But this shocked me:

“While most trans boys don't start packing until they are teens or older, sometimes young kids want to have a prosthetic and what is on the market is really just too big for most folks under 10 years old. So our friends who make our Silicone Packers, came up with a mini version for young and/or smaller kids. Now these may look "too" tiny to some, but we have done a lot of research and think these are pretty accurate in their overall size. That said they are a scaled down version of a larger Packer, so the proportion is not what you might see attached to an AMAB kid. “

My position is that this appears to me to be child abuse.

Ah Sorry.

Yes, there must be people who are doing this out there because we have historical examples of it. The chances are it is becoming more common. Plus people will only sell things there is a demand for.

Is the OP credible? Different question.

i agree speaking

We have words for people who concern themselves with what preschoolers genitals and crotches look like - and those words are not “concerned parent”.

I don't know if the OP is telling a true story.

I do know that there is precedent and future potential for an abusive parent to 'trans' their child in a similar sort of way to Munchausen's by Proxy, and that those responsible for safeguarding should be allowed to question a child's reasons for persistently saying that they are the opposite sex.

There needs to be focus on breaking down stereotypes, not telling children that the solution is to pretend to be the other sex if they prefer stereotypes of the other sex.

Absolutely. I’ve had one of my small DS’s tell me that he’s a girl because “I like pink and only girls like pink”
I’ve also had the same DS tell me that he wants to be a girl, and when I asked him why, it turned out that he thought that if a particular medical condition he was having wouldn’t be there if he was a girl. Of course declaring himself a girl wouldn’t solve the medical condition, but he’s too young to have thought it through and understand that his “solution” was faulty by himself.

I’ve also had the same DS tell me that he wants to be a girl, and when I asked him why, it turned out that he thought that if a particular medical condition he was having wouldn’t be there if he was a girl. Of course declaring himself a girl wouldn’t solve the medical condition, but he’s too young to have thought it through and understand that his “solution” was faulty by himself.

hope I think you have hit on something really important there about child-like 'solutions' and faulty reasoning. Children do the best they can but without guidance and correction from adults they simlply aren't able to make proper snese of what they feel and see.

How many children wrongly blame themselves for problems they see at home or even the death of a parent. Poor kids will come to the wrong conclusion if not parented well and then sadly some carry that faulty thinking through to aduthood. I don't think gender identity issues are totally different.

Muckazymes! Does she say "not now Mummy, I'm in a meeting?"

I agree with people who point out that kids pretend to be things all the time. I find it weird and scary that we live in a world where when a three-year-old says they're a T-rex adults know it's pretend, and when a three-year-old says they're a boy, we take it entirely, completely seriously.

I find it particularly scary because I have a "gender non-conforming" infant - as in, the baby wears hand-me-downs and sometimes they are not pink (shock horror). I have a "gender non-conforming" job, in that women don't usually do my job. When DD gets a bit older she is going to be in a climate that says mummy is a man because she does a man's job, and baby must be a boy because she isn't wearing pink, and I think the local regs say that if I tell her that she's a girl actually, that's some sort of flag for social services (we aren't in UK). It's all bloody mad.

I do have a bunch of trans friends, and some trans acquaintances who aren't friends, and a friend-of-a-friend who is one of those people with messed-up genetics; I'm not inherently opposed to transness. Just don't think toddlers are capable of being trans, and freaked out that encouraging trans toddlers is apparently a thing in my social circle.

seafret "Children do the best they can but without guidance and correction from adults they simlply aren't able to make proper snese of what they feel and see."

Yes! But now it's apparently a safeguarding concern if you guide and correct by telling a little girl in dungarees that she's still a little girl. This is mad.

Not going to bother trying to convince people that I'm talking about something true. No way to prove it, limited energy to invest in arguing about it. Seems to me if I wanted to make up an anti-trans troll story I could do better than this. This is a thing that has been happening for a while with someone I know professionally and my professional circles are very Woke so everyone is terribly Pro Trans Toddler, at least on the surface.

(I do not know if the child is packing. The parent has posted excited posts about pediatric packers, but I did not ask if she has bought one for her kid. What, after all, could I say if she said yes? Other than "I apologise for my brief and inappropriate interest in the contents of your child's pants.")

My 'Muckazymes' employee is currently singing along to 'Let It Go' while wearing her favourite Elsa costume so I'm guessing he must have given her the afternoon off. I will ask for some of her pay cheque to contribute to household expenses, good suggestion upthread. I've a feeling it'll be paid in stones from the garden though.

My favourite part of her 'grown-up' alter ego is when we're out and about and I say something like 'oh there's that place we went for pizza' and she then tells this entire story about her kids and how she took them there once but one of them had a tantrum and they had to leave and they got NO DESSERT and she hasn't taken them back there since. It's hilarious.

I would put the trans delusion on the same level with me assuming her tales of 'her kids' and her employer being a sign of past life remembrance. I mean it could be, but really the more likely explanation is that she is just a normal 3-year old with a big imagination who loves coming up with stories.

I feel sorry for these kids who are being fed nonsense by their parents. It must be very confusing for them.

Awful.

I feel sullied just by clicking that packers link. Disturbing.

I’m deliberately buying some ‘baby boy’ clothes for my daughter soon, as I like the designs. Trans baby! Or maybe I should be looking into some sort of species realignment as they are foxes and badgers etc. If she doesn’t cry when I put them on then she’s obviously identifying as, well, something other than a baby girl. Or am I supposed to say AFAB.

aidel

I'd say you could seek advice from the NSPCC, which is what I'd advise anyone with a child welfare concern to do. Not so sure after yesterday's fiasco and no-show from the NSPCC on the Facebook Live chat

I feel this is child abuse...not sure what kind but there is something seriously wrong with a parent that adopts this approach with a toddler . I feel that for some parents it is feeding into their own narcissism about having a 'special' child. People need to ignore and not pander to it and definitely call out on the appropriateness of fake genitals.

iamawoman

Emotional abuse. It's akin to Munchausens by Proxy

Venting here because this sort of thinking is verboten in real life

Depends who you know I guess, I don't think one person I know would think what this mother is doing is anything other than ridiculous and harmful.

I agree with those who are suggesting maybe the mother has a form of munchausen by proxy.

@InionElle your daughter sounds incredibly charming. My 3yo is mostly a dinosaur, although at the moment he has a taste for being the pink flying unicorn from Animal Mechanicals. He doesn't have fictional children, but he does occasionally parent his soft toys in a way that makes me go "... dear God, did I actually say that to him?"

It’s just rediculous.

The tiny penis packers are just so disturbing, it actually made me feel sick. You know, I try so hard to be fair and non-judgemental and accept all etc etc as I'm sure we all do, but this kind of thing actually doesn't help the trans or diversity agenda at all. I just feel that anyone who makes, sells and promotes fake penises to little girls has something seriously wrong with them.

Yes thats exactly it a form of munchausens by proxy or a similar mentality of the type of parents that dress child in an adult manner to enter beauty pageants. Children go through a lengthy stage of magical thinking so wouldn't it reasonable to assume that some very imaginative children who may prefer the stereotypical toys / clothes / play style of the opposite sex might go through a stage where they are very convincing that they are a boy who is really a girl.