The youngest patients were three? Fucking three? That's made me feel quite sick. Actually nauseous. It's grotesque to think of a child that age having any sort of gender awareness, FFS
see important explanation about how young children develop awareness of sex from expert in child psychology (from Lancaster Resisters recent meeting about Safeguarding)
'Young children, reality, sex and gender'
Katie Alcock (Lancaster University lecturer)
(extract)
"I’m a researcher in developmental psychology, and I’m interested in how young children learn symbols and how they think about the world. Most of my research is on children learning vocabulary but as a feminist (and mum of a boy and a girl) I’m also very interested in how children learn about sex and about stereotypes.
it takes children some time to work out both whether they themselves are a girl or a boy, and that both they and others cannot change sex. Working out which they are themselves happens earlier, and is based in all the studies that have been done on physical appearance and stereotypes. Have a look at what James, aged 3, has to say on the matter:
James is firm that having short hair makes him a boy, and that it also makes other people (and dolls) into boys. My own child aged four was convinced a teenager we knew must be a boy because she had short hair. (continues)
Now these days we are all anti-stereotyping and we are convinced we have not raised our children to know what sex stereotypes are. If the only influences on children were things people said directly to them, and especially things we as parents said directly to them, this might work out. But children don’t grow up in a vacuum — they see the other children at nursery, they see toys that other children play with, obviously they hear what other adults than their parents say but most of what children take in is not from people talking to them, but from what they see.
Making generalisations is a very useful skill for a baby or child — if they couldn’t make generalisations, they would never be able to work out that a new cat they saw was in fact a cat, or a new apple was just as good to eat as the last one, or a new car is likely also to go places. Children can work out at a very young age that there are men and women, boys and girls, in the world — it’s probably quite useful for them to work this out in the general scheme of things². So when they see all the girls at nursery wearing pink and having long hair, well, that’s what girls do! And they also realise, from what people are saying, and from how their parents dress them, what toys they are given, and what toys other children who look like them (same clothes, same hair) what they are supposed to like and do based on what sex they are." (continues)
medium.com/@katieja/young-children-reality-sex-and-gender-3421f4f165f1
thread
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3551115-Gender-Identity-Safeguarding-Children-and-Young-People-For-Women-Lancashire