5 year old trans person

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nationalfile.com/britains-first-trans-couples-child-5-also-beginning-transition/

How is this considered good parenting rather than child abuse? It says they've been reported to social services, so at least one person has concerns, but yet they still seem to be able to plough ahead with it. Surely there should be some protection for a child who isn't even old enough to be trusted to choose their own clothes, let alone their gender.

It seems so young!!! Hardly know what to think about it

Jayden no longer sees his father who is an abusive bully.

I know Jayden was referred to child mental health services, so hopefully if he is autistic it will be picked up.

What a sorry state Ginger - I feel for Jody to a degree but what she is doing is, well, I won't say it. I hope the child is getting some semblance of balance from grandparents and the school and friends and doesn't end up on puberty blockers etc.

I know two children, one really well, that transitioned around this age (4 and 6), both have one really unpleasant parent who makes everything all about them.

I'd take the hair pulling with a pinch of salt, both families I know completely rewrote history using the mermaids playbook to try and convince everyone what great parents they are.

One of my ds has ASD consequently i know a lot of ASD kids and their (sometimes) ASD parents. It's so commonplace for ASD kids to go through a phase of saying they want to be the other gender aged 6-8 then completely forgotten.

Just a couple of years older than the NT kid who spends an entire summer being a dog.

When I was a child I used to believe I was a ‘beautiful crippled princess’. I used to lie on the sofa and insist I couldn’t move because my back was broken. It was a very intense engagement with the role- more than just a game. I was truly in that fantasy world.
I’m so very glad no-one acted on this.

Forgive me if this has already been mentioned but why are we really tightly defining the criteria for what a boy/girl or male/female "should" be like?
Why can't people just "be".
So they can be a boy who likes frozen , or wearing dresses, or playing with dolls. Not all boys are the same. The same as if a girl doesnt, like frozen, or dolls or wearing pink, she is simply a girl who doesn't like those things (and at 5 what you do and don't like possibly changes pretty regularly )

Boys are not allowed to be 'feminine males' because of sexist stereotypes.

Equally if you wanted to suppress that 'maleness' then a woman saying her boy was trans might happen.

Throw in a history of being the victim of male violence and a particularly vulnerable young mother and...

Also (I’m not a doctor) if a child has partial hearing from birth and has total speech absence (whether these facts are linked or not), then child begins speaking at I think the age of 4, as reported in the Mail article linked to above... that is going to have been very challenging for any young child to cope with emotionally, developmentally, as well as physically.

I can imagine it is very isolating and frustrating not to be able to hear fully. To be a non-speaking person living in a fully hearing environment, speaking environment. They don’t mention using signing or other ways of communicating but hopefully that was happening.

I can imagine that unfortunately with partial hearing, there are likely to be some quite traumatic situations that will lead to a child feeling fear and anxiety. for example things that weren’t heard by the child that will be interpreted by others as ‘not listening’ or being naughty, that the child will then unexpectedly be getting told off for.. or just simply the child not being aware of the build up to something happening due to not hearing, and then getting a fright or shock when it happens.
Poor poor kid.

Other elements jumped out at me from that Daily Mail article but I had better not comment on those. I am very glad there is or has been outside professional involvement from social services and that the mum has got her family supporting her and involved in their lives. She is still very young and seems a very vulnerable person and has been through an awful lot.

Butterisbest I got my first strike yesterday and am now too scared to voice strong opinions and words which 'might' offend lol! I'd never heard of these guidelines before I received an email from HQ

I got my first strike yesterday
I'm new here, what's a strike? Is it having a post deleted or something else?

At 5 ds used to crawl round on all fours after our dog and say he was a dog.

5 is too young

I'm new here, what's a strike? Is it having a post deleted or something else?

I think it's where a post is deleted and MNHQ email you to tell you that you've broken the special FWR guidelines about trans issues (in the pinned post).

I've had a few posts deleted, but I have yet to receive an email for a deleted post, so I assume I haven't had any strikes. But maybe I have. Who knows?

This is part of the email I was sent (can't post the whole email or I'll o doubt get another strike) I've been a member of Mumsnet for more years than I can remember but posting on a feminist/trans issues I came a cropper.

From Mumsnet: As noted in our guidelines, we've introduced a three strikes system whereby users deleted more than three times in any rolling six week period will have their membership automatically suspended and we’ll then take a view as to whether they will have membership reinstated. We're considering this your first strike.

By the parents logic my little girl putting on my bra’s must mean she’s really an adult woman.

(I suspect the some of the support for twaw comes from the appeal of that exact argument).

At least my other girl is really a dog. I always wanted a dog. Our vet will be confused though.

Also- seeking unnecessary medical attention/treatment is mbp. Surely social services should be checking every single incidence of children with gid to clarify that the parents don’t have mbp and the child isn’t being subjected to medical abuse.

Also- seeking unnecessary medical attention/treatment is mbp. Surely social services should be checking every single incidence of children with gid to clarify that the parents don’t have mbp and the child isn’t being subjected to medical abuse.

Agree. So much of this resembles MBP behaviour on the part of parents (apparently psychiatrists don't use that phrase any more but I don't know what the new phrase is).

The thread throughout is the attention the parents get, the praise heaped on them, the media attention, the money for selling stories no doubt, the charities fawning over them, the victim status which they revel in. It's all mental.

This isn't a comment on this specific parent or her child (and i'm not accusing her of having MBP)... but I imagine if you are a MBP parent declaring a young child trans would be very appealing, as it doesn't have physical symptoms that you'd need to fake and you can still use it as a way to get lots of attention for yourself.

Not to mention the cheerleading from the Mermaids gallery - so brave, such a hero for standing up for our kids, thank you for educating others, you're doing the right thing, Social Services don't understand, follow your child's lead, trust your mummy instinct, you know your child best, you can't make a child trans.

I can totally imagine how appealing and validating such cheerleading would be to many stressed out parents, never mind a vulnerable, isolated, troubled young mum.

If they no longer use it that’s a good thing- if a doctor or teacher or anyone else fabricates symptoms and lies to get unnecessary medical treatment for a child then it’s termed medical abuse, it should be when it’s parents who do so also.

I went through some medical abuse, very mild by comparison to other victims or in comparison to sexual and emotional abuse i went through (latter from my mother, the former from those she gave me to). Despite a lot of contact with social services (due to both parents job, and later due to my behaviour) the only time any adult in my life ever noticed something wasn’t quite right was connected to how my mother withheld medications, gave my medications that weren’t prescribed, ignored actual illnesses and exaggerated or lied about symptoms when seeking medical appointments or talking socially/or to teachers etc. Medical abuse can be hard to detect at times but in some ways it can be the easiest type to spot from the out side, can be proven through medical tests in some cases (science woohoo!) and for me was the most possible to articulate as a child. (She didn’t give me my white pills, she did give me a blue one, she gave me the milk the doctor said I was allergic too and so on- so more concrete descriptors that used words I had access to as a child.

I’m not saying parents accounts shouldn’t be valued, I have two children with asc and related conditions- how hcp dismiss parents seeking assessment by devaluing their experience of their child and blaming their parenting is very common for parents seeking help- but the automatic acceptance of parents claiming their kid is trans effectively redefines-if it is medical abuse, I appreciate some cases may be gid- medical abuse and wipes out what can sometimes be a more clear cut type of abuse to identify and intervene with (of course not always, and not decades ago before it was common knowledge). That’s really really scary.

It’s a damaging route to follow with potentially dreadful and life changing repercussions.

Jaydens behaviour sounds worrying and both he and his family in need of a lot of support that does not include changing gender.

DGD is 4 and has been channelling a firefighting kitten for the last year. Other than providing her with a firefighters costume, attendance at the local fire stations open day and some books about both firefighting and felines no one has decided any further action is needed. Should her family buy her a cat bed , a scratching post, encourage her to use a litter tray instead of the toilet and change her name to Tiddles? That would be abuse , right?

I look at this, and adoptions, and think of all the nightmare the agencies and councils put wonderful prospective parents through to care for a child, including obstacles like not being the right race for the child, and parents like this can just right ahead and screw up the minds and in all likelihood the life of their children and social services does nothing, and that lot just smile and happy clap them.

So much of this resembles MBP behaviour on the part of parents (apparently psychiatrists don't use that phrase any more but I don't know what the new phrase is).

Fabricated or induced illness.
www.nhs.uk/conditions/fabricated-or-induced-illness/

VMisa

Agree with what is being said about the lobby group support being very validating for parents. What worries me about that narrative is because it’s all politically based, if there are any issues for their child post-transition then how is the parent supposed to handle it, according to this political orthodoxy? Or if their child changes their mind will they still get the support and be told they are doing great?

If one solution (transition) is supposed to resolve everything, then what support can there be for the children and families for whom transitioning either does nothing to help or makes things worse?

To be charitable to well meaning parents (in general) if your child says they wish to be the opposite sex we are taught now to validate a child's feelings.

If they said they were gay we would validate that, if they said they were a dog we'd play along and do some woofing. My thoughts are to do nothing and say 'really dear, see how you feel when you're big'.

So I'd play along with Spider-Man or dog desires, ignore trans wishes and I might be fairly dismissive about crushes either way too.