Help with talking to a 12 yr old about trans issues

[GoingOnce]

My son has a friend whose sister is apparently now his brother. I sense my son wants to talk to me about this and I want to have the right language to engage sensibly in a conversation. He has swallowed whole the ideology that people can change their gender as this has been “explained” to them at school. The child does not attend my son’s school but still attends a girls school - whilst going by a new name, wearing an adapted and having a special toilet assigned just for them.

The child in question (and the entire family) is struggling. There is self-harm and have been suicide attempts. I do not want to criticise them or their child. But I do want my child to realise that they are being presented with one narrative here. (I am quite certain the parents are simply going along with the whole thing because they are terrified of their child’s mental state and what they might do next. I feel very sorry for them).

Any advice for how I can discuss this sensibly? I can’t believe at age 12 we are already having to talk about all this.

Oh and there was no JAT. The Year Head was also the head of the school LGBT club at that time and as far as I can tell (nothing in our SAR indicates otherwise), decisions were made by him.

Now I know your reasoning, I'm more than happy to share this with you. I know you shouldn't have had to tell me but I'm sure you understand why I'm more taken by your story than someone who tells me about something in research.

Is there anything you want to ask about what we learned?

Out of interest (sorry if that's sensitive) how does that work then? Your child uses pronouns at school that you have advised against?

I don't think you can apply the same logic to the child themselves and their peers though.

Of course there's not a basic explanation. That's why it's so complicated.

I work with teenagers

Well that's what you say, @stopwaitingforpermissiontobeyou

You're not interested in referenced research, you insist on posters accepting your statements of your experience, but you won't accept other posters' evidence of their personal experience??

Anecdote is not the singular form of data.

By not applying that logic you are removing any chance for the child to give any form of informed consent though.

If they don't understand they shouldn't be doing it surely.

Amd there is a very some.basic eleven small children can grasp. Girl. Female child. Boy male.child.

What else is there?

This is getting really annoying.

Where did a parent of a teen or someone who knows a teen tell me a story and i rejected it?

The only one I questioned was someone who claimed they wrote safeguarding.

If you look above you will see a very interested (genuinely) interaction with a parent of a teens child.

I have never said it's the only form of data. I have said it appeals more to me than anything else because I look them in the eyes every day. Shoot me now, I'm the worst of people.

No, I'm not,

I am talking about their peers.

The below stance genuinely baffles me. If this was the case, do you honestly think it would get as far as it has? People talk about persuading kids etc etc.

My question is why. Why? Why do you think I support trans teens? for the fun?

@stopwaitingforpermissiontobeyou

I find it hard to be objective on an issue that affects people I look in the eyes.

Posters you have dismissed have shared their own experiences of people they look in the eyes. You've dismissed them and / or said you don't believe their accounts.

Your personal experience isn't the only one that matters. Your personal connections to people you look in the eye aren't more important than those of people who look their children / family / friends / pupils etc in the eye.

You're basically saying that if you aren't objective it's because you care too much yet you're not making any allowance for people you disagree with caring just as much about the topic but having a different POV.

No worries, I post extensively about what happened to us, to the point of trying to cut back as others will be bored of me. 😁

Thanks for sharing. I was really just interested in seeing whether or not LGBTYS have built any caution into their training and whether the role of parents, clinicians, mental health experts etc had been built in to give some balance, but it doesn’t sound like it.

Yes, the school use different pronouns for our daughter. At the moment they say they use “they/them” but teachers regularly use “he/him” at parent/teacher conferences - sometimes they correct themselves to “they/them”, sometimes they don’t, so who knows. All we asked was that school staff turn a blind eye to her and her peer group’s use of pronouns for her. In December 2020 the school reported us to social services because we were “suppressing” her wishes to transition.They said our approach had put her at the threshold for child protection. Social services investigated and said the school was creating division and that they agreed with the clinical advice we’d received. School chose to ignore this.

There’s a lot more horrific stuff, but that’s the bare bones. Fortunately she is leaving the school at the end of exams so just a few more weeks to go. The school is also a LGBTYS school which is why I am very bad tempered about the organisation.

You are almost there.

Yes some adults are deliberately confusing and gaslighting children to create a cohort if confused children who will willingly put themselves into dangerous situations in the name of being kind/ affirming their identity /amd wanting to.please the adults around them who are teaching them.this stuff.

So we have a woman involved in training to probably convince herself that surgically removing her child's penis at 16 was the right thing.

We have adult males with beards who will tell girls all about being lesbians
And we have policies and guidence with input from a male person who has been found incompetent with regards to safguarding and who's married to a man openly minor attracted on twitter.

And in America we are heading for an entire cohort of legal adults with the bodies of pre pubescent children.

Your yrans teenager need truth
They are victims of an.ideology thay does not have their best interests at heart.

Hi, again

I haven't dismissed someone who has shared their own experiences of people they look in the eyes, or said I don't believe their account.

That's a lie.

Thanks for the input , though.

This is excellent advice, very well put.

Essentially you’re trying to explain to your child how to behave around people who have an irrational belief and expect your child to change their behaviour as a result.

My child is much younger, but I have given a very simplified version of the above, along the lines that some people believe in Santa (we don’t), some people believe there is an all-knowing all-powerful loving god (we don’t), some people believe that women should not drive and need a male escort (we don’t) and some people believe they are a male soul trapped in a female body, but we don’t believe that souls have sex: we believe only the body has a sex. Some people believe that only girls should wear pink and have long hair and if they see a boy doing those things they say he’s really a girl, but that is sexist and we don’t believe that and you wear whatever you like my darling.

However I also really emphasised that it isn’t worth arguing with these people, because if you challenge irrational beliefs, the person who holds them gets angry. Then I talked about the Crusades etc and said that if a boy at your school wants to wear a skirt and demands everyone calls him a girl, then it’s like agreeing to play a game of ‘let’s pretend’ so that they don’t get angry, and probably all the teachers will join in the game, but it’s important to be aware that they haven’t really changed sex as that is impossible, and they’ll probably grow out of it when they’re older and isn’t it a shame that they’ve got in a muddle.

No, it wasn't.

It was the ones who referred to reports and research.

I'll take your point on that one.

So, you answered my post with something that I wasn't referring to, creating a misunderstanding. When I sought to clarify, you doubled down. Then when I told you with swear words that no parent should be having to 'out' their family situation for your credibility, you got that post deleted because 'swearing'.

Now, you say, that you were not talking about believing parents telling you what has happened in their own experience?

It's not boring @rogdmum

Not at all.
No, it was pretty standard stuff. ours was delivered remotely so I can't speak for the trainers.
I am horrified by your story. I'm so sorry.

I'd have had that deleted if you'd have been telling me you love John Barrowman as much as I do. I detest being sworn at.

Yeah, maybe I've created this.

But no, I certainly wasn't. read above for evidence, and that comes from the heart.

And as a member of school staff...you suggest I do what?

Thank you. I do think my daughter’s school are on crack when it comes to gender ideology and don’t believe most schools are quite as bad!

Perhaps acknowledge the ideology fir what it's doing and stop accusing posters of having an.an agenda when safguarding should be everyone's agenda.

You could raise the safguarding issues too.

You have done nothing but dismiss and accuse parents of children and taking everything as a personal.attack.on the children you deal with. You seem to view wanting even a base line understanding of what it is you are teaching the kids as offensive some how .

Maybe stop taking it so personally and accept your part in the harm that's neomg caused to children. I am actually sympathetic to your situation. It cannot be easy. But the dishonesty that you cannot see the problems amd dismissing any of it as harmful doesn't help.

As a member of staff you follow your school policies - safeguarding, pastoral care, confidentiality, behaviour, anti bullying and all the rest. That protects you as a professional and these policies should be aligned with each other.

Those of us who have examined some of the policies written for schools by trans lobby groups, the CPS (now withdrawn in the face of legal challenge), the Cornwall guidelines, Allsorts etc will continue to argue that aspects of them too often conflict with school policies / good practice, eg aspects of safeguarding (keeping secrets from parents) health and safety (demanding children not accepting mixed sex changing rooms change elsewhere), actively discriminate against other protected characteristics, girls and sport, children of faith and mixed sex changing, showering etc.
It shouldn't be like this. We all agree that this is a vulnerable group of children who require thoughtful support with education professionals using their knowledge and skills to support them in schools and transactivists respecting that they rarely have the knowledge / expertise in child development / psychology / learning to weigh in on school policy.

Will you wind your bloody neck in? I have not dismissed any parent posters!

Having said that, il take it that I probably do react too quickly and personally. Incidentally, it was an above poster that made me realise that.

@stopwaitingforpermissiontobeyou

Careful, someone might report you for saying bloody...

Agreed. It's hard in practice though.

@Whatwouldscullydo , i dont disagree. But the ones gaslighting and trying to corner children are not us - why would I have gone into the profession?

I get that teaching gets a bad name but if you think I don't shed tears many times a month or be able to recount a story as soon as someone in an interview asks me about a particular situation you're dreaming.

I cried more than I've cried about situations in my adult life when one of my S6s that I've worked with since S1 left us last week. They are real people in our lives.

And don't get me wrong. the above story has left me horrified that any professionals could treat parents in this way.

It's a bit rich to 'get someone deleted' for swearing at you and then telling another poster to 'wind their bloody neck in', stopwaitingforpermissiontobeyou.

'He has swallowed the whole ideology that....'

To be honest, just from this sentence it's obvious that you have a strongly biased opinion on this and should probably be letting somebody less biased talk to your son.

I have said it appeals more to me than anything else because I look them in the eyes every day. Shoot me now, I'm the worst of people.

What you seem unwilling to understand - to the point of rudeness, intransigence, and ignorance - is that there is a difference between treating the child in front of you with respect and kindness, and a rational, evidence-based understanding of the broader phenomenon of gender identity ideology.

WE need to see the broader picture.