Would you be concerned... 4 year old "trans"

[Ncdforthisagain]

Not sure I'm posting in the right place but would welcome advice as something that is sitting very uncomfortably with me.

I met a mum recently through mutual friends at a kids activity class. She seemed nice enough and very friendly and chatty. Her son is 5 and he is a lovely child. He was wearing a sparkly top and clip on earrings the first few times I met them - all good, he's only 5 and who am I to judge. However his mum dropped very casually in conversation that she thinks he has "trans issues". Again, I thought it was a bit of an odd comment but kept that thought to myself. More recently though, it now appears that the mum has transitioned the child to living as a girl, has changed his name and is actively referring to the child as her "daughter", "she" etc. The child is so young and it just strikes me as terribly damaging to do this to a tiny child. I have 2 young DC myself and I'm actually reeling that a parent could willingly do this. I'm prepared to get shot down (maybe unlikely on this board) but it just has my alarm bells ringing.

If you see the mother again you could say lots of stuff along the lines of ‘my child (or child I know) was convinced they were a cat/train/ dinosaur. Aren’t they funny and it’s a relief they grow out of this kind of thing.’

Lying to impressionable children, telling them you can change sex, it's so wrong, especially at age 5 when they're so unable to understand.

Dobby makes good points as do pp

It’s really bad to lie in this way

Sadly I know this from butter experience. There are also so many of us working for establishments that have embedded trans mythology. Until they rediscover common sense and safeguarding we are powerless to let our views widely known, but the trans myths are allowed to multiply and flourish, anyone who challenges them silenced.
I've lost so much respect for adults like this I know, supposedly intelligent people, but part of it is the way this ideology has been allowed to take hold. We all have responsibility to parent and not blindly follow trends though.

@DobbysTeaCosy says it all. The mother is a fucking idiot.

At 5 my son liked to pretend to be a cat and drink milk from a saucer. Why can't kids be kids anymore. And why is no one stepping in to help. Pandering to this nonsense is so damaging.

Because those lower down have their hands tied and those who should be stopping it are encouraging it.
See the thread about the teacher sacked for raising safeguarding concerns.

My nephew was like this. Thankfully it was before this madness caught hold. He is a happily married adult gay man with a lovely husband.
Not saying it's easy for a very effeminate boy, or that it has ever been. It's very hard to stay under bullies' radar. But with love and support, a life as a happy gay man should be his future.
I fear for what this mania will do to him. His parents need to grow the fuck up.

Years ago a neighbour of mine tried to bring up her son as a girl. She had 5 boys and was desperate for a girl. The 6th boy was dressed in typical girl clothes and given a female name. SS got involved
Now she would be hailed as a hero. Its child abuse. You are either male or female and it's cruel to let a child believe a special, inner essence makes them the opposite sex

Yup, best mates son loved pink and putting on her make up etc18 now, off to uni, got a girlfriend, very much a lad, very happy. So glad she let him do these things without labelling him.

Great comments from everyone - especially DobbysTeaCosy.
In the face of so much batshittery around this issue, I will work hard to remember this particular bit of advice:
Try hard not to call her a fucking idiot though. Fucking idiots object to that.

When I was growing up late 80s/early 90s a lot of boys had a hairstyle with a step/wedge. I really liked the style and had it cut like that myself. I also went through a grungy phase wearing dungarees and army surplus wear and I was quite often mistaken for a boy. I knew I wasn't and didn't want to be - I just liked those styles. Now days I'm still not especially feminine , rarely wear make up and prefer jeans/sportswear. But it really scares me to think that if that had been now, someone would probably have been persuaded that maybe I wasn't supposed to be a girl? I was older than the child in this instance - probably started about 11. But always a people pleaser it frightens me that "experts" might have convinced me I was meant to be a boy!

My son was at a school nursery with a boy who had become a girl by yr 1. 🙄. Age 11 that looked like wearing pink sparkly boots, having long hair and running away from spiders, screaming. ( According to my son). I'm told there are a few older trans kids in the Senior school, all boys. This is Cornwall though, institutionally captured and proud producer of The Trans Student booklet circa 2012. All you can do is tell your children the truth about biological sex etc and tell them they can't actually say anything about it at school.

Munchausen's by Proxy or simple abuse. So many mothers push this cruelty.

Thanks that's very useful background and well explained. Nice username too!

It's striking that more boys get pushed into girliness than the other way around, from anecdotal info on here.

Could that be simply because girls 'wanting to be boys'(I.e.trying out a masculine identity, not dreaming of surgery!) is comprehensible as an act of 'reaching' (for higher social status) whereas boys acting girly 'identify downwards' so to speak?
Sex hierarchy must be at play somewhere.

OP I'd try to gently question the mum's decisions using some of the info on here. But be prepared to get terfified...

If suggest it's something to do that a 'tomboy' girl is seen as desirable and acceptable (probably due to misogyny)
So blue girls clothes are widely available. Girls clothes with dinosaurs and trucks can also be sourced.
But boys clothes with even a hint of pink, or 'gendered animals' like cats, rabbits and mice are basically not there. So parents have to either dress them from the boys section or the girls section, but either way they end up very much 'coded' by gender.
For example, I dress my son in all clothes, all colours but in 'boy cuts'. I've. T shirts and trousers for comfort. Without fail, everytime he wears pink or yellow he gets misgendered. Even if everything else he is wearing is traditionally 'boy' coloured. This will be subconsciously sending the message pink is for girls, blue is for boys.
So when he picks that message up (he hasn't yet, but likely will from nursery soon) he will either lean into boy things, because he likes his identity as a boy, or he will lean into girl things and wrongly conclude he'll become a sister.
This has always happened but in the past adults didn't agree that you can change sex. Children were either left to explore or had the 'gay' beaten out of them. Most often parents were comfortable with girls being masculine, that's why so many of us were allowed to be tomboys. Because of toxic masculinity and homophobia boys were never quite afforded that freedom and now the 'trans' path gives them a way to explore that, but it is obviously a very damaging path.

Basically, we need to not tolerate sexism because that's how we have ended up here, with 'trans kids' offered up on the alter of stereotypes.

This is the type of parent who will claim "I'm just supporting and letting my child be whatever he wants to be", when in reality, is doing the very opposite.

So sad.

Wasn't Malcom McClaren dressed as a girl by his grandmother , who he lived with , till he was 12 ?

Yes, understood and, for some, this is right.

Munchhausen’s Syndrome by Proxy.

I hope the child’s school makes a safeguarding referral.

The school will not do this as this would cause a massive ruckus and the school being labelled as transphobic. Plus education is all but completely captured so they will probably welcome and celebrate this making it even harder for the child to desist. These children are suffering societal abuse as well as individual abuse within the family unit.

I agree. The mother in my case almost certainly has munchausens. She’s convinced her son also has cancer and won’t accept the doctors advice that he doesn’t.

Our son at that age wore his sisters tutus, played with dolls etc, never once did we think anything of it, he grew up to be a normal male, can you even say that these days? Trans does seem to be a trend at the minute, personally not convinced that a 5 year old would know the difference but that’s just my opinion

Sick parents. My son liked to dress up in these things, like his sister, until he went to school!

This is long, but if you've time, here's a legal judgement from Mr Justice Hayden about the actual harm that happened to a little boy who's mentally unwell mother was pandered to by numerous professionals who listened to her when she claimed he was a girl while ignoring the emotional abuse she subjected this young boy to. She was supported by Mermaids (who he subsequently barred from having contact with the child) and the mother lost custody to the father.

it's a nuanced and fascinating account of how professionals can act when in thrall to an ideology and he emphasises their failure to stop the abuse that this little boy experienced. The views of the school that saw no signs of him being confused about being a boy were ignored, while his evidently unwell mother and adults from Mermaids were the ones listened. Nothing has changed since then it it seems - except that numerous schools have joined in with prioritising the demands of adult trans activist groups over the welfare of children:

https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Fam/2016/2430.html