Help me write a letter please?

[Daisypod]

I'm going to try and keep this brief so I'm not easily identifiable.
I have a 15 year old child, at about 12/13 they started questioning their gender identity then came out as trans.
I have researched this a lot and me and they father decided a watchful waiting approach would be best. The school on the other hand are very affirming and pro nouns and name has been changed at school. We did agree to this although felt a lot of pressure from the school. The name thing we agreed as it was a nickname and officially their birth name would still be used.
We have recently also discovered our child has Asd. The school are really pushing for us to use resources and social groups run by charities that are firmly affirmation based and anything else is transphobic. We have refused to do this but getting any help therapy wise that doesn't affirm their gender is very hard.
The school have done nothing in regards to the Asd diagnosis. I feel like the gender/LGBT thing is very in at the school and they are actively pushing it but the Asd isn't as trendy so they are ignoring it.
I find it very hard to talk to the school as they make me feel bad about our approach and like I'm a bad parent. I also believe I am on the Asd spectrum but we can't afford the assessment atm.
I want to write a letter to the school outlining why we are taking our approach, the research behind it and that i feel school are over stepping their mark (I know they use phrases like 'born in the wrong body' against DfE guidance). Also that I think there should be more help and guidance with the Asd.
Listening to radio 2 last week it seems there are a lot of support groups for teens with Asd but we have never been told about this or signposted for them but we've got leaflets about lgtb coming out of our ears!
We've got a lot on at the moment and I haven't been well so im finding putting hood facts down on paper for my letter very hard.
Can anyone help or point me in the right direction?

I'd start with Safe Schools Alliance and Transgender Trend who may have resources that will help you structure your letter as they are supporters of watchful waiting with children who believe they are trans

I think both have advice on talking to schools

https://safeschoolsallianceuk.net/

https://www.transgendertrend.com/

There are two separate issues, one is the ASD diagnosis and how that impacts your child's education and the other is the gender identity issue and how that impacts your child's time at school. Of course, they will be intertwined to a greater or lesser degree, but the school SENCO should be addressing the ASD diagnosis and looking at whether an EHCP is needed, for example. I would tackle that separately to the gender issues.

Regarding the gender issue, the links provided by the PP are a great starting point.

Thanks I have had a look at those websites before but I find them ever so overwhelming. I'll check them again.
Its partly the Senco giving out this info to my child yet nothing about the Asd 😡

There is also this group which I have seen mentioned on threads before.

Bayswater Support Group
We offer parents whose children have a transgender identity somewhere to talk, share and be understood.
We are wary of medical solutions to gender dysphoria, when exploring gender roles is part of normal child development.
We also work to educate public bodies about adolescent gender dysphoria. Our members come from all walks of life including teaching, the NHS, the law and media and from all regions of the UK
https://www.bayswatersupport.org.uk/

And if you are finding writing your own letter is too much for your at the moment, there is nothing to stop you quoting from any of these groups and just say they express our concerns as parents. And if you acknowledge the quotes then it means the school will know it isn't just you being an individual who is reacting badly, but that you reflect a wide group of parents similarly challening schools who are acting as they are.

If the sites are too overwhelming, just read one article / page at a time. Copy the bits you like (and note the link), then take a break and come back later, or even the next day.

Good luck!

Let us know how you're doing with ideas and we can help with editing or whatever. I suppose the main points you might want to get across could be:

1. You need to deal with the ASD as matter of urgency and only after that and following on from that, will any trans issues be on the radar (because of the correlation between trans ideation and ASD) - cite evidence;
2. You and her father are in agreement about the current situation and you expect the school to act in accordance with your wishes and the law and not push a trans identity on to your child;
3. You look forward to working in cooperation with the school to find the correct and most appropriate path towards the ASD diagnosis and are awaiting further news from them about how they will facilitate this.

I don't know...

The DfE guidance makes clear that schools should not be pushing any one political line on children unbalanced by other information, however it's largely gone ignored as Stonewall et al have trained everyone to believe that they are more modern and progressive and they are right, the law is wrong, and the law will change to fit them. (And haven't realised they're being manipulated.)

Many staff are also very excited and activated by the passion and emotion of TQ stuff which is much easier to be nice and involved in, and isn't that complicated, than addressing SEND needs with limited resources and knowledge.

Show the DfE guidance. Consider talking to your MP, or the DfE if your MP is also captured. Seriously consider another school: with SEND issues, you can rarely fix a bad school in time for a child to have an acceptable experience and it's easier to move them to a good school which will meet needs from the start.

I would go along the lines of:

I want to put what's best for my child as the highest priority.
The affirmative care model is a one size fits all solution, that makes no effort to work out what will give the best result for any given individual.
Medical intervention can have lifelong consequences, and shouldn't be rushed.
It is not possible to treat one mental health condition in isolation if you ignore other mental health conditions that also exist alongside. The whole has to be treated and supported in whole.
Most importantly of all. The school is not qualified or licensed to offer medical advice. It is a school not a hospital.

lechiffe's excellent points made me remember: the Cass interim report I'm sure mentions that social transition is not neutral, and that it is locking children into a pathway towards medical transition.

And yyy to school staff not being qualified or licenced for medical advice or guiding a child along a pathway towards treatments that can be life changing, harmful and regretted once irreversible.

Hi i think if you re visit your post you will see that if you rearrange what you say a little bit it says it all , in a non combative way. You have to assert that your approach is your decision, and that they must respect that, as a matter of law.

It looks as if the government will be finally issuing guidance to schools which will stop them transitioning children and thinking that they know better than parents about all this. So hopefully in a few weeks time there'll be some draft guidance that will support you.

There is a lot to unpick here. I really empathise with and understand how overwhelming it can feel.

A key starting point is to help the school to understand that they have inadvertently conflated two things: autism and gender identity. Perhaps there is a way to bring them on side to your watchful waiting way of thinking by helping them to see the significance of the new ASD diagnosis. At the moment they seem to think that they know best but they have a huge blindspot here. Have you seen the Transgender Trend information on autism and gender identity? It's got lots of useful information that unpicks the conflation, plus some useful links to research papers at the end.
https://www.transgendertrend.com/autism-gender-identity-introduction/

In addition to the Interim Report from the Cass Review, I used the Tavistock research paper that showed that 48% of referrals are autistic when I spoke to my daughter's school about safeguarding. That is far too high to be an acceptable coincidence. This paper is referenced in the introduction on the link above.

Depending on your child's needs, they might benefit from an EHCP. At the very least, it sounds like they would benefit from safeguarding around gender identity. Prior to getting it in to my daughter's EHCP, I wrote a safeguarding statement that I asked the school to follow so that she didn't get pulled towards the idea that she was trapped in the wrong body. Perhaps this is something that would work for you too?

You mentioned in your post that the school is now using new pronouns as well as a new (nick)name.

Will you be asking the school to revert back to your child's sexed pronouns? Have you felt able to speak to your child about why it's important not to make any changes from sex based pronouns while they understand themselves better? Whenever anyone asks my daughter what her pronouns are (I really wish they wouldn't... asking the question is effectively asking "I can see you're a girl but are you happy being one?". Sadly it happens a lot when they see her short hair and "boys' clothes") she either says "I don't know" or "I don't mind". Depending on the person, they either move on or, and I've had to intervene directly on this in the past, they say that they'll use they/them for her. I am mindful that I don't want to push my daughter away from trusting and confiding in me, but I am making it as clear as I can to her that while she's understanding what gender identity means to her, it is important that nothing changes. She uses a neutral sounding nickname but that's very different from changing her pronouns. The Cass Review, mentioned above as well by a PP, makes it very clear that social transition is not a neutral act and that autistic people are particularly vulnerable to locking in on an identity as an answer to any distress that they might be feeling about their body or who they really are as a person.

I'm not pushing my own views about gender identity belief on to my child but I'm safeguarding her as best as I can from being pulled towards the bias that could lead her on to an affirmation pathway. It's a very difficult line to tread, making sure that I remain neutral so that I don't get cast aside as a "bigot", and having the school on side is an important part of it all.

If the school won't accept that this is a safeguarding issue and that they need to unpick autism from gender identity, I would personally move my child elsewhere. Otherwise, everything that they do will continue to be from a affirmation perspective and will inherently bring in the bias that your child does have a gender identity (representing belief as fact) and that this needs to be affirmed before anything else is put in place. This is not a safeguarding approach.

From my own experience, I would caution against autism parenting support groups as there seems to be a general acceptance amongst them that having autism and being trans identified doesn't raise any alarms.

Is your child male or female? The conflation of autism and gender identity seems to follow general patterns in line with sex. This is also something that may be helpful to point out to the school.