Children's Mental Health

[MalagaNights]

This isn't specifically about gender but related.

I observe, from GC people and not just TRAs, that ideas such as: children wearing whichever uniform they want at school, and changing names, is all 'fine', as long as (for the GC) you don't tell them they are the opposite sex.

I think this is a mistake. A really big mistake.

I think this is part of a broader idea that has taken hold and that often seems shared by GC and TRAs: that children should be allowed to express themselves freely at all times. Or that supression of free expression is harmsful.

And, I think this idea itself is damaging children & partly responsible for the child mental health crisis beyonf the trans kids.

It is part of a wider view that children need to discover themselves, and this must be respected and expressed once discovered. And that any supression of this self expression is damaging.

This in itself conveys to children that time and energy spent on this level of self absorption and rumination is important and valued. That their idnetity (even if not gender identity) is something internal to be found and should be given extensive consideration and expressed.

And that it is so imporatnt and valuable that adults must respect it and they must be allowed to transgress any norms(becuase the norms have no value or point anyway?)

This level of self absorption is anxiety. It creates mental instability.

It is much healthier for children to have to learn and then accept: there are boundaries and rules. Some around the sex you are. You cannot just trangress the boundary just becuase you feel like it. In some situations you just have to conform.

You don't have to know the reasons for the rule, you don't have to agree with the rule, but while there is a rule it applies to you and everyone else.
When the rule chnages we'll tell you.

You are not harmed but not changing your name. You are not harmed by having to wear trousers to school.

But you can be harmed by thinking you have to make decisions about how to express your true self through your name and clothes and that this must be allowed or you are dangerously supressed. That idea is harming kids.

Yes this is constaining, but it is also freeing. It frees them from endless introspection, it frees them to go and do things instead of endless hours thinking about themselves.

We create small boudaried worlds for children, where choices are limited, but this allows them to play and exlpore within the bounadaries, instaed of having to work out what they want their world to be.

As they become older their boundaries obviously expand and chnage, they can play with the boundaries in certain contexts, but they are then doing this knowing how and when to conform.

I am incresaingly seeing the wider context to the GC debate is situated within the childhood mental health crisis and that some ideas promoted as 'fine' as long as they're not 'changing sex' sit within more general ideas that are still undermining children's mental health.

Anyone else noticing this?

I agree with you.

Name-changing, though, comes under this:

*We create small boudaried worlds for children, where choices are limited, but this allows them to play and exlpore within the bounadaries, instaed of having to work out what they want their world to be.

As they become older their boundaries obviously expand and chnage, they can play with the boundaries in certain contexts, but they are then doing this knowing how and when to conform.*

To what extent you accept the name-change is up to you.

From a GC perspective the point is it doesn’t matter if a boys wears a ‘girls’ uniform; it doesn’t stop them being a boy. Just as it doesn’t matter if boys take home Ec and girls take woodwork, boys have long hair and girls have short - nothing about liking things stereotypically thought of as belonging to one sex or the other changes your sex.

in terms of uniform, I think there is a lot to be said for a unisex uniform (with differently cut items to fit each sex). Trousers for all so the girls don’t feel pressured to wear belts instead of skirts. And with the gender rubbish going on at the moment it would address some of that in school.

But in adults, I no longer agree with ‘dress how you want’ because men at Malaga airport are not making simple fashion choices.

My friend changed their name from Margaret, which they hated, to Susan when they started sixth form. Is that ok?

What about those kids who play with the "wrong" toys and get punished or shamed for it? Where do you draw the line?

personally I think the introspection and naval-gazing rather than doing comes from living more and more life online.

Also all this sharing about mental health and celebs baring their truth and performance crying etc has consequences.

But even around name changes we have norms.

We have nicknames which develop and are tacitly agreed, we have variations of a name and preferences which can be expressed and honoured within this.

What we've never had is just children deciding on an entirely different names particularly one which transgresses a norm around sex.

I actually think having a given name is significant to your identity and this idea children get to choose and change this very potentially damaging.

It's based on a different view of identity. That's it's not something you own, not something just internal to be discovered and expressed.

Instead it's a view of identity as you within your social context, the relationships you have and the roles within that which interact with your developing internal sense of self but is not separate from it or just something which suppresses it.

So you are not just what you feel or think.

You are a boy or a girl.
You are a child.
You have parents.
You are their child.
You are part of a family.
You have siblings.
Etc

You have a name. It is x.
Your parents gave it to you.
You live here.
This is your school.
Your parents chose it.

These should be facts for a child given aspects of their identity. This is the world of adult responsibility.

There is also I think something very deep about a name and how it connects you to others. It should not just be considered yours to change at whim.
Yes there can be good reasons for having to change a name but I think it's a very significant thing, being portrayed to children as just another choice.

We don't change adopted children's names because we know how significant a given name is.

I think we're playing with fire pretending names are just another personal choice for children like their shoes or hair.

Agree with all that. My DD has been well and truly swallowed up by this and early on tried a few different names. It's a control thing too as it requires everyone to acknowledge it and interact with you.

in terms of uniform, I think there is a lot to be said for a unisex uniform (with differently cut items to fit each sex). Trousers for all so the girls don’t feel pressured to wear belts instead of skirts.

As parent to a non-standardly shaped girl, please don't insist on that. She much preferred the skirt option to the too tight/too baggy/too clownlike/too awkward-during-a-period trouser option. Growing girls come in such a wide variety of shapes.

Isn't it all part of the destabilising of childhood & the influence of families? Pushing the narcissistic narrative? The superficial idea that the sexes are identified by superficial attributes - clothing, hairstyles, names?
The removal from childhood of notions of family, community and society, being part of groups based on what you contribute, not what you claim to be?

Our poor children being surrounded by these vacuous notions.

I agree about the navel gazing. But I disagree about where I'd draw the boundary. I think the hard boundaries have to be reality-based, such as the immutability of sex, the necessity of safeguarding and the role of pronouns within speech. Names and uniforms are more based on stereotypes and fashions. Schools are free to decide their uniforms but any options within their selection should be open to all.

If a different name and uniform ceased to grant special privileges to the beholder, they would lose their appeal to those who want to transgress boundaries anyway.

Necessary rules are important. But rules based simply on stereotypes are not necessary. Having too many unnecessary or harmful rules runs the risk of none of the rules being respected, even the important ones.

Yes it is such a superficial notion of what your name signifies about who you are.
Or what your position in a family is.
Or how that relates to others.

An idea that your identity is entirely seperate from your relationships with others, it belongs to you and is dictated by you.
That your clothing choices reflect somehitng essentail about you.

It's giving the highest value to the shallowest apsects of identity.

I think we're realising that we often don't know why the rules were in place until we remove them.

See AGP men for the clearest example. Differential dress codes in formal situations for the sexes might well have utility.

This also realtes to a thread on safeguarding running at the moment and how we can't expect safegaurding to reaplace all the protections social norms used to provide.

This is my post from the other thread and also relevant here:

I agree with you that it is a mistake to think we just need structures which protect us from the bad people. The world isn't just good and bead people, it's people making choices dependent on the conseuqnces and we can create such permissive culture that otherwise good people start to act in ways which can impinge others in harmful ways but the 'rules' allow.

We used to know this. It was the idea that we needed to be 'civilised' and that norms, shame, judegment and ostracisation could be used to guide behvaiour to comply with norms which were agreed tacitly by the group.

We've thrown this out, and decided it's abad thing, and instead tried to hang everything onto 'safeguarding' and a legal framework, but there are many things that just can't quite fit within this and these grey areas used to be managed by agreed norms of civilised behaviour.
This was particuarly importnt for men, where strong drives around sex and aggression need to be very carefylly managed by the group with very strct codes arounf acceptable behaviour to be part of the group. Patrucuraly tiwards women and children. Laws can cover the clear extrems fo this but there are many other behaviours where men's code was socially enforced in a way we've abandoned.

I think we are trying to strech 'safeguarding' to cover all of these and it just doesn't work and the gaps are showing.

There always has to be a tension between the group norms (civil behaviour) and individual expression but I think we've gone way too far in throwing out the norms wholesale in the beleief that anyting goes will bring ultimate and freedon and happiness. It doesn't. And safegurding and consent, whihc is all that's left, allow a whole lot of grim stuff whihc can now just run rampant.

And one of the things I think is running rampant is the idea that you should find and express your identity and it should be validated by others.

I observe, from GC people and not just TRAs, that ideas such as: children wearing whichever uniform they want at school, and changing names, is all 'fine', as long as (for the GC) you don't tell them they are the opposite sex.

Is that what GC people mostly think though?
That name changing etc is all fine?
I wouldn't have thought so.

The Cass report specifically says that changing names and pronouns in school isn't a neutral act.

Name is different from pronouns. If you allow any name change (eg from Pocahontas to Lucy) then it is very difficult to draw a line. Peter is a boys name, but what about Phil? It could be short for Phillipa? And I wouldn’t have a clue about names from different ethnic origins. Pronouns, however, refer to sex and are specifically changed to force others to refer to you by a sex other than that you are.

Yes there was a thread today where general agreement was name changing wasn't a big deal but changing pronouns was.
You can see it on this thread. Names are just a socila convention etc.

The Cass report says social transition is not a neutral act. So making chnages to 'transition' is not supported.

But wearing the uniform you want and chnaging your names is often referrde to as 'fine' on the GC side as long as it is clear you are still a boy ro a girl and you are not transitioing sex.

My point is: giving this level of identity performace narcissim and control to children is bad for them even if it's done without the chnaging sex narrative.

Names are definitely harder as the social norms are looser and families have the decision. So you can always get families who give names others consider wacky or who call their son Sue.

But the decision to break social conventions used to lie with adults, now people are advocating for handing it over to children to change whenever they like, and presumabley as often as they like.

There can't be any 'rules' but we're demolishing the prevsiouly loosing held conventions and envouraging children to lead the way in pursuit of thier true self, and thinking there won't be reprecussions.

I think there are recpercussions, and one is it's bad for children.

"Yes this is constaining, but it is also freeing. It frees them from endless introspection, it frees them to go and do things instead of endless hours thinking about themselves"

I agree. The belief that you can change anything about yourself - name and even sex - must be quite terrifying for many teens. Rules and boundaries - and hearing adults say no - can be reassuring and comforting

I haven't read the other thread but I actually wasn't aware that people were changing names without changing pronouns.

I mean, there's always been a 'baseline' amount of name changing, when people finally decide they can't stand their given name for another minute and start using their middle name or another name. Or they move countries and adjust a name to suit or pick a new one. There's always been a bit of that. Didn't realise this had increased?
As I said I thought name changing and pronoun changing mostly went hand and hand these days.

I don't think they are @BuntyandJackie but there is a suggestion which arises that name change without pronoun would be ok in theory.

Obviously it's always happened to a small degree in the past sometimes for good reason, but my point is that a suggestion that children should now be able to choose their own names whenever they want is part of an belief system around identity that is bad for children. Even if it's separate from gender transition.

Just on the general point about the need for boundaries.
This brought to mind a study (about architecture design of playgrounds) from a few years ago.
It really struck me at the time, of how the physical relates to the psychological and just thought it was an interesting echo of your wider point, Malaga.

I've copied the key section- but easy to find online:

A team of landscape architects conducted a simple study to observe any physical and psychological influences of having a fence around a playground, and how its consequent effects would impact preschool children.
By observing teachers and their students on a playground surrounded by a fence, and on a comparable playground with no fence, the researchers found a striking difference in how the children interacted in the space.
On playgrounds without fences, the children tended to gather around the teacher, and were reluctant to stray far from her view. On playgrounds that were fenced in, however, they ran all around the entire playground, feeling more free to explore.
The researchers concluded that with a boundary, in this case a fence, children felt more at ease to explore the space.

Don't forget that nowadays teens have to pick their own name(s) anyway in order to have an online handle (or three) - just like we all do here.
e.g.: Asking to be known as "Jenna" or "Tom" seems like a pretty boring thing to get hung up on if your friends also know you as "cthulukitty45".

I totally agree. It also endorses the idea that the individual is of primary important and the majority of societies and communities in the world (certainly historically) have always viewed the group as being more important than the individual, with some occasional notable exceptions (eg King, queen, village chief etc).

In general I think the idea that anyone else gives two shits about your “identity” just encourages narcissism and ultimately poor mental health (whether that be in any way related to gender or anything else). Stop thinking about yourself constantly and what other people think of you. Think about other people first and what you can do to help others. Stop spending so much time on introspection and get off your arse and do something useful. And if you do spend any time self-indulging in thinking about yourself, start off with thinking about how grateful you should be for the many privileges you enjoy.

Sorry, wrong thread. Have asked for it to be deleted.