More than 70 children aged three and four were sent to Tavistock transgender clinic

[fromorbit]

Even worse than we thought according to the latest findings:

In total, 382 children aged six and under were referred to the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) run by the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust in north London...
A spokesman for the Tavistock said: ‘The GIDS pathway provides psychological assessment, treatment, and support for families, so we are unable to provide figures on those who have undergone physical interventions.
“The outcome of gender identity development in younger pre-pubertal young people is uncertain and so “treatment” is not provided.
“Most often there would be a one-off discussion with the parents/carers to provide support and advice.”

Telegraph article:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/12/26/tavistock-transgender-clinic-children-aged-three-nhs/

Remember common practices in the Tavistock are probably still going on in Scotland and Wales.

There is some fairly old sociological research that looked at parents who tried to raise gender neutral children (in the late 90s/early 90s). They had much more success before the children attended any childcare or education setting because the parents could control everything around their child to some extent. Once the children left that bubble and encountered a world full of other children and gender roles/stereotypes, they quickly chose to conform and fit in with their peers (even if they might also try to please their parents at home).

There was nothing innate or essential about gender for any of the kids (or the families) involved.

It’s abundantly obvious that some parents can and do choose to actively teach their small children that they are ‘trans’ - for a range of reasons that should probably be addressed via adult psychiatry and social sanctions. Instead these rainbow parents make money out of their social media accounts and are lauded by idiots.

So when they see all the girls at nursery wearing pink and having long hair, well, that’s what girls do! And they also realise, from what people are saying, and from how their parents dress them, what toys they are given, and what toys other children who look like them (same clothes, same hair) what they are supposed to like and do based on what sex they are.

One of the people I know who had a "trans child" was very much 'toys are toys', but perhaps would also go far the 'other way' and would actively push the child towards the opposite gender things. Started school, and instead of working through the "this is for boys, this is for girls" it was that they are trans.

I don't know what is happening now, I got blocked on FB a long time ago.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/12/27/why-were-three-year-olds-sent-to-the-tavistock/

James Esses has also written.

At 4 I declared I was a beetle! At 5 I arrived home from school convinced I'd met the actual Santa and not a pretend Santa because he had a gold buckle on his belt.

Young children don't know fact from fiction.

aghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! This shit is all wrong!

I think stereotypes is pushed more at children now than in the 70s and 80s.

If you get your hands on an old argos catalogue the baby and infant toys were more neutral / primary coloured.
I was the owner of a red tractor 🚜.
Things market at girls were more neutral colours.

I think stereotypes is pushed more at children now than in the 70s and 80s.

I remember a conversation with a family member who said “Gender equality is all well and good in theory but there’s so much choice so it’s easier to tell the kids which clothes and toys are for them. I haven’t got time for them to look at them all!”

Which is quite depressing.

I remember helping on a preschool farm trip as a teenager. One boy age 3 or 4 told me 'when I grow up, I'm going to be a lady farmer'. He also insisted the pregnant cow was going to have bunnies. He was still developing his understanding of how the world works!

@BendingSpoons exactly how can any GP take these parents seriously enough to actually make a referral?

Squeaky wheels

I think GPs refer because they don't know what else to do, but feel they have to do something when a parent turns up worrying about their child. They're probably very happy to have 'experts' to palm them off to, rather than spend time trying to work with a family to discover what's actually going on.

*Sugarfree23 · Yesterday 22:43

I think stereotypes is pushed more at children now than in the 70s and 80s.

If you get your hands on an old argos catalogue the baby and infant toys were more neutral / primary coloured.
I was the owner of a red tractor 🚜.
Things market at girls were more neutral colours.*

That was until the early 80s and the arrival of the bloody Early Learning Centres - when every toy became plastic, colour-coded and 'gendered' - a blue aisle and a pink aisle - yuk.

This has gone too far and I imagine some sort of public enquiry into all of this in years to come over. I remember when I was a child I would be curious about what it would be like to be a boy as I used to wonder how they used to urinate! That's all it was curiosity.

Both DH and I are very short sighted and so I asked the opticians when I should start bringing my three year old for eye tests. They said they don't take under fours as they're not able to reliably communicate what they can or can't see.

So three year olds can't go for standard eye tests because they can't communicate well enough, but they can be referred to a gender clinic?

Had a thought. We know that the Dept of Health refused to be involved with the new guidance for schools - at least we know they said they wouldn't assess in order for social transitioning at schools? But now they are saying (and effectively this all goes back to Dept of Health, whether NHS England wants to do something or not) they want to bring in the age of seven.

There's a divergence here at least. What's going on?

No doubt at all that the acres of pink and blue in the shops were not there when I was growing up in the 1960s. There wasn't enough money around for most parents to buy a whole new set of clothes, toys and accessories when they had a new baby, so all prams were a practical navy or similar and most children played with and wore whatever was to hand - handmedowns from older siblings, cousins, neighbours. Not many pink garments as I recall. My daughter was born in the early 1990s and I remember being surprised by the amount of pink and pastel clothing for girl babies and toddlers. Also, Disney characters and other images on a huge percentage of chain store clothes. That didn't happen to anything like the same extent when I was young. Our clothes were pretty plain. Stripes or checks were about as fancy as it got. Flower prints on girls' clothes, but in a wide range of colours, not just the sugary pink/lilac pastels. Fair Isle or Aran jumpers/cardigans if you had a very good knitter in the family or somebody had enough money to buy a fancy knit from a department store.

This advert is from the 1980s, I think, but it's unimaginable that they would use it now, which is depressing.

Im not choosing MY words carefully. I am trying to decide whether the staff at Tavistock or the parents taking there children to the clinic are #$$%%&.
Can the Minister consider criminal offences against all those involved we know they had poor record keeping but there should be enough to ship a sizeable number of this lot off to a stay at a luxury prison. IT IS CHILD ABUSE. How come no one calls out what it is. Have we lost our care for children ?

I would love to know how these referrals happened. Presumably parents took these children to a GP, described some "symptoms" and obtained a referral. But what symptoms?

Between the ages of 2 - 5 my son was pretty gender non-conforming. He strongly favoured stereotypical 'girls' clothes and 'girls' toys. His play tended to involve dress up in princess dresses or using fabric to create dresses, trousers on his head to simulate long hair (we did leave his hair to grow at his request but he wanted Rapunzel hair). He favoured pink, glitter, pretty stationery, mermaids, unicorns, rainbows and played with Barbies and a dolls house. He has only ever had female friends (at 8 this has remained, he does not play with boys). He would make comments like "I wish I was a girl". When I asked why he'd like to be a girl, he'd say so he could have long hair. At the time many of our male friends had long hair and his female nursery keyworker had very short hair so we had lots of good examples to talk about how people can have any kind of hairstyle they want, regardless of if they are a boy or a girl.

His younger brother is the most stereotypical 'boy' imaginable, so it's been interesting to see how preferences for play etc seem to just be there when they're born in many ways.

If I had taken my GNC son to the GP (say around 2019 when he was 4), would I have been able to get a referral to GIDS based on the presentation I describe? I'd be so interested to read those referrals (anonymised of course) to see what people thought warranted a referral. It's absolutely mad to me.

All my son needed was to be able to play how he wanted without judgement OR celebration.

I wouldn’t assume that the referrals were coming from GPs.

Remember that mermaids and other activist organisations were also referring children.

I would bet quite a lot of money that the vast majority of referrals for young children came in that way.

Mermaids think under 7s should still be referred because of the long waiting list

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12905019/transgender-charity-mermaids-7s-nhs-gender-clinic.html

Perhaps gi should be checked when the mother birthing unit has her a first scan? Get the wee mite in really early. Except, it can't be because it's fucking nonsense.

The DM article gives a pretty full background to Mermaids.

There was a lot of brown and orange around in the 70s and I, for one, would like some of that back.

In a sane world parents who took a 3 or 4 year old child to a "Gender Clinic" would immediately be sectioned for serious mental illness or questioned by police for possible child abuse.

tbh, the referral should probably go to some sort of MBP diagnosis service for the parents masquerading as a children’s service.

Just not on the walls and carpets as well as the clothes, though, right?

I'm just trying to compare the apparent ease with which these parents are getting referrals from the GP. From the ages of 2-5, I had to proper fight to get referrals from the GP for my DC for hearing loss/glue ear, speech therapy and ASD assessment.

The best thing about the new hubs was the idea that they will be integrated with general CAMHS. Though I do worry that the problem with GIDS becoming a major income stream for the Tavi at a time of austerity, meaning that they had too much clout to be under proper governance scrutiny, may be repeated. The best safeguard would be pressuring this government and the next to make GP practices and CAMHS major funding priorities for the NHS. The question is always what is going to get deprioritised as a result.

Suzy Green referred children directly, even when their own GPs refused.