7 year old pronouns

[BeechLeaves]

A year old child in my child’s school has started to use they/them pronouns. I won’t go into the details of the child just to protect their confidentiality and be respectful.

However, I would like to know what I could or should say to my child about this. Our children aren’t in the same class, it’s two form entry. Parents and school and both fully on board.

I posted previously on a diff channel because I couldn’t access this one to start with.

Continue as you were until you are officially informed/directed, then take it further using some of the excellent advice posted on other threads?

Think I may have misunderstood. Do you mean your DD has been told to use plural pronouns for this singular child?

I would be interested in what the school told the kids.

Have a look at the new draft DfE guidelines below that are out for consultation. They make it very clear that this nonsense shouldn't be anywhere near primary children - "Primary school aged children should not have different pronouns to their sex-based pronouns used about them"
Parents need to speak up about this, otherwise all our children get faced with anti fact / science gibberish.
I'd probably send a copy of the guidance to the school with a brief letter stating that I was not asking for any information about the child but asking what the other children have been told in terms of pronouns and how this complies with the draft guidance? I'd acknowledge that this is a likely a vulnerable child, however any decisions about pronoun use has an impact on other children in the school as they develop their critical thinking skills.

I'd also state that this letter is not to be discussed with your child. You are acting as a responsible parent wanting to ensure that your child's school is not promoting an unscientific, contested belief as factual to young children.

Tricky but it's now up to parents to insist that these levels of social grooming of children in schools stop. Any 7 year old who thinks they're neither a boy or girl is likely to have been influenced by an adult who's failed to protect them. Time for schools to started recognising this for the emotional abuse that it is.

https://consult.education.gov.uk/equalities-political-impartiality-anti-bullying-team/gender-questioning-children-proposed-guidance/supporting_documents/Gender%20Questioning%20Children%20%20nonstatutory%20guidance.pdfy

This is also useful to share with the school - it's a clinical psychologist's devastating account of the psychological harms caused to young children when the adults pretend a child is not the sex that they actually are:

https://www.transgendertrend.com/childhood-social-transition/

Excellent advice, MrsOverton.

Also worth noting/referencing/reading the Cass Interim Report, which discusses 'social transitioning', and how it is not a neutral act.

Its far, far too young to expose children to lofty philosophical theory about 'gender'.

Children this age are still forming their very broad brush ideas about sex, stereotypes, personality, etc.

A very difficult position for schools to be in, but they are in my experience often very good at dealing with difficult situations.

I would hope they'd deal with this with sensitivity and grounded common sense.

Agreed Arabella. Schools need to rediscover their critical thinking about this and to start using safeguarding principles when faced with parents insisting that their young children are confused about their sex. It's age inappropriate and evidently an adult led idea, especially with primary aged children.

Helping parents to find the skills to stand up to their teenagers who get caught up in all this is also needed. Teenagers are so certain they're right about everything, even ideas that are bad for them. We almost need a script for parents to use in the face of unreasonable teenage demands - although the Mumsnet mantra of "No is a complete sentence" is always attractive.

Children aged 7 still need supervision brushing their teeth. They believe in Father Christmas and the tooth fairy. They're still learning their times tables and doing weekly spelling tests practising digraphs and trigraphs, and beginning to understand speech marks and so on.

No way are they able to comprehend this and no way should they be forced to prop up the adultification of a peer. Just no.

Thank you all. There’s a typo in my first post, should have said ‘7 year old.’ I’ll read all the links.

So the school haven’t actually said this. It was the parent that spoke to me about it.

I know that the child is now using they/them pronouns in class. The teacher is using the pronouns. At the request of the child and parent.

The child is in a diff class to mine, so I’m not sure if there will be any kind of ‘inclusivity’ talk from the school about it at all. Or if it will just say in that class. But I am worried about social contagion of the concept spilling out into the playground.

I guess I don’t know if I’m overly worrying about this and actually, if the other child is in a diff class to mine, should I even bring it up?

I feel sad because I’ve only just started talking about puberty with my kid, let alone gender identity. Although I have told my child many times that you can’t change sex. Boys can have long hair, girls can have short hair but you can’t change if you’re a boy or a girl.

Excellent suggestion for a response to what your child has told you.

So I posted this on a different thread but I think it hold true here (though I've edited for relevance the last paragraph.

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If you venture to the Relationships board it will be easy to find many examples of people being gaslit by their partner (and sometimes family) into believing things that are not true in order to manipulate their behaviour and responses to that person/people.

Quite rightly, you will also find that the responses to such situations is to point out the toxicity of this situation and to withdraw from it.

Yet ironically when we are discussing children being gaslit en mass by people who have an obligation to keep them safe (an obligation that extends to not just their physical welfare, but mental health as well) then there seems to be a cohort of people that believe that supporting a false narrative for one child justifies undermining the best interests of their peers.

Odd, when I would hope that when it comes to protecting children from bring manipulated we would hold ourselves to a higher standard than we would for adults?

It's an ongoing theme re: this topic that's fuelled by a narrative of "most vulnerable/oppressed" - specifically formed to justify making accommodations at the expense of others and to manipulate behaviours/responses.

Yet the evidence for this assertion is very thin indeed. Are some "trans" children vulnerable- yes of course, but it's not necessarily their gender identity that's the core factor given the very high comorbidity rate.

Nor should it be assumed that this makes them more vulnerable that other children in the school who may be facing significant challenges of their own.

Safeguarding isn't a game of top trumps.

There is a duty to look after the best interests of all children in a school and teaching children that some people can acquire a special status (and thus control) that compels others to police their behaviour and language is the antithesis of safeguarding - especially when expressing discomfort or rejecting this expectation is punishable.

Sympathies OP. It is sad that these confusing adult beliefs are being foisted on children. And your uncertainty about all this is the dilemma we all face. We're in a place where raising concerns can be interpreted as bullying or taking a prurient interest in a child. Often those charges are led by parents with children caught up in all this, completely unable to appreciate the dilemmas for all children in terms of psychological development, trust in adults and safeguarding that this poses Thus other parents remain silent for fear of upsetting others or being called a bigot.

I'm now of the view that it's our responsibility to speak out - calmly, using evidence while insisting that our children's factual knowledge must not be compromised by pandering to the demands of individual children and parents or the trans lobby groups that have been allowed to run amok in schools.

I would definitely be asking the school why they are not following the new guidance on this. This is not just about one child, there is strong evidence of social contagion.

This:

Young children think that the external stuff IS what makes a girl or boy. They don’t know any different.
We do. We need to hold that space for them. The space where they can do anything they want, be anything they want – but not change their sex or fly to Mars, because neither of those is actually possible. We can imagine it, fantasise about it, but we need to hold that space for them. Because they don’t know.

We are the adults. If we aren't prepared t do the "adulting", we shouldn't be having children. Parents can't afford to be frightened of upsetting their children, or having their children angry with them on occasion - that does with the territory. It's the parents job to support their child, and teach them about the world - not to take the easy way out when the child is on a self-propelled course for destruction.

This is all so helpful, that DFE guidance is really useful. What I will say, is that I genuinely think that the parents think they’re doing the right thing. They are committed and caring parents.

But what you say overtons is correct. I’m scared to say what I really think in case I’m thought of as a bully or bigot. It’s not helped by the fact that I kind of know the parent. You know how hard it can be to ‘criticise’ other people’s parenting anyway. And it was just an in passing conversation rather than one where we sit down and chat about it all.

I mainly feel sad for the child. I used to want to be a boy when I was in primary school. I wasn’t into girly stuff like dolls or dresses. I can’t imagine what would have happened if someone had actually gone along with that thought. I just hadn’t yet realised how awesome women are!

Make sure you recognise the guidance is out to consultation. But I think you can say that as it is basically a description of the law, there's not a case for going against it as you're going against the law. Where things are not black and white, it says so in the document.

It’s all so sad. All these upset children hating their bodies or stereotypes or whatever it is. And rather than explaining that we need to challenge stereotypes, parents just tell children that they can opt out of their sex. It’s a bit like with anxiety, where if you avoid stuff it makes it worse because you’re confirming that the anxiety was right.

I just never expected this in my school so young. Maybe that’s naïve but I really thought it would be a secondary school age thing.

And the thing that pisses me off is that this all gets lumped in with middle aged men wanting to be women. They’ve been through puberty, had their careers and families and are now leading the conversation about children. Anyway, won’t go on a rant, I know you know it all already.

Also, does anyone know when the draft guidance might be accepted?

The consultation ends some time in March. The adult trans lobbyists are ramping up their objections and powerful as they are, I can't see that they will get much traction. Responsible adults all know that children can't consent to this.

#OperationLetThemSpeak is proving remarkably successful in demonstrating the nature of the adults pushing this in schools, the NHS etc. Arguing that young children or mentally vulnerable teenagers with a host of co morbidities must be allowed to "change sex" on demand is increasingly being seen for the gaslighting the young that it is.

The challenge will be to support the thousands of young people caught up in all this and their parents who have (for a variety of reasons) been unable to protect them from these dangerous to children beliefs. That's the ongoing tragedy but why the rest of us must speak up to get this adult ideology out of schools.

https://sex-matters.org/posts/schools-and-safeguarding/what-hilary-cass-needs-to-tell-schools/

You may find this link helpful OP - lots of stuff to go at.

"She [Cass] observed that “social transition” is not a neutral act but a major psychosocial intervention that may affect whether a child’s gender distress disappears or becomes long-lasting."

I'd ask the school what expertise/advice/guidance they have engaged with that means they feel confident in rejecting the findings of the intermin Cass Report that has been fully accepted and is being implemented by the NHS.

"Supporting full social transitioning in schools is incompatible with child safeguarding and the duty of care that schools have for all their pupils. Schools are not clinics, and teachers are not mental-health professionals: it is not appropriate for them to be overseeing a psychosocial intervention with such potentially grave consequences."

Given social transition is not neutral, there is the possibility of harm to both the child and their peers:

"In 2012 the Intercom Trust (a regional LGBT lobby group), Cornwall Council, and Devon and Cornwall Police published their first version of an influential guide to “transgender children” in schools. It encouraged schools to adopt the concept of the transgender child, and to socially transition children, in order to comply with its own interpretation of the Equality Act.
The guide stated that gender-reassignment discrimination was an asymmetric protection, whereby only trans children were protected against discrimination. It claimed that schools were “therefore free to take special steps to meet the needs of Trans pupils without being accused of discriminating against pupils who are not Trans”.
This view of the law is inaccurate, since special steps taken to meet the demands of children identifying as trans could result in direct or indirect belief or sex discrimination against other children. Furthermore, schools always need to consider their duty of care to all children before considering special steps (such as lying about a child’s sex) which impact others."

There's loads of really good advice here OP.

I'm going to copy a comment of mine from a different thread in case it's of use when you speak to the school. In all my discussions with my daughters' school to date, I have found it beneficial to position two different beliefs: a) the belief that we all have a gender identity and b) the belief that we don't/sex is immutable. Under my belief that there are two sexes, I don't identify as a woman, I just am one. I don't believe in gender identity. The law is very much in favour of this positioning, with multiple tribunals now being won based on it and the new government guidance also rooted in it. Positioning it this way has also allowed me to be respectful that others hold a different belief - in this case a belief which means that the child is requesting they/them pronouns, presumably because the child isn't "identifying" as a boy or girl - while also pushing back on that belief being forced on to me and my children as a truth.

I'll put the copy of my comment and a link to the thread it's from in the next post.

Copy of comment (formatting gone a bit weird, sorry!):

I'm following up on something I posted earlier up in the thread. I'm putting it here in case it's helpful to anyone.

This discussion has really helped me to clarify how to approach the current promotion of preferred pronouns at my daughters' school. Although I don't know if the teachers that run the LGBT club, which is putting up all the posters, identify as non-binary or are just allies of trans and non-binary identified people, the end result is the same: these posters are actively promoting gender identity as a "thing" in the school.

I've already shared a copy of my response to the draft government guidance with the school and am in conversations with members of the SLT. The direction of travel seems to be positive and I'm keen to keep the dialogue as constructive as possible. There are clearly some very activist staff at the school, so I understand that it's not a quick or easy job to sort this out. I've now sent an email which includes the following main points:

1. a reminder (with reference to my guidance feedback) that the guidance sets out the fact that not everyone believes that we all have a gender identity
2. following the Forstater appeal, the right to a lack of belief in gender identity, as well as the belief that sex is immutable, is protected in law. Screenshot and link to tweet from Anya Palmer on my earlier post.
3. a request that the school follows up on whether this promotion of gender identity belief fits within the existing laws of the Equality Act and the statutory Teaching Standards on how personal beliefs should be handled by schools. I've asked if it should be handled in the same way as religious beliefs.
4. a summary of why autistic and looked after children are particularly vulnerable to believing that they are in the wrong body. I've also summarised the impact on SEN children when using preferred pronouns for others, WRT confusion and an impact on their ability to learn.
6. I appreciate this isn't my thread, so I hope it's not a derail to say thank you to everyone for the discussion and a special thank you to MrsO for (as ever) the invaluable insight and clarity on how beliefs should be handled in school.

Link to relevant page on thread:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4992220-non-binary-teachers?page=12

Screenshot relating to point 2 below

Honestly I'd be asking what other rules of English are optional and can be varied according to children's identity.

My dyslexic DD used to tell me over and over that SPAG didn't matter to her and she didn't want to learn how to do it. Can she just not use any punctuation because it's part of her identity? And not get marked down for her entirely punctuation free work?

I said in another thread, schools enabling this shit will have terrible SATs results. Someone needs to do this analysis. How can the poor kids grapple with the rules (such as they are) of the English language and make it make sense and - you know - learn when they're simultaneously told one person can alter all those rules on a whim. But you have no way of knowing when this will happen.

The pronouns rubbish is the bit of transactivism that annoys me the most.

Obviously it's not the worst aspect (the women sexually assaulted by male criminals in prison, or the rape victims turned away from support or the children sterilised would be that) but it annoys me the most.

It's the most nonsensical and the most clearly an egregious attempt to bully others.

Third person pronouns IN ENGLISH are in the gift of the speaker and based on externally observable sex class. This is just a fact. The vast majority do not consent to the rules of the language just being arbitrarily changed.

Making them individual is pointless - you might as well just use their name then.

But if you are going to do it and have 'gender based' pronouns then it needs to be for ALL people and in all situations, otherwise the language is inconsistent and impossible to learn.

Doing this to children in schools is abusive.

Full stop.

And definitely send a copy to the school governors too.