Bit miffed by school...

[CactusMactus]

Received this email from school at 4pm yesterday:

"Dear Parents/Guardians,
We want to inform you that we will be hosting a guest speaker tomorrow to talk about building empathy for others and the importance of being yourself. This speaker is a member of the LGBTQ+ community and will share their experiences to help foster understanding and respect among our pupils.

Please note that this session is not a compulsory part of the national curriculum. If you prefer to withdraw your child from this 30-minute session, kindly let us know by the end of today, and we will make the necessary arrangements.
Thank you for your support."

So I emailed the school asking for a bit more information, I am totally cool with them learning about LGBTQ+ rights, experience and empathy for others... but there is zero information about who this person is and what their agenda is.

Full disclosure I am gender critical. And would object to my daughter being told she could be a man.

The school has not replied to me. So I am past the point of being able to choose whether my 8 year old listens to this talk or not!

Why would the school not share this information earlier? Surely this "person from the LGBTQ+ community" has had to be DBS checked prior to yesterday afternoon? Surely the school knows what the talk is about?

Any advice?

Well that's an argument for having virtually anyone talking to children 🙄

How many people are going round telling random eight year olds exactly who they fancy, completely unprompted?

I mean, I might (if it was appropriate to the conversation) explain to an eight year old who'd assumed otherwise that I don't go out with boyfriends, I go out with girlfriends, or mention a boyfriend in the past when they knew I had a wife now, or whatever was relevant to my situation. But bringing up who I "fancy" as a topic with a load of young children I don't know, and going into detail about exactly which type of people I fancy at what times when I'm dressing in which way, feels kinda skeevy to me.

But the point is that it is a parent's choice when to discuss sensitive matters with their child based on their deep knowledge of their own child. It is not down to the school to choose.
As I have said above. Primary age children need to be taught to respect their fellow human beings. End of. They do not need to be told ... you must respect Mr A, you must respect Ms D etc etc. .... and here is a prime example of one sort of person or another ... and wheel one out. It is inappropriate and crass.
Here's a black person you.. must respect the. Here's a Muslim .... you must respect them. Here's a lesbian .... you must respect them. Where do you stop? How many different examples of the wonderful diversity of humanity are you going to wheel out one by one?
Children need to know they should respect ALL their fellow human beings and treat them with kindness.

How many people are going round telling random eight year olds exactly who they fancy, completely unprompted?

We know precisely what kind of person does this. The number of them with access to children has to be zero.

Of course he/she isn't in a safeguarding role.

Every single time a poster on here gets pulled up on their agenda driven bullshit, they make this claim. "It's my actual job"
Suddenly, they are an NHS worker, a teacher, a civil servant - whatever they think will give them the right to tell you they know better than you. It never fails. 😂

When he said he fancied boys and girls did he mean children? Or was it coyspeak for being bisexual?

But that can be introduced in more subtle ways; certainly at that age. ( via story books which depict different types of family, for example)

Most young children understand that a baby comes " when a Mummy and Daddy love each other"...and that is entirely appropriate. It is too confusing to introduce these sorts of alternative 'realities' in such blunt ways as a 30 minute talk from an LGBTQ+ activist on the last day of term......if indeed that was what the disputed session was to be about.

How did you discover this? Was your child removed from the session in time, and were other parents aware?

The problem as a I see it, is the automatic linking of the LGB with the TQ+.......and this indeed turned out to be the case.

Even then, how would this be appropriate for an end of term event?

What have those automatic defenders, who referred to people as " bigots" and "homophobes" for voicing their concerns, got to say now that the evidence, that most of us suspected right from the start, came to pass?

People have been urged on this thread to loosen up, ignore their own instincts and trust the school........that played out well, didn't it?

Great double speak for pushing boundaries hey.

@CactusMactus Your best bet is to write to the Chair of Governors now documenting your concerns over the process that the school has taken and the content of the meeting with the children. This letter will then have to be addressed at the next governors' meeting, which will be documented, and then this will be visible to Ofsted when inspected. The governors will continue to work over the school holidays and they have to deal with it, rather than just addressing the school, who may try to conveniently ignore it.

And it's appropriate for 8 year olds to hear from him because??
It's an adult self indulgence and he's using children for his own ego trip. Thank heavens there are enough adults on here concerned about safeguarding children who've given some useful advice.

Please formally complain OP. Children are not in school to satisfy the egos of confused men.

You could report this to the Safe schools Alliance. I met some wonderful ladies who will give you the correct information as to what is allowed to be spoken about with regards to this nonsense.

8 years old. It's fucking ludicrous. My DCs at 8 would have been more impressed with being a power ranger than the opposite sex!!

I'm trying to remember being eight years old (so very long ago now) and I'm not at all sure I'd have understood what 'fancies' means in this context. I'd have almost certainly kept very quiet about that until playtime, when it would have been the topic of conversation for all the kids.

I wonder how this man would have answered a child who asked what 'fancies' means? I remember when one of mine asked what a lesbian was and I said a girl or a woman who likes other girls, which she interpreted very sweetly as being about friendship 'oh! I'm a lesbian then because I really like Amy & Camilla & Emma...' Is there an age appropriate way of explaining this? I think not, which clearly means (to me, at least) that this wretched man should never have been allowed to be in the school in the first place.

@CassieMaddox - please do pipe down. If he'd talked about fisting, you'd have popped up with 'this was an ideal opportunity for OP to explain to her 8yo what fisting is all about' would you? Give it a rest.

I find the choice of wording very concerning. The talk shouldn't have happened at all in my opinion but to say boys and girls instead of men and women is massively inappropriate!! It's normalising to children grown men are allowed to be sexually attracted to boys and girls and it must be true because they learned about it in school! Even if it was child speak for men and women it does the same thing. NOT OK

What?? Don't be ridiculous . There is a lot of difference between fisting and relationships.

I have a different opinion to lots of posters on here about "safeguarding". I think most teachers know how to do their job and that the world is not going to end if someone comes into school to talk about themselves, even I I strongly disagree.

I too am confused about how OP knows what was said if her child wasn't there?

Also regarding "age appropriate" introduction to people being gay - in that situation I told my children that adults pair up into a special relationship which is not just friends but about being in love like mummy and daddy are and that gay men have their special relationship with other men and lesbians with other women.

Children aren't thick. They see their parents romantic relationships are different than friendships. It's entirely possible to talk about different relationships in an age appropriate way

I thought exactly the same, @Rightsraptor . I was trying to think of the eight-year-old myself too, and I think most kids barely really comprehend 'fancying' at all at that age. Can't they just enjoy being children at that age? But I don't have experience of kids that age now, so if that applies to today's kids, I can't say for sure. But I expect it mostly does. The last couple of days a bunch of girls about that age have been playing on the green out front, and they've a camping table, and a tablecloth, and some chairs, and it looks like they're having a kind of teddy bears picnic, with dolls and suchlike. I thought it was sweet that kids still do things like that.

The OP explained that despite emailing to say she didn’t want her child to attend, the talk happened first thing in the morning, and the email wasn’t read until later so the child was included. Which considering the parents had such very short notice of the visitor seems very remiss on the schools behalf not to have checked the emails first thing to see if parents wanted their child withdrawn.

Saying we're having a talk from someone from the 'LGBTQ+ community' is an incredibly vague description and I'd wager it was described like that on purpose. A gay or lesbian person sending a message that being same-sex attracted is normal and nothing to be ashamed of would be amazing. But I'm guessing this wasn't what the talk was about...

Of course safeguarding is not a matter of 'differing opinions', but about protocol and procedure.

I agree, strange timing. I thinks it’s a prep for someone

I'd complain. The school were dishonest and showed total disregard for parents; they should have been open about the nature of the talk and provided an opportunity for parents to make an informed decision. And then the talk was from a man who dresses as a woman who told 8 year olds that he fancies boys and girls. This is inappropriate and I'm sorry you were treated so badly OP.

...and even if it was what you described, I still don't think it would have been appropriate for 8 year olds, and certainly not for an end of term event.

I smiply cannot conceive of my granddaughter's school ( she's 9 years old) hosting such an event. Her school's end of term events included a prizegiving ceremony; a years six 'leavers' disco' to which some younger years were invited; school sport's day; a performanceof Shakespeare's 'Misummer Night's Dream'; and an invited ice cream van which came to the playground for free ice creams and lolly ices...not talks by men who liked to cross dress and reveal how they "fancied" both girls and boys.