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?

Does the man work at the school?
I would not be comfortable with my 8 year old listening to a grown man talking about who he fancies, why do they need to learn this way? And so close to the end of term, all absolutely bizarre

I think as a ‘range of human beings’ that could have been truly inspirational or interesting for an end of term assembly for 8 year old children, they were truly scraping the bottom of the barrel with that one.

My lovely kind 90 year old eternal-Peter-Pan father would have told some interesting tales of his time as a child in the war. He wouldn’t have centred himself and who he ‘fancied’.

Ugh why I am even bothering? How can people even think this is normal? It’s a perverse and concerning decision for a school senior leadership team to a) make that choice for young children and b) to deceive parents.

Fuck that. No grown man should be coming into school and talking to children about who they fancy. It’s creepy.

It absolutely would be appropriate for 8 year olds to let them know that some men marry other men and some women marry other women.

In a class of 30, there will be at least 1-2 gay kids, and it's really important for them to grow up realising that being gay is perfectly normal. It's even better if they see gay as being normal before they themselves realise they are gay as this will make sure they are happy and content with themselves, and don't try and delude themselves that they've been born in the wrong gender or other such nonsense as a way of coping.

I would not want anyone who disagrees around children.

8 year olds do not yet know they are, or may be, gay.

As I've said introducing the idea of alternative families is something that can be done in more subtle ways than having a cross dressing man come into school at the end of term to tell the children he fancies both boys and girls. If you don't appreciate why this might be the case, I suggest maybe you ought to consder the issue a little bit more.

I agree that children should not have the idea implanted in their mind that they can choose their sex, or that feeling a little bit different or non conforming might mean that they are the opposite sex.

Children can be non conforming for all sorts of reasons; not all to do with being nascently same sex attracted. Being same sex attracted might be a suitable topic for puberty, when children's nascent feelings of attraction are really starting to consolidate - not when they are 8 years old.

These kids should be outside doing sports, PE, designing age appropriate fun things not having agendas shoved down their throats.
What is happening to this country?!! This should be illegal. The child is only 8!

Please read my original post where I did make it clear that I was against the idea of a member of the TQ+ 'community' visiting a school.

I don't intent on engaging with you any further.

In any other context, that kind of conversation with a child could be viewed as grooming. I'd be asking head/governors if they are happy to allow grooming in school. To think it's appropriate would ring loud alarm bells. I'd be asking very uncomfortable questions.

For the children, it does open questions on adults they can trust, adults to avoid and how some are very persuasive.
Yes, some children will be gay as they mature, but that's a subject to approach in an age appropriate way, showing adults getting on with life with same sex partner not some dodgy creep grooming kids telling them his fetish.

Excellent post.

8 year old primary school children are not an audience for adult man to discuss his sexual preferences with. Anti child safeguarding posters who argue that this is how children should be treated in school demonstrate an ignorance of learning, children's rights to age appropriate education and safeguarding.

It's evident that this is why the school dealt with it in such a cack handed way. They know that if they'd said they'd got a random man in to talk about being a woman one day and a man the next etc, no sane parent would have offered theoir child up as his audience.

I've got 2 boy teens. 19 year old is G. 17 year old is B.
My brother has 3 younger DC (10,8,6) . My teens cannot imagine any situation where it would be appropriate to tell the small people they are G/B EXCEPT when they are asked.
Eg. 10 year old asked my 17 year old "have you ever fancied a boy?" He said yes. "Have you ever kissed a boy?" Again he said yes. 10 year old said "oh cool"
That's it. No fuss, no drama.

My own DC have always known about same sex relationships. My own best friend is in a same sex open marriage and they have a shared boyfriend. Again, this is just something that is. No fuss, no drama.

Despite that, I'd have been fuming if they'd attended a talk that I had withdrawn them from!

Of course some of them do

Honestly. I vividly remember having a crush on a boy in my class when I was 8/9.
My children have all talked about who they think is pretty and might marry when they grow up from very young.

There's a surprise.

I'd actually state that and why were they doing it in this way because it was leading you to a place where you felt you were unable to make a fully informed choice and that they were deliberately withholding information which was ultimately the reason for you withdrawing consent not necessarily the content of the event which you had no knowledge of.

It's not ok. Schools need to do better at communicating and building trust with parents otherwise doing these type of talks is actually counter productive.

They should be about building trust with the community - that requires full transparency. Without it, it just leads to hostility which isn't in the interests of the speaker themselves!

I expect most 8 year olds know this anyway. In any case, that is something that can easily be talked without getting a speaker in to describe his personal preferences which is completely inappropriate.

If you read my other posts you'll see I'm in full agreement with those who think this talk was inappropriate.
My only point here was that the poster I was asking about seemed to be saying that it's adequate for children of this age to learn about hetero relationships (in an age-appropriate 'mummies and daddies' way of course), and that it was unnecessary/not appropriate for them to learn that e.g. some children have two mummies.

You might have known a gay couple. Obvs when you were young probably less people were out and obvs there was much less media representation

If they have gay parents or know someone in a gay relationship, which is quite possible, ofc they will. Or see in media. I personally found out at 7 when I heard my parents discussing the 2013 gay marriage bill.

@AliasGrace47, why are you resurrecting all of these dozens of zombie threads?