School parents join forces to fight ‘trans propaganda’

Doctors who preform gender surgeries are raising the alarm about current teaching packs and youth referral rates

Tell that to the trans boy I worked with. Who couldn't talk to his parents because he knew they'd disapprove.

Or the trans boy who DID have the support of his parents, who blossomed with relief, when after 3 years, he got help.

Or the trans girl, I currently teach, who acts out so much due to lack of support that she will probably be expelled within the next 3 or 4 months.

NO 'pushing of an agenda', just very troubled children.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6401593/Whistleblower-teacher-makes-shocking-claim-autistic.html

It is troubled and vulnerable children who are most susceptable to the idea that their problems can all be solved by transitioning. But it doesnt work. See the many many many tragic detransitioming stories emerging

4thwavenow.com/2018/12/19/the-theatre-of-the-body-a-detransitioned-epidemiologist-examines-suicidality-affirmation-and-transgender-identity/

Or the trans girl, I currently teach, who acts out so much due to lack of support that she will probably be expelled within the next 3 or 4 months.

And you think chemical castration and cancer inducing medicines will improve that kids lot?

health.10ztalk.com/2019/04/12/five-staff-resign-at-leading-uk-transgender-youth-clinic/

Gagajo How many trans children does the average teacher come across in the course of a career?

I try to avoid personal comments but here goes.
GagaJo, you seem to feel you are the site expert on trans issues and that gives you the right to accuse anyone who expresses anything other than total support for your views, as lacking in empathy.
I haven't seen any comments from people expressing a level of concern as lacking in empathy. What I've read are genuine concerns, based on evidence, about the complexity of trans issues for all involved.

trisher the Spectator journalist, Madeleine Kearns, currently works in America but is Scottish and was writing about 'trans training' she received while working as a teacher in Scotland.
Do you not believe what she said about that?

gagajo teachers who are loaded with work would not seem to be the best people to assess how to proceed with a child who claims to be trans.

Teachers are the ones who find themselves facing an unhappy child, as you say, but having to deal with the situation without adequate back-up means teachers will not always get it right.

Tell that to the trans boy I worked with. Who couldn't talk to his parents because he knew they'd disapprove.

Or the trans boy who DID have the support of his parents, who blossomed with relief, when after 3 years, he got help.

Does 'support' mean only affirming that a child is trans? Approving?

Is there no other possible type of support?

FarNorth the only concrete example she gave was as I said American. One American mother shared her story with me. ‘My young teen daughter first started thinking she was a boy after attending a school presentation about transgender children. After she told her teachers they changed her name and referred to her by masculine pronouns. The school did not inform me or my husband. After we withdrew her from this school, I later discovered that she had shared a room with the boys on an overnight school trip. Apparently it was common to allow children’s self-proclaimed gender identity to override sex differences when determining where they should sleep.’
Not Scotish, Not British.
And actually the training looked quite good to me. I liked the Barbie to GI Joe scale and was wondering where I would fit on it.

Hoping you're not too near the GI Joe end of the spectrum trisher as you'll have to start making adjustments to your life and, most likely, to your body instead of just proceeding as a female who is happy to have certain characteristics that are stereotypically considered 'masculine'.

Just as gagajo earlier identified liking opposite sex clothing and pastimes as being a 'problem'.

trisher, you seem determined to miss the point about instruction being given to teachers :

During my training, we were told to avoid ‘outing’ potential transgender children to their families. If the child so wished, we might want to keep mummy and daddy out of the loop. Un-believably, this is in line with Scottish government guidelines.

Well said Iam64...I was just returning to the thread to say a similar thing.

Having spent most of my childhood wanting to be a boy I am thankful that the trans issue was far in the future.
I am happily now to be female. I understand ( I think) the reasons why I wanted to be a boy.
My daughter as a young teen also wanted to be male and have her breasts removed. A couple of years later she changed altogether and is also happy to be female and a mother.

I am less clear what was making her feel that way But it does leave me thinking that young people are fluid full stop.

So I think that nothing should be done beyond complete acceptance of whatever the young person is feeling.
When they reach around 18 then it is quite likely things will sort themselves out.
I have also seen a female specialist talk of very similar experience of wanting to be a boy and then happily growing into being female.

My conclusion is that some of us are very fluid for a time. Therefore acceptance is key and nothing done like hormone blockers which have all kinds of effects some permanent and not healthy like sterility.

Young people need safeguarding to be themselves and to feel accepted as they are.

The complicated issues of adult trans is something else. And I am not commenting on that here.

Exactly, pinkquartz.

When they reach around 18 then it is quite likely things will sort themselves out
I think that is exactly the sort of comment children who are transgender don't want to hear.
FarNorth I can remember exactly the same sort of comments being made about sex education and contraception. In fact a very long time ago a friend nearly lost her job because she had a speaker in to discuss contraception with the group of 15 year olds with learning difficulties she was teaching. Because they weren't 16 she was told they couldn't be taught such things as sex was illegal so they couldn't be doing anything and she was encouraging them to be sexually active. As she said it was obvious they needed advice. There are always people who want to block any advances in sexual education for children and sadly sometimes those people are parents. The priority for every teacher is always the child.

Or the trans girl, I currently teach, who acts out so much due to lack of support that she will probably be expelled within the next 3 or 4 months. And you think chemical castration and cancer inducing medicines will improve that kids lot?

Notanan, at what point did I mention either of those? SUPPORT does not necessarily mean surgery or hormones. I meant TALK and EMPATHY.

NOT supporting children means they end up out of control, dangerous to themselves because they are so distressed.

WHAT do you propose? I'm assuming you've never been in this situation and therefore this is just theoretical for you. Unfortunately for me, this issue has names, personalities and emotions. It's very hard to watch when there is little I can do to help.

I think, Doodledog that on average a teacher encounters a student like this every other year. Every school has a small handful. It is not uncommon. IF they get support at home, they tend to need a lot less at school.

Farnorth, if you choose to willfully misinterpret what I have written, that is your choice. However, the implication of that is that you are likely to do the same thing with the 'facts' that you support. E.g. cherry picking those that suit your point of view and ignoring others that don't. Hardly empirical evidence.

trisher, I'm so glad you see that the child is always the priority. It is heart breaking to watch them struggle. It is SUCH a huge thing for people who are so young to face.

Of course the child is the priority. I have seen nothing on here that would suggest that anyone thinks otherwise.

I don't think that teachers are the best people to deal with this sort of thing, with all due respect. Yes, a teacher can talk and sympathise (or empathise if they have experience in common); but it is absolutely not the role of the teacher to exclude the parents, or to do anything really apart from to be kind, accepting and then refer to specialists. It s not for a teacher to decide whether or not parents would be sympathetic, or whether they should be able to take a part in any decisions that are taken. Frankly, doing so is, IMO, breathtakingly arrogant, at least on the face of it. You have no idea what goes on in families, and neither will you have to live with any consequences of distancing an already troubled child from his or her parents.

You haven't addressed my point about the links between Autism and children who identify as trans. Does that not concern you?

Have you ever known a child who has changed their mind about transitioning?

Doodledog, at NO point have I said teachers would exclude parents.

Schools have a VERY clear and legally mandated process for reporting child protection issues, which are passed through a qualified child protection officer and social services. Once a teacher has reported the issue (whatever it is) they have no more involvement, other than supporting the child emotionally in a teaching and pastoral role.

Any teacher doing anything OTHER than follow the strict procedure are liable to lose their teaching licence.

With respect, these are VERY basic facts that you would easily find if you Googled them.

No, to be honest, I haven't. Every child I've ever taught who seemed to be / id'd as trans continues to live that way. In one case, she went ahead and had trans surgery.

Those who work at the clinics supporting trans children and adults do come across individuals who change their minds. We can't reach definite conclusions based on our individual experience. We need to look to the experts, to the research evidence.
The issue of the way people/children with a diagnosis of ASD do feature more frequently in the trans community. We don't yet have enough research on that. I can say from my experience at work and personally, that the ASD trans community I know, have been confused, uneasy, excluded and found life much more difficult than those without the ASD diagnosis, from very early in their lives. Id say from toddler or earlier in some cases. Does that mean they have always felt they were born in the wrong body? I'd say possibly not as a number of them didn't begin to explore trans issues until their 20's but I don't know. I don't know enough to be definite, I wait for research evidence. Until we have more, I remain cautious about early medical intervention. Psychological support definitely.

People who have anorexia nervosa are unhappy with how their body is, and they are consistent, insistent and persistent about trying to change it.
Their medical treatment does not focus on helping them to achieve their aim, because that would harm their health and probably end up killing them.

Could there be a parallel here with trans people?
Hormone treatment does damage health - there is risk even with HRT for women - and no-one yet knows the results of long term use.

trisher
I don't think saying what a teen wants to hear is the issue.

If my daughter had obtained hormone blockers or had her breasts removed she would have ruined her life. She is now the mother of 5 children and loves them all very much. They were all breast fed. I can only imagine the distress she would have felt if she had unwittingly taken this away from herself.

And if that help had been available I think she might well have taken it. A distressed teen is a very intense experience for them and for their parents.

If a teen can't cope with the changes their body is going through then they need to talk this through with specialists. People who will know the best way forward but not put hormones on the table.

I think there will be a lot of regrets and suicides in the future when some of these young ones feel they have deformed themselves.

What we need as a society is to be brave and allow people to be undecided until they reach an age like 18 and perhaps also accept that for some people it will never be binary.

It means new fresh attitudes and I will welcome the freedom for the young people and the older ones if this can happen.

I know that teens are very dramatic about their state of mind. I have known so many people who have switched their sexuality as well. sometimes more than once.
We are more fluid than we acknowledge.

Farnorth, you are skating dangerously close to classing trans sextuality / gender etc as a mental disturbance. Something that the vast majority of trans people would find terribly offensive.

Do not forget, that homosexuality used to be regarded as a mental disorder but that it was removed from the DSM. Homosexuality is not an illness. Neither is trans sexuality / trans gender.

pinkquartz, How many of us who are secure in our gender have prevaricated about our gender identity? Your daughter may have, but I would posit that 99.5% of us NEVER question it. Saying that teenagers do not know their gender identity is akin to saying teenagers do not know their sexual orientation. A LOT of us are bisexual. Women more so than men. That doesn't mean we switch. It just means we are open to other than the heteronormative model.

The REASON teenagers find their gender dysphoria so distressing is because many of the physical changes they undergo during the teenage years are only correctable by surgery. Hormone treatment (which is INCREDIBLY hard to access - most trans teens are unable to) holds off those changes until they are capable of making an adult decision.