In which I look at why we should not present the idea of trans-ness to children.
Concept of Self in Child Development is very important.
This concept has been evaluated for many years in psychology. The basics are that kids develop a sense of self over time and this is relative to feedback they receive from caregivers. These caregivers are first parents. Second, we see that teachers or other close family members come into play.
The concept of being an individual is not innate or necessarily present at birth. This most basic concept and how one feels about it is the bottom of a pyramid on which self-esteem is built. We all know that we want children with high self-esteem because these people tend to function as healthier adults.
This short time period is one of lightening speeds of growth both externally and internally. The success of one realizing that they are, in fact, separate from their parents can even be shocking for babies. This is a time when what is real and tangible is not just important, it is what forms the ability to cognitively think. We must first gain understanding of the physical world before we are asked to analyze subjective concepts.
Thus, to introduce the concept that some children are not what they seem to be is wildly damaging to children. Instead of striding forward to become safe and confident in the body a child was given, they are now asked to question the most basics of reality- themselves.
We see children between the ages of 2-6 exploring the world with fervor and excitement. They are not often questioning themselves in this exploration. They move forward, grab, jump, swing, taste, bite, tiptoe, caress, smack… all of these actions being done with little thought for themselves and most brain activity going into a simple “what happens, how do they react, what is this spacial world made of?” The child does not grab things with gender, they do not caress a puppy with gender, they do not smack their mother’s leg for attention with gender on their mind.
Gender comes into none of these things because gender is not a concept, it is and should be a fact at this age. It should be one of the few immutable characteristics that a child can feel safe inside of. We can permit that the child may not feel good about that gender later in life, but that is not now.
It is extremely detrimental to overall development to ask a child to question themselves at this age. We would never ask them to start thinking about if they want to wear blue contacts over their brown eyes – because what we know is that their brown eyes are absolutely perfect and beautiful. We would never tell a 5 year old that maybe they wish they had better legs and should start to think about how they are going to get better legs as soon as possible.
For a child, gender is no different than these other factual body parts. It simply has very little actual importance. Gender and “gender roles” only play as much a role in development as the adults around them make it into. Just 25 years ago, American society had really gotten far away from forcing gender stereotypes onto their children. Perhaps we had girls and they absolutely had a play tool box. Many of us had boys who had a doll-baby. We didn’t care and we made sure our kids didn’t care, BUT that they did feel good about the gender they just were.
Gender was literally ceasing to be important. Now, this doesn’t mean that it didn’t play a role in who our children are and were. We all know that boys play more rough and girls will quietly play with dolls and stuffed animals for hours. These truths can never be drawn across all children, but it’s still absurd to deny it applies to a lot or most. I had one daughter who boy-moms told me all the time (with large amounts of sympathy), “Oooohh, she is like raising a boy!” She operated with wild abandon for physical safety and could be extremely rambunctious. She climbed highest in the trees leaving me shaking my fist from the ground and fearing for her life. She once got into a neighbors work truck, with the help of a girlfriend, and pulled out a 5 gallon bucket of paint and “painted” our fence. Myself and the other girl’s mom were mind-blown that our 6 year olds had even gotten a 5 gallon paint bucket open, something I still struggle with today.
Today, that “acts like a boy” child is the most feminine woman with the longest fake nails, the most dresses, and the most fiery attitude of all my girls. She is not and never was a boy, but she was allowed to act like one with no one questioning the root of her identity.
Sometimes, kids are just kids and should just be kids. Ok, not sometimes. Always.
To present a child’s mind with the concept that they may not even be who it plainly appears they are is an immense amount of pressure to handle. It is an immense amount of pressure for an adult to handle this possibility.
We are completely interrupting the most basic developmental stage and interjecting a poison. The poison is, “Your body is a lie,” or even, “Your body could be a lie!” This is a terrible idea to plant into anyone’s mind. It does not make children who may grow up to be trans any safer. It poisons the development of an entire generation and leaves them open to insidious people and programs for the rest of their lives.
Whether these children latch onto the trans-train or not, all children in this generation are being violently forced to believe that some of them are only better with visit after visit after visit to doctors. They are never perfect and good because of what they *do* or who they make themselves into. They are not judged by the content of their character anymore, they are judged by which route they take. And there should be no routes.
Children have never in history been handed the reigns on changing themselves.
Being a child is one solid growth pattern that should never be convoluted. Just like we know that a child who suffers abuse at a young age will have a very hard time forming positive attachments as an adult, what do you think is going to happen to a child who was raised to question what body they were gifted when they arrived here? There is no place where a child’s mind should be laden with such ideas.
It not only causes a break between a child’s belief in the innate goodness of themselves, it then often leads to obsessing about themselves. We are left with either a shaky ungrounded adult or a narcissist. It’s no wonder because the child under 12 was never supposed to be questioning themselves this deeply at this age. They were supposed to be questioning gravity, the weather, adults around them, the smooshiness of playdough. To throw the mind into such an irreverent circle at these ages could be seen as torture.
I’m sure that someone with more than an almost-bachelor’s in Psychology could flesh all of this out even further. I am surprised that I have not heard this perspective from other prominent people and psychologists who are speaking out about “trans children”.
Clarify: I do not believe in trans children. I believe there are trans adults, but that there are somewhere around .03% of adults who have true gender dysphoria. Should they have rights? Absolutely! But I will not be compelled to see people like Josh Seiter as trans. I spent many many years working with and in the trans community. I am no hater.
But autogynophilia and trans are two different things. And our kids getting sucked into a life of castration, catastrophizing, and never feeling like they are good enough in the body they were gifted by whatever God there is – no. I’m not down with that noise.
Scarlet Pearl 