STEP THREE
“Stop making parents the enemy.”
“With a huge rise in kids and teens identifying as transgender at school, the question that keeps being asked is: Should teachers ‘out’ students to their parents? . . . actually this question misses the point entirely. It’s . . . rather a question of how can we best support kids in distress? In nearly every situation the best support comes from schools and parents working together, not through creating cloaks of secrecy.”
If a student asks a teacher to call her/him by a new name or different pronouns, the teacher should require a letter from the parents. Social transition is life altering. Both of the arguments used to justify teachers acting without parental permission are rife with contradictions:
(1) Gender dysphoric teens are at increased risk of suicide.
“This narrative has been proven to be exaggerated, misinterpreted and misrepresented . . . telling distressed kids that they cannot trust their parents, and should keep secrets from them, is a dangerous idea.”
(2) The parents may not be supportive.
“The word supportive, in this case, is twisted up to mean only one thing: parents willing to socially transition their kid without question.” Most parents are supportive. “At the same time, they do not think transition is a cure-all for their kid’s distress. . . . They may know that their teen has co-morbidities such as ADHD or disordered eating that is influencing their gender confusion.”
In the office of this teen’s school her parent noticed a poster. It read “Feelings aren’t facts. Feelings are real but they aren’t always reality. Feeling like a failure doesn’t make you a failure. Allow feelings to come and go without judging yourself for having them.”
“Wouldn’t it be nice,” the parent writes, “if we could teach kids that message with regard to their bodies . . . ‘Feelings aren’t facts. Feeling your body is wrong doesn’t make your body wrong. Allow these feelings to come and go without judging yourself.’ This is how schools can truly support gender non-conforming kids.”
Dr. Jonathan Haidt would agree. The subtitle of his book The Coddling of the American Mind is “How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure.” One of the bad ideas is that feelings are fact and should be acted on.
We know from God’s Word that each of us is either male or female (Genesis 1:27; 2:18-22; 5:1-2), and we know from science that every cell in our body bears witness to this fact.
Related posts
How Schools Can Better Support Gender Non-Conforming Kids II: Stop asking for “preferred pronouns”
Gender dysporia: What you need to know Part I
Gender dysphoria: What you need to know Part II
Transgender questions, facts, and concerns 3
