When Children Transition

More and more children are coming out as transgender. Why?

No one really knows, but my guess is that they now have positive role models. I don’t think that there is any change in the number of trans-children, but now they feel safer and now they see other children who have come on and they now have a vocabulary to describe their feelings. Also parents and others are better at recognizing the signs of transgenderism. Some of the children are transitioning in elementary school and in kindergarten. Many times the classmates are accepting, but their parents are not,

Mother of transgender girl says adults, not children, taunt her
PinkNews
by Staff Writer
September 12, 2011

The mother of a ten-year-old transgender girl in Worcester has told how adults, rather than children, taunt and harass her daughter.

The 36-year-old woman, who has not been named to protect her daughter’s identity, told the Worcester News that while the girl’s classmates had largely accepted her, other parents and adults had not
[…]
Her family took the decision over the summer to allow her to return to school as a girl and say her headteacher has been “fantastic” about the issue.
[…]
“Some of the parents were unhappy she was allowed to go into the school. They were walking past, coughing, and saying, ‘That’s that freak family. That’s that freak child’.”

She added: “I don’t expect people to understand. I just don’t want people abusing my child.

“I don’t want her to be called a freak. I want her to be left alone.”

Hate is taught. What are the parents teaching their children? That it is OK to be a bigot?

When I read or hear about stories like this, the song from South Pacific, Youve Got To Be Carefully Taught comes to mind…

You've got to be taught
To hate and fear,
You've got to be taught
From year to year,
It's got to be drummed
In your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade,
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught before it's too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You've got to be carefully taught!

Oh, it is so true. Bigotry is passed along generation to generation and we have to break the chain.

There is one other thing that I want to mention, I hear a lot of older trans-people say, “Oh the kids have it so easy now a days”… WRONG! They do not have it easier, just different. In our childhood we learned at a were early age not to discuss our feelings of being trans or we were picked on out in the playground. But it can be a hundred times worst for an “Out” trans-child and they are at an age when they haven’t learned coping skills yet. So please stop and think before you say that they have it easier.