Do You Trust Them?

One of the criticisms that we face is that there is no long term studies of trans youth, well now there is research going to answer that question.

$1 million federal grant will help study of transgender kids
Washington Post
By David Crary  AP
April 12, 2018

The first large-scale, national study of transgender children, including some as young as 3, is poised to expand thanks to a five-year, $1 million grant awarded Thursday by the National Science Foundation to the professor leading the project.

University of Washington psychologist Kristina Olson, 36, was named winner of the NSF’s annual Alan T. Waterman Award, the government’s highest honor for scientists still in the early phases of their careers. The NSF said the choice was unanimous, and noted that pediatricians are already using her findings to raise awareness about gender diversity.

While the award citation honors Olson for a broad range of her research on children’s perceptions, she has become best known as creator and leader of the TransYouth Project, which is widely considered the most ambitious long-term study of transgender children being conducted in the U.S.

Launched in 2013, the project has recruited more than 300 children ages 3-12 from 45 states, with the goal of tracking their development over 20 years. The NSF grant will help Olson maintain the study as many of the children go through adolescence; she hopes to continue it into their adulthood.

This is what we need, my only concern is that it is being done during the Trump administration, will they doctor the results to find anti-trans results?

Some of the study’s early findings were reported two years ago in the journal Pediatrics — notably that the 73 children being tracked at that time had rates of depression and anxiety no higher than non-transgender children in control groups. The trans children were supported by their families and allowed to live openly as the gender they identify with — suggesting to Olson that family support was a key to avoiding the mental health problems identified in studies of other transgender youths.

One of the important differences in this study than other studies is that all of these children have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria not like other studies where most of the children were not true trans children and also those who drop out of the study will not be labeled as detransitors.

However, the right wing conservatives are challenging the study…

The TransYouth Project received positive coverage following the Pediatrics article, but Olson’s research also has been the target of criticism. An article last year in The Federalist, a conservative online magazine, asserted that it was “utterly ridiculous” to open a study on gender identity to a 3-year-old child “who is just learning to use the bathroom, spell his name, and the days of the week.”
[…]
“People frequently compare early-identifying trans children with those who go through phases of believing they are cats or dinosaurs or who have imaginary friends,” Olson wrote recently. “Yet decades of work on gender development suggests these are precisely the ages at which nearly all kids are coming to understand their own and others’ gender identities.”

I would think they would welcome 3-year-olds to the research, after all they are the ones who are saying young children are too young to know that they are trans. I would think that if that was true there will be a higher dropout rates as they realize they are not trans, but I think they already know we are right and that there will be a low dropout rates for young children so they are running scared.

But will the Trump administration tamper with the results since it is federally funded.

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So where was I the last couple of days?

I was at the closing of my cottage; it is a standalone condo and is part of a three condo complex. It is a lot smaller than our New Hampshire cottage that we sold last year but it is all mine.