Kids

I know of several children who transitioned before they started kindergarten and they are all doing fine.

The Controversial Research on 'Desistance' in Transgender Youth
KQED
By Jon Brooks
May 23, 2018

The phenomenon of transgender children "growing out of" their transgender identity by the time they are adolescents or adults is called “desistance” by gender researchers.

For decades, follow-up studies of transgender kids have shown that a substantial majority -- anywhere from 65 to 94 percent -- eventually ceased to identify as transgender.
[…]
If most kids will eventually cease to be transgender, some clinicians have reasoned, isn’t it more prudent to take the least disruptive path in coping with a child's gender dysphoria? That way, if or when kids later stop identifying as transgender, they will have less to “undo.”

The article then goes on to say,

“The methodology of those studies is very flawed, because they didn't study gender identity,” said Diane Ehrensaft, director of mental health at UCSF’s Child and Adolescent Gender Clinic. “Those desistors were, a good majority of them, simply proto-gay boys whose parents were upset because they were boys wearing dresses. They were brought to the clinics because they weren't fitting gender norms.”
[…]
Some clinicians criticize this study, however, on methodological grounds, because the researchers defined anyone who did not return to their clinic as desisting. Fifty-two of the children classified as desistors or their parents did send back questionnaires showing the subjects' present lack of gender dysphoria. But 28 neither responded nor could be tracked down.

But in another KQED article yesterday…

When I met Gracie, she was a few months out of kindergarten — pretty young for a transgender kid, I thought. Gracie lives with her parents and younger brother in a small city in the East Bay. She is  already two years into her transition, having started her public life as a girl at four. The family began by discarding her boy name and referring to Gracie as “she” and “her.” She was also allowed to wear girl clothes outside the home, and her parents changed the gender on her birth certificate.

Steps like these make up the “social” aspects of social, not medical, transitioning. The distinction is important: According to Endocrine Society guidelines, patients who want to begin medical treatment like puberty blockers, hormones or surgery should be old enough to give “informed consent,” which the organization says is usually attained by 16.

I think that the key is “informed consent,” doing nothing that cannot be reversed. I don’t believe that the desistors rate is not more than a couple of a percent; but let us for argument sake say it is high and you let the child socially transition since nothing has been done to them other than live in the gender that wasn’t assigned at birth they can go back and live in their birth gender. Even if they were on puberty blockers no lasting physical changes were made.

"That's not the question,” the therapist told Molly. “The question is, what if you don't do it?”

It was only semi-rhetorical. Some gender therapists say there are serious potential dangers if adults suppress a child’s desired transition. On surveys, American transgender adults have reported attempting suicide at the startling rate of around 40 percent.

You know that is the thing that none of those who say children should wait until they are “old enough to transition” is will the child still be alive? Also if you wait until they are “old enough to transition” will they be in the throes of Tanner Stage II? Tanner Stage II is when secondary sexual characteristic develop, voice deepen and beards start to grow in trans girls and trans boys start to develop breasts.

So the battle will continue; the conservatives will continue to use flawed data to justify their position and meanwhile the children will suffer if they are not allowed to transition.