Originally Posted by euphoriatheory (Post 433058)

The one thing that concerns me in cases like this is that 2nd graders seem a little young to fully understand the ramifications of changing gender... If you don't know anything about sex yet, are you really equipped to make that decision? Maybe this kid IS, maybe he'll never regret it.... or maybe in 6 or 7 years, he'll just realize he's gay and maybe likes to cross-dress, and not that he considers himself female.

Originally Posted by DanaC (Post 433044)

The child obviously has a very clear idea of how he/she wishes to express him/herself. I can't see that this is the parents' 'fault' in some way. It's not unknown for a child to have these kind of gender identity issues at such a young age, and frankly I get the impression the parents are handling it in about as open minded and fair way as is possible. Would you prefer that they enforce their own concept of his/her gender identity onto their child in order to help him/her fit in to school? Those days, hopefully, have gone, along with taking young children who've shown proclivities towards homosexuality to the psychiatrist for a 'cure'.

In terms of the child ending up as a punching bag for bullies....you can send a child who seemingly is absolutely just like all the other children in their cohort to school, and their classmates find something abotu them that's 'different'. It might be something as small as the way they walk, or a slight astigmatism in their eye....you could send a child with glasses to school, braces on their teeth, freckles or eczema, or a little extra weight on their belly and all these things could make them a punchbag at school. There may be no definable reason that you or I could isolate. They could just have the misfortune to come to the attention of the wrong kid at the wrong time and be marked out for the rest of their school years as prime target no.1.

Originally Posted by DanaC (Post 433120)

And enforcing the 'correct' and acceptable gender identity onto the child would make him normal? If he's this insistent on his identity it will show in a myriad of ways. The way he walks the way he talks, the children he chooses to play with, the games he chooses to play. If he is identifying himself as female he will act female regardless of the clothes he wears or the toilet he uses. Kids pick up on that and are just as likely to bully him for it if he's wearing trousers as they if he's wearing a dress.

Originally Posted by TheMercenary (Post 433125)

Someone is going to pay dearly if anything happens to this child because of the desire to let it dress and act as it pleases. Political correctness gone wild.

Originally Posted by theotherguy (Post 433133)

I very seriously doubt that a 2nd grader is that self-aware. Kids act these things out. They want to be called a different name or want to be a different species, or inanimate objects. I have a friend who's child would ONLY respond to the name "Maxipad" for over a year. It was one of the funniest things I have ever seen. My little boy ran around for awhile saying he was a little girl and not a boy. We didn't feel the need to run with it or away from it. HE IS JUST A LITTLE KID! My niece wanted to be a dog for several years. Actually cried about it on several occations. They do and say all kinds of crazy things. If I had to guess, this little kids has some crazy, way, way, way left of center parents who figure he must be right and ran with it. Encouraging him to go with it. I may completely wrong here, but I don't think so.

Originally Posted by skysidhe (Post 433175)

I know my next example is simplistic but we don't let kids draw on themselves,We make them wait for tatoos,piercings ect. Why not wait for gender and name changes too. * shrug*
Just my thoughts. :2cents:

Originally Posted by monster (Post 433176)

We don't let them get tattoos, but it's hard to stop them drawing on themselves using readily available washable markers -and is it really worth the fight to stop them when they are determined to do so?