Posted on 05/11/2008 4:06:45 AM PDT by Man50D
A Pennsylvania elementary school has angered parents by giving them one-day's notice of planned counseling sessions with 100 third-grade students to explain that one of their male classmates would soon begin wearing girls' clothing and taking a female name and to ask that they accept him as a girl and not make unkind remarks.
The exercise in "social transition" was initiated by the boy's parents who approached the administration at Chatham Park Elementary School in Haverford Township asking that the school help in having their child's female identity find acceptance among his peers. After consulting experts on transgender children, the Haverford School District sent letters to parents advising them the school guidance counselor would meet with their children, reported the Philadelphia Inquirer.
While some parents contacted the principal asking that their children be excused, others took their anger out online.
"Why is the school introducing this subject to 8- and 9-year-olds?" wrote an angry parent who started a discussion on the Haverford Township's blog site. "Why were we not notified sooner. We received the letter today, the discussion at school is tomorrow."
The Haverford Township blog is not currently viewable.
In the letter to parents, Chatham Park principal Daniel Marsella assured parents the counseling would use "developmentally appropriate language" to explain "how we need to help this student make a social transition in school."
(Excerpt) Read more at worldnetdaily.com ...
Amen...sadly!! What is with parents these days??? What happened to decent parents who had some common sense!!
Get the kid some COUNSELING instead of a new DRESS!
That was my husband’s reaction, and he added that the school officials that thought it was a good idea to discuss this with the other students without any parental input should be fired and never allowed a job around children- even as janitors.
“The boy” needs to be removed from that household and “the boy’s parents” need to be sterilized.
The parents need the counseling not the students at the school
Well, we may see what happens right away -- like the first time this gender-bent child uses his chosen student bathroom.
Having said that , I agree with many here that the school's other children shouldn't be involved--or even aware of the situation at this young age.
Had I been the parents and known that this was in the future, I would have found a way to move out of that school district so that when the child was ready to return to the class room, the new identity would be in place from the beginning.
Also, since this obviously isn't an emergency situation, why could the surgery not be done during the summer recess, which is less than a month away? In the fall, the patient would be in a new school, and none of the kids from either school would know anything about the kid's (should be) private medical history.
It seems to me that this would make it much easier for the poor little child to make the adjustment.
Really, not all government schools are that bad... I went to one for a bit, and my siblings are currently enrolled in the same one, and nothing remotely like this, or any other school horror story you hear, ever happened (unless you count the guys who dressed up as disney princesses for Halloween one year, but nobody took that as more than being ridiculous with costume choices).
Kiss my arse.
If I was the parent of a child in that school, I’d tell the school to go F themselves and put my child in private school.
When I was in kindergarten in the very early 50s there was a boy who played with dolls with the girls. I have no idea how the girls felt about him—who talked to girls?—but every 5-year-old boy knew that something was terribly wrong. I also remember our teacher doing her best to smooth his way, telling us that fathers had to know how to hold babies, etc. but none of us boys were buying it. I know that some gays choose their lifestyle, but I doubt that this boy did. Your explanation makes as much sense as any.
The kid’s life is going to be hard enough, I think my kindergarten teacher did the right thing, she let us know that she wouldn’t tolerate anyone picking on the kid.
Well, without knowing any of the facts, but with a reasonable working knowledge of Children's Hospital, I call BS.
Facts, please.
It's pretty flippin' sad, actually.
Is this a child whose parents have decided, for some sick reason, to attempt "gender reassignment", or is it a child with ambiguous genitalia who is going to need surgery and medical care to arrive at a fixed gender?
Somewhere along the line a psychologist is steering people down the lunatic fringe path. Psychologists are more dangerous to society than greedy lawyers. At least the lawyers seek to reward themselves with money, an age old goal of thieves. The psychologists are simply nuts and want everyone else to live unquestionably in their “King of Hearts†world.
There are other hard-wired behaviors not normally shared between the sexes, such as the inclination toward predatory behaviour being far stronger in men than women – an inclination which complements the larger body and results in men usually being The Hunter in societies and relationships.
If a male fetal body doesn’t imprint the brain to develop the neural nodes and patterns needed to spur basic male behavioral tendencies, the child will be born with a male body and a basically female brain. This often results in behaviors emerging in boys as young as 4, which seem to be at odds with their gender. Sometimes – usually after puberty – this conflict between the brain and body can spread to the conscious mind, creating clinical Gender Dysphoria: a condition where even the higher brain conceptualizations won’t deal with the actual gender of the body.
Having this problem is like being born without arms: something went wrong in the fetus, and it’s not repairable. The child is just screwed. The only thing worse than this kids problem, is the way that everyone in the article seems to be dealing with it. What a joke.
I don’t know if the kid will be beat up, at 3rd grade they’d just think it was weird and he/she would probably end up being more isolated.
It is ridiculous that a child that age would have any idea about being a boy or a girl. Heck, my son thought he was Batman for a year and then became a cowboy. Instead of the kids in school getting counseling it sounds like the parents and the child need it.
So what part of the curriculum should we cut out to try this ridiculous experiment: math? science? history? English?
My inner puppy dog is scratching at the door, better let him out.
“Gender identity comes with sexual maturity.”
Funny, I always thought it came with birth...
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