The truth about 'trans kids'

There are now a number of online groups for parents of transgender children, such as on the Mermaids website and on Facebook, with collectively thousands of members. They’re presented as support groups but they appear to involve parents egging each other on to groom their children to believe that they are transgender, often based on minor behavioural attributes that are common among young children.

The main ones seem to be hidden from the general public, but with so many members, inevitably, several posts have been shared across the internet. Here are just some of them:

A mother shows off that she's been telling her 3 year old son that he is actually a girl - and now wants to take the child to a 'gender clinic'.

Another mother is excited because her 4 year old girl is trans. The child still dresses feminine, refused to have her hair cut and refused a new male name, but the mother knows the child is a boy because the child prefers to play with other boys.

Elsewhere: 'I have two children. One's a lesbian who's exploring her gender, the other is 10 years old, non-binary and pan romantic. They're both autistic'.

‘I’m disappointed that my child doesn’t want to be trans anymore despite assuring us that she was when she was 4.’

‘My child is definitely trans but she refuses to use she / her pronouns and doesn’t even want puberty blockers or HRT. I’m at a loss.’

If you're a parent of a 4 year old boy who 'knows he is a boy' but says he'd like to be a girl, do you tell him he can do almost whatever girls do but there are some differences that can't be overcome, or ask 'parents of transgender children' for advice?

This mother of a 4 year old boy who, she claims, is actually a girl, has told the child to sit down to urinate, in order to deceive other children at school. It doesn't matter that the child finds this uncomfortable.

Here's several parents of children who say they are trans, mostly aged 3, discussing how they ensure they are not exposed to people, even other 3 year olds, who might disclose biological facts to them.

'My 4 year old son is going back to school tomorrow. But now he’s a girl. We've told his friends and the school; they'll all be telling him she is a girl. We're so excited! We've known for years'.

This last screenshot was shared on Twitter by a number of horrified people, including an MP and a trans school teacher. How did Helen Islan, a former worker for a charity (Mermaids) that deals with children confused by their gender react to the sharing of information that most people would consider to be child abuse? That’s right - she called for the MP and the teacher to be reported and banned, for spreading information that the alleged abusers didn’t want the rest of the world to see.