From My Perspective

There’s been a lot of talk lately about gender, gender identification, choosing a gender, sexuality, biology, how it affects our kids of today, and the age they or their parents should be deciding how they “identify” themselves.

Can I please just say, “What the hell?” Seriously, what is this world coming to?

In some states it’s now legal for a parent to authorize a surgical procedure to change their child’s sexual anatomy by the age of three. I don’t know about you, but at age three, I was coloring in coloring books, still taking naps, making mud pies (and likely eating them) and learning my ABC’s.

I knew that my mom and I were girls because of the anatomy of our bodies. I knew that my dad and brother were boys based on their anatomy. How did I learn those things? My mother, very early in my life, read and talked to me.

One of the books we read, right around the time my brother was about to be born, or shortly thereafter was “Where Did I Come From,” by Peter Mayle and illustrated by Arthur Robbins. It’s a top-rated children’s book that was published in 1973 and still today, gives a no-nonsense approach to explaining human sexuality in the form of an age-appropriate picture book. She read it to me then, and truthfully, it’s a book I will never forget.

Later, when I had more questions, my parents also explained to me what it was called when a man loved another man, women loved another woman, and that sometimes men dressed like women, and women dressed like men. My parents neither promoted, condoned nor negated any of those topics. They explained to me it was a preference and a choice.

Now, I realize there are the families where parent’s don’t talk to their children about the birds and the bees, so to speak. And here’s what I have to say to those parents: If you’re a parent, YOU should be having these discussions with your children. You shouldn’t be relying on public education to do this for you. I feel like it’s one of those unwritten responsibilities that comes with being a parent.

In my opinion, it’s not right or appropriate for young children to be learning about how they identify themselves in pre-k, kindergarten, or even elementary school settings. There was something I read somewhere about a child “identifying as a dog.” When I grew up, this was called pretending and make-believe. It wasn’t a reality nor was it given credence. Our parents and teachers didn’t placate us or cajole us into thinking any of it was true.

Let’s be clear, I’m not saying there aren’t kids who feel like they don’t know which side of the sexual fence they stand on. Heck, I think there are still some adults that are trying to figure that out. Individuals should be allowed to live and decide for themselves what that might be, not have their parents, while they are young and literally have no say, choose for them.

In my opinion, parents who make these decisions for their children to have sex change operations before their children are old enough to decide for themselves are selfish. The repercussions of this are yet to be seen, but I personally believe they will be disastrous. Children who didn’t make the choices for themselves could have long-lasting effects, physically, medically and psychologically. I’m not really looking forward to seeing how this all plays out.

My own child, at one time thought they might have leaned towards a particular sexual orientation. I didn’t encourage it, and I didn’t discourage it, and I’d like to think they knew they could come to me and talk to me about it. There were conversations and questions. It turns out this was a phase, a curiosity. If I’m honest, I think I even went through one of those phases a time or two questioning myself.

Now, if I had gone ahead and made a decision for my child based on that phase, they might not be who they are today, and personally I think that would be one of the biggest tragedies, because who they are today is pretty incredible.

So, how about we let our kids be just that, kids? Kids who don’t have access to a cell phone and social media 24/7. They are being fed so much information they aren’t even equipped to hear.

Kids should be allowed to grow up, make their own decisions about who they are, not who we want them to be, not who we expect them to be, but who they actually are.

It’s time we keep our kids safe and out of the political warfare that we’re all constantly being fed. So, maybe, instead of a parent choosing at age three what they think their child’s sex should be, maybe they could just take time to spend with them, read a book to them, or go be a kid again themselves and color and make some mud pies.