Explaining transgenders to an 11 yo boy

[Irving]

A little boy in my daughter's class decided he wanted to be a girl in second grade. He's been a "girl" ever since, and they are all in the 4th grade now. A lot of parents were initially upset and talked to the teacher and principal. He still acts like the asshole little boy with shitty/no parents as he did before, only now he dresses like a girl and added an "a" to the end of his name. Everyone likes to talk tough online about what they would, or wouldn't do, but almost none of that matters. The school isn't going to tell them that they can't do that, and the parents have opinions on it long, long after any of the kids do. I think your explanation of a little boy "pretending" to be a girl about sums it up. Much longer of an opinionated explanation of why you do or don't agree with that is going to be lost on most K-12 kids anyway. There are plenty of other, more difficult, social obstacles that kids will have to navigate and overcome over the course of their schooling. To kids, it's just another weird kid at the school. I thought the Jehova's Witness kid growing up was a weirdo, and that's about as much as I thought about it. I was way too involved with myself to even talk to him about why he didn't celebrate his own birthday.

So, there are plenty of reasons to take your kids out of public school, but there is rarely one single issue that outweighs any other. You can ask that your kid can't be in class while they read the book, but big deal. The first thing they are going to do is ask their friends all about the book, then they'll get the little kid interpretation, which is probably even further away from whatever you're trying to instill in the kids. We just refer to that kid as a boy, because he is one. My daughter and her friends refer to him as "it," and he's even in her circle of friends. Like I said, just another weird kid at school. My opinion is that trying to insulate your kids from things like this is just a futile waste of your time, especially if there is a transgender kid in the school. Handling issues like this are the exact same as handling every other thing your kids will learn. I personally had a more difficult time trying to explain September 11th to my kids than the little boy who wants to be a girl.