Teachers on the look out for potential transgender children
PRIME Minister Scott Morrison says there is no need for “gender whisperers” in schools with teachers now being taught to spot potential transgender students in the classroom.
NSW
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PRIME Minister Scott Morrison says there is no need for “gender whisperers” in schools as news emerges of teachers being taught to spot potential transgender students.
Experts claim the move has contributed to a 236 per cent surge in the number of kids wanting to change sex in the past three years.
The training has been conducted by gender identity experts in public and private primary and secondary schools under the guise of professional standards development.
It involves teachers learning to identify key phrases such as “I feel different”, “I’m androgynous” and “I’m born with two spirits”, indicating transgender leanings in students as young as five.
Mr Morrison tweeted this morning that schools should “let kids be kids”.
We do not need ‘gender whisperers’ in our schools. Let kids be kids. https://t.co/POzM26PXU5
— Scott Morrison (@ScottMorrisonMP) September 4, 2018
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Exclusive figures obtained by The Daily Telegraph show already this year hospitals have referred 74 kids aged 6-16 to gender dysphoria clinics geared to help children and adolescents transition.
In 2015, the number was 22 and in 2013 there were just two.
The figures have sparked a heated debate among health experts, with the huge increase denounced as a “tragic” and “dangerous” fad” fuelled by gender support experts in schools and celebrity trans cases. Gender counsellor Dr Elizabeth Riley, who has advised 40 private, public and Catholic schools in the past three years, said it was important to educate teachers given 1 per cent of students were transgender.
“I only go into schools I’m invited into. I teach the school how to deal with these children with special needs and to treat them like any other child,” she said.
“Trans children are in every school, they’ve been around since the 1800s … If a school has 1000 students, 10 of them will be trans, whether they go on to transition or not. It’s important we support them so they get the right advice early so they are not bullied or go into hiding.”
Western Sydney University Professor of Paediatrics John Whitehall said gender identity support experts in schools were creating more problems and more confused children. “They’re part of the problem as they mess with the kids by giving them a platform to believe they have a genuine problem,” Prof Whitehall said.
“It’s a sad, tragic and very dangerous fad, especially when medical treatment can involve hormones that interfere with the brain as well as the body, and progress to irreversible surgery and loss of fertility.”
He said mental illness such as ADHD and depression were often associated with gender dysphoria and should be treated first while the child was allowed to mature.
Sydney-based Gender Centre says it has provided transgender training to schools including Hamilton Public, Winmalee High, Menai High, Stanhope Gardens Catholic School and Toronto High. It attributes the rise in younger children transitioning to better educated parents spotting the signs early. “It’s not necessarily an explosion, it’s that people now identify earlier and parents are more open to what for years was a taboo subject,” spokeswoman Eloise Brook said.
Sydney Children’s Hospital Randwick, The Children’s Hospital Westmead and John Hunter Children’s Hospital report increases in children believing they are the wrong sex or diagnosed with gender dysphoria.
Children are assessed and, as early as six, can undergo stage one gender affirmation sessions including swapping names and clothes. Stage two of treatment, from age 11, can involve the use of puberty blocking drugs. Stage three is irreversible cross-sex hormone treatment and surgery — of which the youngest patients have been 15.
Professor Whitehall said children should not even be allowed to undergo stage one treatment before age 18.
Under Education Department guidelines, schools operate their own professional development budgets. A spokesman said Dr Riley was not an employee of the department.
“Students who need support for whatever reason will receive it in NSW public schools,” he said.