Warning over letting children change gender

PARENTS are risking psychologically damaging their children by allowing them to “socially transition” their gender without medical or psychiatric advice, NHS experts have warned.

Primary school-aged children are increasingly being encouraged to formally switch, in defiance of the recommended “watchful waiting” approach, the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) leaders said.

In some cases, children as young as six are attending school where nobody knows their original sex.

In the UK, children who display symptoms of gender dysphoria are not given hormone blockers until the onset of puberty and cross-sex hormones may only prescribed after they turn 16. The GIDS psychologists, who practise at London’s Tavistock Clinic, said that younger children who believe they may have been born with the wrong body should be permitted to explore behavioural aspects of the opposite gender, such as dress or types of play.

However, they warned that many such children end up preferring to remain the biological gender they were born and that to formally socially transition before puberty risks predetermining the outcome.

They acknowledged that well-meaning parents, faced with deeply unhappy children, can sometimes feel they have no other option. The situation is made worse because the waiting list to see a specialist at the Tavistock and Portland Trust, the NHS’S only child gender service, is now two years long.

Dr Bernadette Wren, head of clinical psychology at the trust, said: “We have never recommended complete social transitioning, but it has become a really popular thing and many advocacy groups really promote it.

“We take the long view because our concern has been that what might work to lower anxiety in a younger child may become the thing that is problematic when they get older… We think that is setting up problems for later.”

GIDS received 2,590 referrals in the year 2018-19, almost a fourfold increase in four years. Almost three-quarters of children seeking help with their gender are now female-born.

Around 45 per cent of the children referred decide to undergo physical interventions, according to GIDS.

The experts said various “advocacy groups” encourage parents to opt for total social transition.

Mermaids, seen as the most prominent and controversial advocacy group supporting gender-diverse children, said: “For some young people social transition can be very helpful… Across all contexts, including schools and local communities, we need to support young people experiencing distress around their gender identity.

“We need to support exploration, which may include a social transition for some young people.”