Your 5-Year-Old Boy Says He’s Really a Girl: What Do You Do?

Commentary

Four years ago, I began an investigation into the transgender movement for my Hidden Truth Show podcast. The show conducts deep-dive investigations into controversial and unresolved issues. At the time, transgenderism had seemingly blown up overnight from a tiny, fringe idea to a major player on the heels of the gay marriage movement. It was sparking national debate over bathrooms and public curiosity over the transition of well-known figures such as Caitlyn Jenner.

I wanted to understand the science behind it, and the politics. Since my investigation, the issue has only become bigger and more controversial—bathrooms now seem to be the least of the issues we are confronting. Schools are teaching children they can choose their own pronouns and that they may have been born in the wrong body. Applications of all kinds now have many more than two choices for gender. Biological males are winning championships competing in women’s sports, pregnant women are now called “birthing people,” and there seems to be a transgender role in every new movie or TV series.

I interviewed doctors, psychologists, athletes, transgender people, and politicians on all sides of the issue over the course of 20 weeks. I went into it with an open mind. I am primarily a libertarian by philosophy; I believe in maximum individual freedom and respecting everyone’s right to live as they please. I am also deeply concerned about our children, and I fear that the breakdown of the American family is having an adverse impact on our country.

Of the many questions I sought to answer, one rose above all the others: If your 5-year-old son comes to you as a parent and repeatedly tells you that he wants to be a girl, what should you do? Should you seek counseling? Should you do nothing and hope that it passes? Or should you give him a girl’s name and let the child wear dresses? More parents than ever are faced with this very real question. Making the wrong decision may cause long-term damage to your child, and it could even be child abuse.

When I started the investigation, I assumed the best plan would be to take your child for counseling. However, the investigation revealed that is probably the last thing you would want to do. My investigation revealed that LGBT activists have taken over the American Academy of Pediatricians (AAP) and the American Psychology Association. As a result, these associations have adopted a policy of helping children transition to the opposite sex at the earliest age possible. It’s all part of a movement to reduce the stigma associated with transgenderism by acting as if it’s natural and normal.

But it is not natural or normal to feel that you are in the wrong body. That is why it was labeled “gender identity disorder” for so many years, until it was changed to gender dysphoria. It was changed to reduce the stigma. I agree with reducing the stigma, but changing a name does not change the science. It is, by definition, a disorder, as it is a disruption of normal physical or mental functions.

And it does require treatment. As I learned in talking to so many transgender people, gender dysphoria is a nightmare. The question is: What is the proper treatment for it? LGBT activists would like you to believe that transgenderism should be embraced, and thus the proper treatment is assisting the person in their transition to the opposite sex. They call this “gender-affirming” care, even though it’s actually “gender-changing” care. They denounce any care that may help a person identify with their biological sex.

Why not treat a disorder by trying to minimize or eliminate the disorder? We do that with every other disorder: bipolar, schizophrenia, depression, anxiety, obsessive compulsive, substance abuse, ADD, body dysmorphia, bulimia, borderline personality. (In fact, most people with gender dysphoria also have one of these disorders.) But when it comes to gender identity disorder, it is to be embraced and not treated. The foundation for their argument is that people are “born this way.”

Yet, we know this is not true based upon numerous identical twin studies, which reveal that the majority of time, when one twin is LGBT, the other is not. Same DNA, different outcome. Scientists have now mapped the entire human genome. No transgender gene has been found. The most likely explanation is that it happens in early childhood due to some form of trauma, just like so many other conditions that manifest later in life. Studies have shown that the trauma usually involves the small child not accepting or embracing their gender due to a failure to bond with the same-sex parent.

Thus, the best thing to do for a child experiencing gender dysphoria is to help that child become more comfortable in their biological sex. For a boy, that means the father or a male role model spending more one-on-one, intimate time with the child, and ensuring the boy is not being bullied by others in a way that causes him to retreat from his maleness.

For older children or adults with dysphoria, it can be treated in the same way as other disorders, through traditional psychological counseling. The most effective counseling usually involves examining a patient’s childhood and looking for childhood traumas. The most common form of childhood trauma involves poor, abusive, or absent parenting, but it can also come from abuse by other family members or friends. However, because the activists are so focused on reducing stigma by insisting that transgenderism is natural and normal, they can maintain that such counseling is inherently wrong.

Since there is nothing wrong with being transgender, it does not need to be treated—so their logic goes. This is why they go to extreme measures to try to discredit counseling designed to reduce dysphoria. But there is a fatal flaw in their logic: Merely because something can or should be treated with psychotherapy doesn’t mean that we should stigmatize or look down upon those who need the treatment. Can you imagine not providing alcoholics with treatment simply so that society does not stigmatize them? But that’s their logic. They are putting the feelings of the group over the individual needing treatment.

We must make the availability of counseling that reduces gender dysphoria known. A relatively new treatment called EMDR (eye movement, desensitization, and reprocessing), a treatment used successfully to treat PTSD, is now shown to also have great effects on reducing gender dysphoria.

But incredibly, 25 states have made psychotherapy to reduce dysphoria in children under 18 illegal. They disparagingly refer to the therapy as “conversion therapy,” calling it shaming or “praying away the gay,” but the therapy has been proven to be effective by the National Association of Reparative Therapists in the child, youth, and family gender identity clinic in Toronto. And if it does not work, the patient is still free to transition to the opposite sex. It does not work so well the other way.

When it comes to treating children with dysphoria, we must be even more cautious since they don’t get to make the decision for themselves. Studies show that most children experiencing confusion about their gender will grow out of it. So, providing “gender-affirming” care, i.e., transitioning to the opposite sex, as the activists advocate for, is really not wise. But what I learned through my investigation is that if you take your child for counseling, that is exactly what you are likely to get.

In a policy statement issued by the AAP, the very first conclusion they draw is that “discrimination based on gender identity or expression, real or perceived, is damaging to the socioemotional health of children.” And their first recommendation is that youth who identify as transgender have access to “comprehensive, gender-affirming” care.

The AAP’s primary focus: discrimination. Their primary recommendation: transitioning children as soon as possible. They criticize not just providing psychotherapy, but even taking a wait-and-see approach. They state, “This outdated approach does not serve the child because critical support is withheld. Watchful waiting is based on binary notions of gender in which gender diversity and fluidity is pathologized.” In other words, the sooner you take your child at their word that they are the wrong sex, the better.

But gender-affirming care involves the most radical and risky of hormone manipulations and surgeries. The concept of “gender identity” has no physical presence and can only be known to the person in which it resides. As one expert reported to me, gender-affirming therapy is a high-risk, experimental therapy based on low-quality evidence and which represents a treatment for a condition that cannot be diagnosed by any doctor.

The AAP goes on to trash psychotherapy designed to help a child identify with their biological body. They state that conversion or reparative treatment models are used to “prevent children and adolescents from identifying as transgender or to dissuade them from exhibiting gender-diverse expressions.” The AAP described reparative approaches as “unfair and deceptive.” States in turn use statements like this one to justify their bans on such treatments.

Parents in these states who want to help their children reduce gender dysphoria are not permitted to do so. They are only permitted one treatment option: help their child transition to the opposite sex. They must change their child’s name, change their clothing, administer hormone blockers, and ultimately change their genitalia. This is all for the cause of reducing the stigma associated with being transgender, but really it amounts to an unscientific experiment on children. Also known as child abuse.

I want love, acceptance, and non-discrimination for all adults and children with gender dysphoria and who are transgender, but the price for this cannot be the denial of science. The failure to provide needed psychotherapy for children and the total suppression of information about this for adults is untenable. We can have both acceptance and recognition that this is a disorder that can be treated if desired.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.