A growing trend of researchers are encouraging parents to be accepting of and even facilitate their young children’s gender transitions.
“Many gender clinicians now recommend parents ‘socially transition’ kids who persistently express a transgender identity,” according to KQUED writer Jon Brooks, noting that therapists at San Francisco’s Child And Adolescent Gender Center Clinic admitted they’ve aided transitions of children as young as three.
“There are some people that think folks like myself, and the people at our clinic, have fallen off the deep end,” San Francisco Center’s mental health director Diane Ehrensaft told Brooks. She is a staunch advocate of early social and medical transitioning for children with gender dysphoria.
The Endocrine Society posits that people who seek to undergo hormone therapy and any medical procedures should be at least 16 years old so that they are able to give informed consent.
California’s transgender “Rainbow Day Camp” provides a safe haven for children who claim they are transgender, catering to “gender fluid” and transgender children, according to the Associated Press. Founded in 2014, the camp is currently the only one to offer a transgender program of sorts to such young children. (RELATED: Preschoolers Can Now Go To Transgender ‘Rainbow Day Camp’)
“A decade ago, this camp wouldn’t have existed. Eventually, I do believe, it won’t be so innovative,” the camp’s founder Sandra Collins told the AP. “I didn’t know you could be transgender at a very young age. But my daughter knew for sure at 2,” she said, crediting her daughter as inspiration for starting the camp. Collins has also founded “Camp Kickin’ It” for transgender kids ages 13-17.
There’s “a lot more openness to the understanding that trans adults start as trans kids,” the Center for Transyouth Health and Development at Children’s Hospital medical director, Olson-Kennedy, also told the AP. She doesn’t think a child can be too young to know his or her gender. The program has over 900 people between 3-25 years old.
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