Transgender children

According to an article in The Telegraph by the 'Chair' of a charity called 'Mermaid' which supports transgender children, some 80 children of primary school age in the UK are currently 'transitioning' from one sex to the other.
It is known that there are a very small number of children born who have incomplete or incorrectly formed sexual organs, but this article is not referring to these. The charity is supporting young children of one sex who 'believe' that they should be the other and are currently 'transitioning'.
There are a number of problems here; the main one being that there is no reason to believe that children have any idea of their sexuality prior to puberty. Another is that, having set up a charity to support such children, they need clients in order to justify their existence.

I had a sister who was forever moaning that she wished that she were a boy when she was at junior school. This seemed to be largely based on the belief that boys did far more exciting things from climbing trees, playing football to falling in the local stream whilst trying to catch frog spawn or tadpoles! This desire largely disappeared when she went to an all girls school at eleven and discovered there were girls sports such as hockey and netball as outlets for her energy.

Our elder daughter was very similar, she much preferred the toys owned by the young boy next door, and always wanted to join in boys' games and generally she was allowed to do so. Then she discovered another girl in her class was having tennis lessons and persuaded us to let her do the same, with the result that any idea of being a boy and becoming a footballer suddenly disappeared.

But had either my sister or daughter been asked at the age of, say six, whether they would like to become a boy, I'm sure that the answer would have been a definite 'yes'. One wonders how they would have felt by the age of fifteen if they'd been allowed to 'transition' to be boys as seems to be the current 'thing' if they 'identify' as a boy.

Another problem, I suspect, could be all these bright young things with shiny degrees from second-rate universities who have swallowed these trendy ideas and become social workers. What happens when they meet a child who wants to be the other sex and the parent says, as I would, "Don't be so damn stupid" or a more forceful equivalent. Would these social workers see them as children to be taken into care on the basis that they are being abused by their parents because  they refuse to go along with the child's beliefs?

We don't let children smoke, drink or get married until they are an appropriate age because it is generally accepted that they are not mature enough to make decisions on such matters. How can anyone the believe that a child as young as four years of age can decide on his/her sexuality?