Toilet training

[Lord Jim]

Geez, those quotes from the mother are quite illuminating...

Looks to me like she may be the one with the most "special needs"...

Her first kid is autistic, then she has triplets...one is autistic, one is transgendered, and one has a "brain injury" at four months...(I think the cops ought to take a long hard look at the circumstances surrounding that one.)


I wonder what the mathematical odds against all of these things happening are?

It looks to me like there's one psychological issue that's gone undiagnosed....

A version of Munchausen by proxy...

[Gob]

I have to agree Jim.

[Lord Jim]

I found this bit particularly creepy:

Lily had a very bad brain injury as a 4 month old and is about like having a 1-2 month old baby, but is so much fun (and feisty!).

The woman sounds like she's delighted about her 3 1/2 child having the mental capacity of an infant....

[oldr_n_wsr]

CPS should come a calling on this house.
And with her being a "full time nurse" to her children (oh, and a professional photographer) and daddy still in school, a lesson in birth control migh be in order also (better late then never).

[Rick]

This story just keeps going South...

[Scooter]

Has it really?

Described as "gender-variant," these children typically begin to demonstrate cross-gender behaviors between the ages of 2 and 4. They express a strong desire to live as the opposite gender — clothes, toys, pronouns.

Children who are gender nonconforming are not considered to have mental disorders unless they experience great distress and discomfort at being unable to express who they believe they are.

Last year the medical journal Pediatrics published the first U.S. study of children and teens with gender-identity disorder, based on 97 patients of the clinic.

More than 44 percent described experiencing gender dysphoria — the feeling of a mismatch between biological sex and gender identity — or cross-gender behavior in preschool years.

The study found that gender-dysphoric children who did not receive counseling are at higher risk for behavioral and emotional problems.

In Denver, parents of gender- dysphoric children usually find their way to [Dr. Daniel] Reirden [at the Children's Hospital Colorado] or clinical psychologist Sarah Burgamy, who specializes in working with gender-variant children and their families.

"It's important for people like us to collaborate because this is a medical issue and an emotional-psychological issue," Reirden said. "I don't view it as psychopathology. That generally comes about because families refuse to offer support, or society doesn't allow the child to express as the preferred gender."

When a parent shows up in Burgamy's office with a gender-dysphoric child, she usually advises a wait-and-see approach, because research shows that young children can be gender-fluid. In most children, gender dysphoria will disappear around the age of puberty or before.

"I tell the parents, let's give the child some room to tell us who they are," she said. "But that can be a tricky thing, because in practical life, it's a gendered society — sports, bathrooms, changing rooms, even boys' and girls' birthday parties."

Reirden knows of families who work with their Reirden knows of families who work with their children to transition in steps. They go to school as their biological sex, he said, "but come home to a safe and supportive environment where they can express their perceived gender."

Children who are insistent about being cross-gender for a sustained period of time, he said, "are probably not likely to change by the time of late childhood and pre-adolescence."

Coy Mathis seems to be one of those children.

Her mother, Kathryn Mathis, recalls that as early as 18 months, Coy loved dresses and tutus. By age 2, she refused to leave the house dressed as a boy.

"Ever since she was able to talk, she expressed to us that she was a girl, not a boy," said Kathryn Mathis.

As a triplet, Coy has a brother and a sister, so the Mathis parents were able to watch one boy develop a male gender identity, while the other became ever more insistent about being female.

Coy started kindergarten as a boy but soon became unhappy when classmates treated her like a boy. Being made to stand in the boys' line made her cry.

Doctors diagnosed her with gender-identity disorder. After a few months in kindergarten, Coy's parents consulted with therapists and began to help her make the social transition from boy to girl.



Read more: Pediatricians see growing number of cross-gender kids like Coy Mathis - The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_22706 ... z2Mg837f8h
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So the parents began observing signs of what could have been gender dysphoria at around the age of two, which puts their child within the norm of those who are diagnosed with gender dysphoria as children. They did not themselves stop identifying their child as a boy (there would have been no cause for the child to refuse to leave the house dressed as boy if the parents had not attempted to do just that), and they enrolled the child in kindergarten as a boy. It was only after several months at school, with Coy experiencing increased distress at being continually expected to identify as a boy, that medical advice was sought, a diagnosis of gender dysphoria made, and treatment following the path that the two most experienced medical professionals in the state in dealing with pediatric gender dysphoria have recommended - let the child be who she feels she is right now. In time she may grow out of it, but that is unlikely for a child who persists in cross-gender behaviour for as long as Coy, and so if it does turn out to be more than a "phase", she will have been spared years of pointless anxiety. A course of treatment that is supported by international standards of care

No one is proposing snipping off any vital bits until there is no more room for doubt. There is nothing being done that cannot be undone. If it does turn out that Coy begins identifying as a boy a few years down the road, the fact that her parents identified a problem and got her into the appropriate therapy means that her therapist can help her prepare for that possibility and guide her through it if it does come to pass.

As to the problems facing her other children, I'm sure we all know families that have faced multiple serious health challenges with their children. The fact that one child is autistic would make it more likely that other children would also have it, so its diagnosis in a second child does not defy the odds in any way. And since there appears to be some link between autism and gender dysphoria, it shouldn't be surprising that such a gender dysphoric child might have siblings with autism.

And the suggestion that she purposely brain damaged her own child, based on not a single shred of evidence, doesn't deserve to be dignified. The fact that she chose to accentuate the positive traits of her severely developmentally delayed child puts her in the same company with most other parents of developmentally delayed children, and is not indicative of anything, least of all that she is "delighted" with her child's disability or was in any way responsible for it.

Such accusations are on about the same level as some of the comments to the quoted article, that claimed the parents named the child Coy, alleged to be a gender neutral name*, because this was something they had planned from the very beginning. They named their first son Dakota, which could also be a girl's name, and he didn't end up becoming a girl.



*if it is, I would challenge anyone to find evidence of it being used to name a girl in the last 200 years.

[Rick]

Then there is no reason he shouldn't use the nurses restroom...

[dales]

His/Her parents don't want him/her to.

[Crackpot]

they want attention

[Scooter]

Then there is no reason he shouldn't use the nurses restroom...

Which sends the message that SHE is not accepted by others as a girl, meaning that there must be something wrong with identifying HERSELF as a girl, which of course could not possibly be damaging to HER at all. And your refusal to use pronouns appropriate to her gender identity really says it all.

Serious question - is there any point at which you would find it acceptable for a transgender person to use the bathroom of a gender that is not their biological one? Is an ability to "pass" necessary, so that no one else can tell by appearances that the body they see once looked like a different gender? Does it require the person's chest area and/or genitalia and/or facial features to be surgically altered first? Can a woman who was once a man ever wear pants into a woman's washroom, or must she always wear a dress?

Because you see, if the standard you use to make that decision is whether someone else might be uncomfortable sharing a washroom with a person of a gender they don't perceive as their own, then transgender people will never be able to use sex-segregated washrooms, because there is no foolproof way of hiding the fact that they are transgender. So unless you are saying that transgender people must be relegated in perpetuity to the janitor's washroom or whatever equivalent to the nurse's office exists in the adult world, then there is no reason to prevent this child, right now, from using the washroom of gender with which she identifies.

[Rick]

Yeah...no.

If Sally wants to be Sal, dresses up as a boy and has to drop trow and hike a leg to piss in the urinal that's fine too I suppose.

As long as he has a dangler he should have to use the alternative...

[Scooter]

they want attention

Just one problem with that theory, to have believed that they would garner attention from it, they would have had to have known that the school would refuse to let Coy use the girls washroom. Since she had done so for a big chunk of kindergarten, they had no reason to believe she would be refused in grade one. So unless they are supposed to be psychic in addtion to being serial child abusers...

[Lord Jim]

Scooter, what do you think about this particular case, when placed in the context of all the other kids in this family?

A first child who is supposedly autistic, and then a set of triplets, one of whom is also supposedly autistic, one that is supposedly transgendered, and a third that sustained a "brain injury" at four months that has left the child with the mental capacity of an infant....

All happening to a woman who says that it was always her desire to work with "special needs" kids....

What are the odds of all that happening? You don't think that when looking at the totality of this it should raise some red flags?

[Scooter]

Yeah...no.

If Sally wants to be Sal, dresses up as a boy and has to drop trow and hike a leg to piss in the urinal that's fine too I suppose.

As long as he has a dangler he should have to use the alternative...

Someone with a vagina who identifies as a man can use a stall and sit down to pee, such that no one has to have any inkling of his business. Which is exactly what someone with a penis who identifies as a woman can do in that circumstance. So again, where is the problem?

As to your use of "danglers" as an exclusion from the woman's washroom, genital surgery is among the last of the stages of transition, if it is undertaken at all. Before that time a transgender person would have spent YEARS, if not decades, living her life as a woman. So your solution is that, until the dick is sliced off, someone who in every other way looks and acts very much like a woman is supposed to use the men's washroom? And no one is going to take issue with someone they believe to be a woman walking past the urinals while their dicks are hanging out?

[Crackpot]

Not all stalls have doors

[Rick]

Especially in public schools.

However what if Sal wants to use the urinals like the rest of the "boys"?

You evade the question...

[Scooter]

Scooter, what do you think about this particular case, when placed in the context of all the other kids in this family?

I think it teaches us to use caution when trying to draw a conclusion from the confluence of independent probabilistic events. Their first child is autistic, that means there was an equal if not greater probability that another child would be autistic. The probability of the brain injury was not dependent on the autism diagnoses. Nor was the probability that a child would turn out transgender (or perhaps it increased it a bit).

Ah, but of course you see the mother's hand in this somewhere; the two boys must have been somehow injured to develop sufficient symptoms of autism to fool medical professionals, or they must have somehow been "conditioned" to make it appear to be so. This, in spite of the fact that we are still decades away from determining the cause(s) of autism, and even the most skilled and knowledgeable medical professionals in the world can't create an effect without knowing the cause. The daughter sustained a brain injury that was enough to severely disable her without killing her, presumably by a fall or being struck with force with some object. How would the mother have known how to apply just the right amount of force that would do the job without killing the kid, and in a way that was in every way consistent with the capabilities of a four year old, in order to escape detection by those investigating the incident (and there would have been an investigation)?

So now a child is diagnosed with gender dysphoria, and the parents accomplished this, how? By brainwashing the child into identifying with a different gender? Except...how did they manage that while perpetuating Coy's identity as a boy right up to the point of diagnosis (by enrolling her in school as a boy, etc.)? And how long did they think they could fool the army of medical professionals who have taken on the case? Because one guarantee is that this child will be in therapy for years, in large part to determine whether transitioning is the right course of action for her. You don't think that trained and experienced therapists will be able to tease out whether the child's feelings are coming from within her, or if her parents were giving her a push?

In any event, the proposed course of treatment is standard of care for a child who thinks and feels and acts as Coy does. Whether those thoughts and feelings and actions are a passing phase, or whether they are the result of parental mind control, or whether they actually do mean that Coy is a girl, would not change that. And the school should not interfere with a course of action that is in complete concert with the best medical advice.

What are the odds of all that happening? You don't think that when looking at the totality of this it should raise some red flags?

I look at four individually improbable but nevertheless foreseeably possible events. Then I try to imagine how all four of them could have been engineered by the parents, which would have required four interventions that were individual nearly, if not completely, impossible to pull off. You seem to be the one focussed on the probabilities, in which direction do the odds lean?

All happening to a woman who says that it was always her desire to work with "special needs" kids...

You know, it's funny, while I was a kid, I always thought about being a doctor. Then in my junior year of high school, something pointed me towards accounting and told me that was what made sense for me, so I majored in business. For years after I finished school, I would wonder what might have been if I hadn't altered my path. By your logic, I deliberately got infected with HIV to gain the opportunity, out of the necessity to preserve my own life and health, to learn more about medicine than I would ever had imagined.

A lot of people think about becoming doctors, very few of them want it badly enough to put in the time, effort and money to get there. If Mrs. Mathis is one of those people, then it would not surprise me that what has happened to her children would create regret that would lead her to exaggerate how much that desire really meant to her.

And without being a doctor, there are lots of ways to work with special needs children; if that was really her dream, she could have pursued a very rewarding career. It's not as if "I want to work with special needs children, so I'll injure my children sufficiently to fit the bill" would be the solution at top of mind.

[oldr_n_wsr]

Which sends the message that SHE is not accepted by others as a girl, meaning that there must be something wrong with identifying HERSELF as a girl,

Kids are going to be kids and they are about as cruel as people can be to each other. Anyone "different" is going to be "pointed at" whether he/she uses the nurses bathroom or not. And you can bet that if a guy/girl is using the girl/guy bathroom, the kids are going to notice sonner or later. Then the other parents are going to come down on the school saying sally/sal should not be using the guy/girl bathroom.
The school is between a rock and a hard place regardless of the parents motives.

Nurses bathroom for all.

[Scooter]

Not all stalls have doors

Oh please. I once used a truck stop restroom in North Carolina that had a walled off area with an open front for the toilet, but otherwise I used to travel a fair bit around the U.S. before the HIV ban, and I never came across a restroom with no doors on the stalls. What is it, 18th century Calcutta?

However what if Sal wants to use the urinals like the rest of the "boys"?

You evade the question...

Jesus H. Fucking Christ.

How do the "rest of the boys" use the urinals? Do they lower their trousers and underwear right down to their knees or lower, or pull one leg completely off, which is probably what would be required to avoid soaking them with urine in the manoeuvre you described. No, a man unzips his fly, possibly unbuttons them at the top, and remains otherwise completely covered up so as not to put anything on display for anyone within visual range. Can a person with a vagina use a urinal that way? No? Then I guess they need to use a stall, just like any other man would if he had anatomical issues that precluded him from peeing at a urinal.

Which still means there can be nothing at all to worry about if someone whom you think is a man but who identifies as a woman goes into the woman's washroom and uses a stall just like all the other women. Which meeans there should be no reason why this kid can't use the girls washroom

[Scooter]

Kids are going to be kids and they are about as cruel as people can be to each other. Anyone "different" is going to be "pointed at" whether he/she uses the nurses bathroom or not.

So the solution is to reinforce that mindset by stating as plainly as possible that school officials do not see Coy as a "real" girl".

I thought the notion of separate but equal had been discredited years ago. Should Coy use a different water fountain from the other students as well, in case other students have a problem with drinking from the same tap that was used by this not-a-boy-not-a-girl? Maybe they could make signs for them, instead of "white" and "colored" they could say "everyone else but..." and "the freak of nature".

And you can bet that if a guy/girl is using the girl/guy bathroom, the kids are going to notice sonner or later. Then the other parents are going to come down on the school saying sally/sal should not be using the guy/girl bathroom.

So wait a second, because other students might harass her in the washrooms means she shouldn't be allowed to use them? If a student was being harassed in the washrooms because he/she was lesbian/gay, woould you bar the gay student from using the washrooms, or would you deal with the students doing the harassing.

The school is between a rock and a hard place regardless of the parents motives.

The school created a tempest in a teapot over something that everyone involved would have gotten used to in fairly short order, if they had any problem at all with it in the first place.

How did the kindergarten manage to make it work? Some sort of miracle? Another plot hatched by the child abusing, attention seeking parents?