Letting Children Go Through Stages As Children

On Friday, The Washington Free Beacon posted an article about a twelve-year-old boy who changed his mind about transitioning to a girl.

The article reports:

As a young child, Patrick Mitchell had always wanted to be a girl, the Independent reported. “You wish you could just change everything about you, you just see any girl and you say, ‘I’d kill to be like that,'” Mitchell told interviewers.

After speaking with doctors, Mitchell was diagnosed with gender dysphoria and began taking estrogen hormones in anticipation of a full transition. Mitchell grew out his hair and the treatment caused the prepubescent boy to grow a pair of breasts.

When teachers began to call him a girl in class, however, Mitchell began to question if he made the correct decision. “I began to realize I was actually comfortable in my body. Every day I just felt better,” he said.

Mitchell’s mother recounted his change of heart.

“He looked me in the eye and said, ‘I’m just not sure that I am a girl,'” she told “60 Minutes.” Mitchell has since stopped taking his estrogen treatment and plans to have surgery to remove the breast tissue.

Children go through stages when they identify with either parent as a role model. They pass through these stages and go on to the next stage (if they are allowed to do so). In my opinion it borders on child abuse to begin a sex change on any person under 21.

The article concludes:

Some studies have indicated that at least a portion of children who are diagnosed with gender dysphoria ultimately embrace the sex they were assigned at birth, New York Magazine reported. One study conducted by the Center of Expertise on Gender Dysphoria at VU University Medical Center, a famous gender clinic in Amsterdam, found that around two-thirds of gender dysphoric minors eventually desisted. That is, the minors ultimately reverted to identify with the gender corresponding with their birth sex. Another study, conducted in conjunction with Toronto’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), found 88 percent of male minors ultimately desisted.

Trans activists strongly dispute those studies, arguing that they are “built upon bad statistics, bad science, homophobia, and transphobia,” HuffPost reported.