How to Talk to Kids about Transgender People with Carolyn Hays

Get More Info About Dr. Robyn Here: http://www.DrRobynSilverman.comHow to Talk to Kids about Transgender People Imagine getting a knock on your door from someone who could derail your whole life and take away your child. That knock came for my next guest—not because she was abusing or neglecting her child, actually, quite the opposite- it was because she was listening and responding to her child in the most loving way possible. She was allowing her child to live life as the gender she felt she was—a girl. The topic of transgender youth has been contentious, to say the least. From the outside, when the person looking in is cis gender—meaning you were say, born and labeled a girl at birth and, you feel like a girl, it can be hard to imagine that some people don’t feel that alignment. The only way that I feel like we can really explain that is to switch it– for you to imagine that other people are referring to you, if you are a girl or a woman, as a boy or a man—with pronouns that reflect that, names that reflect that and you keep saying, but that’s not who I am! Some kids know from a very young age that they are not the gender they were assigned at birth. And it’s important to listen to this—because transgender people can have a very high suicide rate- a very high rate of being bullied, attacked, even murdered. Trans women, because they must contend with a profound amount of discrimination, also are at high risk of alcoholism, poverty, homelessness and lack of good healthcare. The solution is not fixing the transgender person but rather, acceptance. Let’s talk about it with my next guest who has personal experience with her own transgender child. Guest Expert: Carolyn Hays Imagine getting a knock on your door from someone who could derail your whole life and take away your child. That knock came for my next guest—not because she was abusing or neglecting her child, actually, quite the opposite- it was because she was listening and responding to her child in the most loving way possible. She was allowing her child to live life as the gender she felt she was—a girl. The topic of transgender youth has been contentious, to say the least. From the outside, when the person looking in is cis gender—meaning you were say, born and labeled a girl at birth and, you feel like a girl, it can be hard to imagine that some people don’t feel that alignment. The only way that I feel like we can really explain that is to switch it– for you to imagine that other people are referring to you, if you are a girl or a woman, as a boy or a man—with pronouns that reflect that, names that reflect that and you keep saying, but that’s not who I am! Some kids know from a very young age that they are not the gender they were assigned at birth. And it’s important to listen to this—because transgender people can have a very high suicide rate- a very high rate of being bullied, attacked, even murdered. Trans women, because they must contend with a profound amount of discrimination, also are at high risk of alcoholism, poverty, homelessness and lack of good healthcare. The solution is not fixing the transgender person but rather, acceptance. Let’s talk about it with my next guest who has personal experience with her own transgender child. Carolyn Hays is an award-winning, critically acclaimed, bestselling author who has chosen to publish A Girlhood: Letter to My Transgender Daughter under a pen name to protect the privacy of her family. Her novels have been published by Hachette, Simon and Schuster, and HarperCollins; her books are also widely translated. A Girlhood will have four overseas editions, including those by Picador UK and Flammarion in France. Her past books have been listed as New York Times Notable Books of the Year and Kirkus’s Best Fiction of the Year, and she’s written for National Public Radio and the Washington Post. Important Messages: There was this kind of violent contraction and then, you know and a real targeting of trans people especially when the Trump administration came in, but you know, down to the governor of Texas this past spring making it a law to investigate all parents who support their transgender kids to investigate them for child abuse. So we, you know, the, the book as I was, as I was writing it and working on it has suddenly become more and more urgent. Our daughter was, as they say, persistent, consistent and acute. All of her expression, (well, at that point we were using male pronouns,) but all of her expression was, was female. All of her play was female. But she was getting in arguments at school as a really young kid, like pre-K, telling her teachers that she was a girl telling the other students that she was a girl. If she would hear me talking to my mom using male pronouns, she would, you know, you know, shout out, ‘I’m a girl.’ My daughter was actually very much understanding her gender and hitting all those markers in childhood development. It just was surprising becaus

from Dr. Robyn Silverman
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AylONri5UuY