The NHS treating ‘trans' toddlers is a scandal
Anyone who has spent any significant time in the company of an infant will know that they are prone to declaring themselves to be dinosaurs, dogs, or any manner of outlandish things; nobody would take them at their word. They do not have the capacity or understanding of the world to know their place in it.
That infant chatter might fit with the ideology of gender extremists, or the desire of certain parents for attention, does not make it any more meaningful. Yet the NHS has decided to water down its guidance in order to 'treat' nursery-age children who believe, or have been taught to believe, that they are transgender.
The previous minimum age of seven – in itself far too young – has been scrapped in response to what a source describes as 'pressure' from trans activists, opening up children of nursery age to counselling and therapy.
The original guidance, published in 2023, was clearly correct when it stated that 'an interest in clothes or toys of the opposite sex… is reasonably common behaviour in childhood'. Why, then, has it been altered?
The numbers involved at the moment are small, with fewer than ten nursery aged children referred to gender clinics. When the 'treatment' can set a child on a pathway to medical intervention and potential sterilisation, however, any number greater than zero is a clear scandal. The prospect that dozens of children under the minimum age of seven may have been referred is no less worrying.
If a parent presents an infant to the NHS insisting that they are in need of gender counselling, the role of the health service is to talk them out of their anxieties, rather than reinforce them.
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