When is it OK for boys to be girls, and girls to be boys? [Schools adjust to boys being girls/etc]

SFgate ^

[ChessMan]

When is it OK for boys to be girls, and girls to be boys?

Many kids want to look and act like the other sex. For some, it's a phase; for others, it's not. Parents and schools are adjusting.

Ilene Lelchuk, Chronicle Staff Writer

Sunday, August 27, 2006

Park Day School is throwing out gender boundaries.

Teachers at the private Oakland elementary school have stopped asking the children to line up according to sex when walking to and from class. They now let boys play girls and girls play boys in skits. And there's a unisex bathroom.

Admissions director Flo Hodes is even a little apologetic that she still balances classes by gender.

Park Day's gender-neutral metamorphosis happened over the past few years, as applications trickled in for kindergartners who didn't fit on either side of the gender line. One girl enrolled as a boy, and there were other children who didn't dress or act in gender-typical ways. Last year the school hired a consultant to help the staff accommodate these new students.

"We had to ask ourselves, what is gender for young children?" Hodes said. "It's coming up more and more."

Park Day's staff members are among a growing number of educators and parents who are acknowledging gender variance in very young children. Aurora School, another private elementary school in Oakland, also is seeing children who are "gender fluid" and hired a clinical psychologist to conduct staff training.

[ChessMan]

Uhhh. I have no idea where to even start on this one.

[tutstar]

PING

[TommyDale]

It is not okay.

[goodnesswins]

"We had to ask ourselves, what is gender for young children?"

O...M...G....

[digger48]

While many of those schools were in California, the state is not alone. In a highly publicized case, a couple convinced the Broward County school system in Florida this year to admit their son to kindergarten as a girl.

He's reportedly the youngest transgender child admitted to a South Florida school, but the Broward and Miami-Dade County school systems were ready with pre-existing policies to accommodate such students.

Ok...now exactly who got to make this "choice"?

[goodnesswins]

"And there's a unisex bathroom."

[Michael81Dus]

Well, this is a start. ;-)

[operation clinton cleanup]

And there's a unisex bathroom.

This can lead to nothing good!

[digger48]

Books for children*:

"Oliver Button is a Sissy" by Tomie de Paola

"The Sissy Duckling" by Harvey Fierstein

"It's Perfectly Normal" by Robie H. Harris and Michael Emberley

"Changing Bodies, Changing Lives: A Book for Teens on Sex and Relationships" by Ruth Bell et al.

* Recommended by the Outreach Program of Children with Gender-Variant Behaviors and Their Families at Children's National Medical Center in Washington, D.C.

E-mail Ilene Lelchuk at ilelchuk@sfchronicle.com.

[freeangel]

"gender fluid"?

I guess they want to dress little boys like girls for their whole elementary school experience and see if they still want to grow up to be male? Is this "teacher" from another planet?

[SoftballMominVA]

Parents are paying up to 18k a year to send their children to hear this type of claptrap.

http://www.parkdayschool.org/admissions/index.html#Anchor-Key-63255

[eleni121]

Teachers are doing it and getting aways with it legally; the kids will follow suit.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14505235/

[TommyDale]

I know this is very politically incorrect, but I know someone who had a little boy in preschool who was encouraged to cross-dress and pretend to be a girl at the preschool. Today he is very effeminate, and it won't surprise me if he is actually gay. The influence of a domineering mother and a preschool teacher who encouraged him to "get in touch with his sexuality" should be horse-whipped.

[SoftballMominVA]

.....ah, my bad **16k** a year....

[bill1952]

Many kids want to look and act like the other sex...

Not in my neighborhood.

[D Rider]

Wasn't this a Monty Python skit?

[billndin]

I love this crap. It grows the GOP and the school voucher movement. No wonder the Islamofacists despise us.

[COEXERJ145]

Where's the Barf Alert?

Doesn't surprise me though that this is coming out of the San Francisco area.

[Question_Assumptions]

Two comments. First, I'm still amazed that Leftists can, on the one hand, say that these confused little kids are born the way they are and can't and shouldn't be changed but, on the other hand, want to say that little boys and little girls who are normal can be "gender" engineered to be sex-neutral and that stereotypical sexual behavior is not inborn. Either stereotypical sexual behavior can be inborn or it can't. You can't have it one way for normal kids and the other way for abnormal kids.

Second, I'm curious that since this cluster seems to be happening in a very gay-friendly area if a disproportionate number of those kids come from gay families. Again, if you can be born gay, it would make some sense that kids of gay parents (generally lesbians) are themselves confused about their sex.

[Michael81Dus]

When I answered your post, I was actually responding to the message #1 "Uhhh. I have no idea where to even start on this one." It´s still hard for me to find words on this issue. I am surprised that people even think of that. Why should kids "cross-dress"??? WAAHHH!!! Where´s the common sense? Oh, right, we´re talking of the San Francisco area.