CHICAGO (The Blaze/AP) — A small but growing number of teens and even younger children who think they were born the wrong sex are getting support from parents and from doctors who give them sex-changing treatments, according to reports in the medical journal Pediatrics.
It’s an issue that raises ethical questions, and some experts urge caution in treating children with puberty-blocking drugs and hormones.
An 8-year-old second-grader in Los Angeles is a typical patient. Born a girl, the child announced at 18 months, “I a boy” and has stuck with that belief. The family was shocked but now refers to the child as a boy and is watching for the first signs of puberty to begin treatment, his mother told The Associated Press.
The Daily Mail reported about yet another example of this back in September:
The lesbian parents of an 11-year-old boy who is undergoing the process of becoming a girl last night defended the decision, claiming it was better for a child to have a sex change when young.
Thomas Lobel, who now calls himself Tammy, is undergoing controversial hormone blocking treatment in Berkeley, California to stop him going through puberty as a boy.
Tammy Lobel’s parents allow the 11-year-old boy (whose birth name is Thomas) to use hormone blockers to delay pubertyPediatricians need to know these kids exist and deserve treatment, said Dr. Norman Spack, author of one of three reports published Monday and director of one of the nation’s first gender identity medical clinics, at Children’s Hospital Boston.
I am really very surprised to read about such decisions that parents have taken to allow their children to undergo sex-changing treatments in so early age in their lives. I am not a mother yet, but hope one day will be and am asking myself, would i do that, if my child has the same desires or would wait until he or she reach at least the age of 18 and then take the decision on his onw. It is praiseworthy though, that parents are supporting their childs, not condemning them for being different.
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Parents should be more supportive when it comes to such a complicated and delicate matter- the child who is consdering himself/herself as the opposite gender should not be surpressed with the feeling of guilt.
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