Fads

In a discussion on Brie Jontry's facebook page in February, 2017, Rebecca Harmon wrote:

When I was a teenager it was cool to be punk, then it was trendy to be goth, and then emo was the thing. Now, the current rebellious trend is being transgender.

-=-Now, the current rebellious trend is being transgender.-=-

Yes. And there are trends among parents, too—to identify special needs in their children and to "save" the children by parental sacrifice or special treatment. In the time I've been writing and speaking about unschooling, running groups and discussions, we've been through waves of epidemics of Dire Issues. Currently, it's transgenderism. The others have waned.

I'm all for parental sacrifice and special treatment, but I'm for helping children have choices and to be whole and who they are. This is a wave of kids being coached to feel need, paucity, deprivation and persecution, and then promised that there is a cure, a solution, and that anyone who withholds that is horrible and doesn't care whether they die. AND HURRY AND CHANGE NOW!

It's a social contagion at best, but some people are also making money off it, and gaining some sort of fame/recognition/status, as transgender counsellors, or experts, without training, just self-claim. There is a cult-like element, too, though I don't think there's a central figure or even a small central group, which is what gives it the mass delusion quality.

There are pockets of unschoolers (mostly girls, I believe) who are also claiming (some with pressure) that they really are boys in female bodies. In their case would it be rebellion? I think it's beyond rebellion to something else, and I think it will pass, too.

Recent years have seen ADD / ADHD, and then lots of people wanting their kids to be dyslexic (like it gives them a bye in life, and a "not my fault" for the parents). There wasn't medicine for dyslexia, but there was for ADHD—BIG money, legal issues, and harmful effects.

There were a few years when parents claimed (hoped) that by controlling diet they could control behavior and change personality. That hasn't been suggested in a discussion for years now, but it used to happen every few days.

"Indigo children" didn't affect unschooling discussions too much, but it was there, and that was more about the parents (how worthy they had been to have been chosen to host such an enlightened being and all). That has wound itself down.

Asperger's Syndome (no longer a legitimate term) came in a wave and a frenzy with parents wanting to change the behavior of everyone else around their children without coaching their children to be more courteous, saying "He can't; he's Asperger's; you're rude not to accommodate him."

Food as religion is still around, but the heat of it is subsiding.

I probably am forgetting one or two of them.

But transgender is the scariest so far because it's involving parents agreeing to chemically stunt growth, and potentially agreeing to surgery (and paying thousands of dollars) for irreversible damage to a healthy body. There are people agitating to change laws and policies so that the children have the "right" to these things regardless of parental wishes, in some places (Canada, it seems, from that BBC special).

In the days of ADHD, if parents refused Ritalin treatement, sometimes the kids were not allowed in school. Many came to homeschooling that way—schools said "he must take Ritalin," and a doctor (maybe with a social worker or judge sometimes) said "MUST." Families broke up over it. Families homeschooled over it. Google "damage from ritalin" if you're curious about the physical and mental effects, so the parents who refused were right. Adults now are physically impaired so that someone's 2nd grade classroom would be quieter.

Transgender issues are harming families, and dyads (relationships between mom/dad, dad/child, mom/child, child/sibling). I hope I'm as wrong as can be about this, but it seem that if some of the trends toward "rights" continue, the government could potentially take custody from parents who don't agree to "treatment" for a condition that has only recently been made up, that even its proponents are saying isn't physical, medical or psychological.