What parents actually say about when their children knew
Dr Helen Webberley on GB News: puberty blockers, with Lucy Johnston, GBNews
Gender identity is something children work out gradually, over years, usually in adolescence. The idea that a very young child could already know who they are seems hard to believe, or like something a parent has projected onto them.
What I keep hearing, from parent after parent, is that the knowing came early, sometimes startlingly early. A toddler who could recognise themselves in a mirror, who understood they were a separate person in the world, and who was already saying: I don't know why you're putting me in the boy queue, because I'm a girl. That is not a teenager working through confusion. That is a small child being very clear. Some families do describe a later moment when the language finally arrived, but even then, many say they had always sensed something, they just didn't have the word for it yet. The children had the knowledge long before anyone gave them a way to say it.
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