Most children who identify as trans grow out of it

The studies behind that figure counted children who would not meet today's clinical criteria for a persistent gender identity: many were referred for gender nonconformity rather than a consistent, insistent sense of being a different gender, and a significant proportion were later understood to be gay or lesbian cisgender children, which is precisely the conflation the claim relies on. When researchers look specifically at children who do meet current criteria, the desistance rates are considerably lower, and the framing of sexual orientation as the natural landing place for those who desist treats two entirely separate characteristics as though one were a corrected version of the other. The older figure has been repeated often enough that it carries the weight of established fact, but the methodology behind it has been examined and found wanting by researchers in this field. Families who hold back support on the strength of it are not giving their child time to settle: they are withholding affirmation from a child who may carry the cost of that in mental health and physical development for the rest of their life.