You need to be an engaged parent who, yes, up to a certain age shelters your child from a whole bunch of shit until they start getting older (but, when they're like 10 and under, not a teen). You need to also teach them how to think through and react to situations where someone may expose them to something,
This is a tangent, but it's something I think we're missing in the modern day.
When I was a kid, there was a
Consumer Reports magazine for kids, originally
Penny Power but they changed the name to
Zillions at some point to seem cooler. It was Advertising Literacy for Kids, and it had the vibe of an educational magazine mixed with
Mad. The magazine told exactly the right age of kid what techniques were being used to sell them stuff, at the age where "whoa, so that's how they're doing it" really is a revelation and it makes the kid feel like they know more than the adults who are trying to trick them. You get your kid a subscription to
Zillions, they learn how DOLL DOES NOT WALK, and not only does your kid learn how to protect themself from how the world works, your kid also doesn't find this out at age 20 and become an edgy
Adbusters-type person instead.
It's honestly a resource that I wish were still around, every time I see a screencap of a Wendy's tweet. I'm pretty sure that it's part of why I'm an asshole today (positive).
Retrospective article with some pages (
archive).
Anyway, that's the kind of anti-gender resource that older kids need, the kind that tells them how to pick apart arguments, how they're being sold on an ism--and the kind that's funny, because if they weren't a threat, just
look at the troons. There are plenty of resources that come at it from a faith standpoint, or cutsey books so you can tell young kids they're special just how they are. It's impossible to get ahead of the ever-changing goalposts of the gendies and warn about each individual threat specifically; kids need a framework and some reassurance that it's not just them, like we have informally here. You want it set up so your kid doesn't come home and say "I talked to Leaf and I think I might be a demiboy too," but instead, "hi, Mom, guess what new identity Leaf is trying to claim
now."
