Children Never Go Through Phases, Right?

Mental health is a fascinating field: on the one hand you have people tirelessly examining the myriad of factors that cause people to develop any number of disorders from seasonal depression to full on catatonic schizophrenia, and on the other hand you have “psychologists” who believe slapping a label on a patient as early and as often as possible is the best way to help them. Take the case of Coy Mathis who was diagnosed as transgendered at the ripe age of four. According to her parents Coy had begun gravitating towards girl’s clothes and pink at 18 months, and at age four had asked them, “When are we going to go to the doctor to get me fixed so I can be a girl?” The natural reaction to all of this was of course to go to a psychologist so that Coy could be diagnosed as transgendered immediately, because slapping a label on someone at an early age is the best way to ensure they have every opportunity to live a normal life.

Transgendered people do exist, they aren’t some mythological creature conjured up to scare bible thumpers into believing the end is nigh. While transgendered people certainly face many struggles in society, and many of them certainly identified at transgendered at a young age, I doubt many of them would have wanted to be labeled as such at a young age. As people adamantly claim that each person has the freedom to choose who they are, it seems incredible hypocritical that we would then turn around and brand someone with a lifelong diagnosis at age four. It’s possible Coy would have continued to identify as female for the rest of his life, but it’s also possible that Coy was going through a phase - as children tend to do - that he would have eventually outgrown if given the opportunity. There isn’t anything wrong with being transgendered, just like there isn’t anything wrong with being homosexual, but there is something wrong with allowing a child to be identified as such at such a young age. Children are stupid: they eat glue and cut their own hair, and hence they shouldn’t be allowed to make life altering decisions. If the parents really cared about their child’s future they would have supported his decisions while not allowing him to be diagnosed until he was old enough to understand the full implications of the situation. This isn’t to suggest that being transgendered is a choice, but rather that a person should probably be able to reach the cookie jar before we take his declaration that he should have been born with a vagina too seriously. The human brain doesn’t finish development until age twenty-four, so declaring a behavior as permanent at four years might be jumping the gun just a bit. In attempting to prevent their child from being forced to be someone he isn’t, the Mathis’ have potentially forced him to be someone he wasn’t going to be.

Use the comments section to tell me how right I am.