Help Me To Continue to Advocate for Childhood
We need to recalibrate for our children and our future
Thank you to all my current paid subscribers, your support allows me to continue to write about and advocate on behalf of children and childhood. If you are a free subscriber please consider upgrading to a paid plan, I really need support to sustain this project. This month I am setting a goal to get 30 new paid subscribers in 30 days. I would appreciate any shares amongst your contacts.
As many will be aware I ‘retired’ from the dance world largely so that I can start speaking freely about the abuses and bad practice in programming directed at children. There are very few of us involved in this pursuit in Scotland, let alone globally. Our arts industries in particular are populated by individuals who ‘believe in the project’ (of politically motivated content for children) due to their political leanings and comfort (as exemplified in Rob Henderson’s work on Luxury Beliefs). They can make virtuous pronouncements and face none of the devastating consequences.
As a result of this (quite ironically) it is the most vulnerable being harmed. I was on the Richie Allan show this week and spoke of such a case in Glasgow wherein a theatre company in an area of deprivation in Scotland was affirming four autistic young people without parental knowledge. Even as one of the females struggled with a breast binder the project continued in their pro-trans approach. This is not ok. But this is happening everywhere. And these stories need to be heard.
And it’s not just the trans issue. The first piece I wrote for the Scottish Union of Education in March 2023 laid out how a ‘disaster model’ being embedded in Scottish schools. Titled ‘Burying Puppies Alive’ it serves as a metaphor for what we are normalising in our children’s everyday environment. The idea that the world is a mess, their bodies are wrong and that they are responsible.
We have, societally, forgotten our duty as adults to advocate for children and childhood. Children are not adults in small bodies. They have developmental stages that when met (more often then not) result in happy, thriving adults. Many teachers and most/all arts workers do not follow the developmental frame anymore, preferring to educate from ideas derived from Critical Theory. The idea of ‘children needing to know everything’ is damaging them for life. We can see in my latest two write ups ‘The Kids are Not Alright’ and ‘Bambi & Ross (and Adam)’ where that leaves us. With paranoid adults, unable to function in the world, broken physically and psychologically.
And whilst we can celebrate recent announcements of the reframing of English RSE curriculum (Relationships Sex Ed) so that young children are not taught explicit sexual content and gender ideology presented as a contested belief, the program is still rife with politically charged therapeutic and psychologically invasive lessons on suicide and death. And even as those of us are delighted the first elements have been removed there are still calls from critics that it is important that children ‘see everything’ to protect themselves and reinstate the first bits. So this argument is not won by any means. (I point out we do not teach children about war by taking them to a war zone. The reinforcing of this explicit approach normalises very harmful content).
But continue we must.
This week MSP Meghan Gallagher hosted a meeting in Holyrood with cross party support where parents of children who had been indoctrinated into trans ideology in their schools told harrowing stories. They heard from a sex abuse victim whose social worker told her to ‘change gender and be happy’. They heard from Mothers of autistic girls who were just trying to keep their children’s bodies intact but all their work kept being undone by schools with their pro-trans policies. Even in the aftermath of the Cass Report, WPATH files and increasing detransitioners coming to the fold this lobby continues to push ahead as Scottish Government does not relent in it’s commitment to the Conversion Therapy Ban which is a metaphoric wolf dressed in sheeps clothing. It is harmful by design.
I consider all these things as I see how children are being used and manipulated with political aims. LGBT Youth Scotland organises a Pride Disco in a local school via 8 year old ‘allies’. Scottish Ballet has toured to schools reaching over 14,000 children with their pro-trans show ‘Safe to Be Me’ (which you could also say promotes the idea before they get started that ‘you are not safe’ as per the disaster model). Or how a trans nursery worker’s identity was prioritised over a child’s reality and safety in a Glasgow early years centre. And these just scrape the surface.
Children inherently trust adults, that is part of their evolutionary instinct. Children also have an inherent need to please adults, also evolutionary by design. Children cannot developmentally understand consequences by and large, nor can they be expected to take responsibility for the ‘big issues’ that we are serving to them. It is too much. At the same token there is very little ‘enthusiasm’ for things children enjoy, things they benefit from, things that historically would have been considered ‘normal’.
I want to draw more attention to this, and I want to advocate more for the ‘good stuff’. We must put (back) into adult minds that it is their role to create foundational experiences for kids, to create avenues for them to explore that are appropriate. I am hoping to grow my site into a larger media venture including podcasts and youtube interviews. I cannot do this without your support. Let us continue to build awareness and recalibrate for what is best for our children.
Thank you so much.
Thank you for reading. Thanks again to my current subscribers and supporters. For new and unpaid readers - if you can please consider becoming a paid supporter of my work via becoming a regular subscriber or buying me a coffee! I really really really do need it. In the current economic climate every penny does make a difference.
Thank you.
