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You get to give them a legal name. That's it. You don't get to decide if their friends call them "Bethany", like you named them, or "Beth", "Betty", "BB", or "Thurgash the Hungry One", let alone if they ask to go by "Garrett".

The schools, in my humble opinion, are there to serve the best interests of the child. Sometimes that means sharing information with the parents so that you are aware of concerning developments and you can work with the teachers to help your child. Sometimes, unfortunately, that also means that the parents are the concern. Signs of physical or sexual abuse, for example. Malnurishment. Things of that nature. The school not only doesn't need to defer to the parents' "rights" at that point, they have a legal obligation to report these concerns for investigations that may even lead to the stripping of those parental rights.

When it comes to children who are expressing ~~body~~ gender dismorphia or non-heteronormative behaviors, A) you have to consider the actual risks of those things and the means by which they are being expressed. If they are expressing them in destructive or dangerous ways, such as overtly sexual acts, self harm, etc. then those are probably concerns to bring up with parents. If they are simply mannerisms, preferred names, identity, then those are not concerning behaviors that warrant intervention of any kind. B) you have to consider the risks of pushing back on the behaviors. Studies show, pretty much universally, that suppression of ones identity often leads to anxiety, depression and increased risk of suicide. If the behaviors are harmless, and suppressing them is not harmless, then the obvious path is to not suppress them. C) You have to guage the reactions of the parents. Some parents are compassionate/caring. Some parents are apathetic/uninvolved. Some parents are shitty/mean. Some parents are straight up dangerous. So you have to guage how sharing innocent information with the parents will be reacted to. Again, if the behaviors are harmless, and sharing that information with the parents will cause harm, then the obvious path is not to share it if you don't have to.

I'm a parent too. She's only 2 right now, so I am not in this situation yet. I've fostered teens and preteens, and been on the not so fun side of this, where behaviors are actually harmful and my wife and I were involved as a result (there is also more complicated "rights" in those cases as they weren't our children, legally). When my daughter is in school, if she starts to feel that she is uncomfortable in her body, that maybe she is a boy, or both or neither, or that she likes girls, or whatever, I like to hope that I will know that as soon or sooner than a teacher would anyway. And if not, I like to think that, if her teacher is familiar with my wife and I, they will know that we are not going to be the type of parents that shame our daughter or suppress who she is and be concerned about sharing that.

But I don't know how this may play out, except I do know that I will not hold teachers responsible for spying on and reporting harmless behaviors of my child to me. If I don't already know and the teacher does, there is probably a reason my daughter hasn't shared that. It may not necessarily be a good reason. Kids often make strange judgements or leaps in logic, and have a natural desire to gain independence from their parents, but that is part of growing up. And if you trust that the teacher cares for your child, you have to trust that they are acting in their best interest from their perspective. They're a person and a caregiver, not your spy or direct report.

If the kid is opening up to a third party for this kind of issue instead of their own parent, somewhere along the line, that parent has failed at being a parent and has broken the trust between them and their child. That's how I see it. This is 100% the safer option for many, many kids. Please do not take away the one safe space they have and just throw them back to their fucked up parents.

In a vacuum sure that’s well and good, but if the child’s parents are shitheads then outing a kid figuring out their identity is just throwing another problem onto their plate. I could see kids getting sent to conversion therapy as a result of being outed.

It reminds me of the logic behind sanctuary cities; you don’t want immigrants to become easy prey for criminals because they’re afraid to speak to authority figures. I think it’s important to allow children to feel secure with authority figures outside of their parents in the event their parents are not good people and may potentially do them harm.

I just want to chime in here, I'm a bit disappointed to see the number of downvotes on this comment. Nomad isn't missing the point here, they're not saying anything insensitive or unreasonable. They're just saying that they do expect schools to be in touch with parents.

Personally I don't know what I'd do if my child's school wasn't as communicative and supportive as they are, because my child certainly isn't. I truly rely on the school to know what's up with my kid.

That said, I did read KryptonianCodeMonkey's excellent post as well, and it does clarify some important points and address additional nuance on the schools actual role. But if you read it, you'll notice that it also doesn't actually contradict anything Nomad said, it's just expanding on ideas, providing context and pointing out limitations and exceptions. All of that is great and super valuable, but it's crazy to upvote that and downvote Nomad's post.

To sum up, this is bothering me because the negative score suggests there's something wrong with that post, but there's really nothing wrong with that post.

Sure, but you’re basing this on the assumption that the parents will actually have the child’s wellbeing in mind. It begs the question of whether or not the parents will be abusive when they find out. LGBTQ+ kids have much higher rates of homelessness, because the chances of them being kicked out by (or forced to flee) their abusive parents is so high. The school (which is legally required to keep the child’s wellbeing in mind) has to take that possibility into account as part of the decision on whether or not to tell the parents.

If the child is coming out to the school but not the parents, it is probably because the child has already done that risk/reward calculation on their own and determined that the parents wouldn’t be okay with it. So that factor should weigh heavily on the school’s decision on whether or not to tell the parents, because you essentially have a kid saying “if you tell them, it will likely put me in danger.”