After my 13-year-old started living as transgender, our public school transformed into our enemy. It treats parents as unenlightened, backwards, and possibly dangerous.

This article was written by a U.S. public school parent whose child self-identified as transgender more than a year ago. To protect her child’s privacy, she shares her story anonymously.

1. My Child’s School Is Not On My Side

As a mom of an autistic child, I developed close, positive relationships with the teachers and specialists at our school. I often heard comments like, “Your child is fortunate to have such a great advocate. We wish all parents were like you.” My advanced degrees in education helped foster collegial relationships at school.

That collaboration ended abruptly when, at age 13, my child announced a trans identity. Because I didn’t fall in line with the new name and pronouns, I was labeled “unsupportive.” My opinions were ignored. When we learned our child had purchased trans paraphernalia at school, and brought it to the administration’s attention, they shrugged.

The school fostered an Us-vs.-Them dichotomy, where the school is the child’s true friend, and the parents are unenlightened, backwards, and possibly dangerous. My child claimed home life was painful, because at school everyone was “loving” and “supportive.” We were painted as the enemy.

2. Society and Certain ‘Friends’ Are Not On My Side

Our child has been trans-counseled behind our backs not only by school staff but also by neighbors and other parents. We’ve been cut off by friends who insist on using our child’s trans name and preferred pronouns—which we do not use—even though those pronouns have changed multiple times over the past year.

These woke warriors can’t even keep up, but they insist they are right and we are hateful. I’ve been told that my child will probably commit suicide because of me.

3. Health-Care Providers Are Not On My Side

When my child announced a non-binary identity, I called my pediatrician and received a list of gender clinics. When I reminded him that my child is autistic, and that studies show a correlation between rapid-onset gender dysphoria (ROGD) and autism, he said he knew of no such information.

During the annual physical the doctor and my child spoke privately about gender identity. I unashamedly eavesdropped outside the door. Fortunately my child did not respond affirmatively to the doctor’s question about feeling unsafe at home.

That very language had appeared in the “coming out” speech we heard months earlier. Had my child indicated we were unsupportive, we may have found ourselves in the same situation as parents in Ohio, who lost custody of their biological son because they would not provide him cross-sex hormones.

4. Transgender Activism Has Bad Health Outcomes for Kids

The World Professional Association for Transgender Health affirms that 80-95 percent of gender-dysphoric children will align with their biology if allowed to pass through puberty naturally (without transgender treatments).

This should be very good news for parents of suffering children. But a small agenda-driven task force of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has declared that helping a child present to the world as the opposite sex is the proper response to a gender-dysphoric child. Many American public schools take their cues from the AAP, as does mine.

But the only longitudinal study on children to date suggests that social-to-medical transition has a profound effect on whether children will align with their physical biology. The comprehensive study by Vrije University at Amsterdam included gender-dysphoric children who were socially affirmed and then put on puberty blockers. None of these children accepted his or her physical biology as his or her identity. One hundred percent of them continued to identify as transgender and pursue further transitioning.

5. Gay Straight Alliance Clubs Can Function Like Cults

The Gay Straight Alliance (GSA) club at our school is for middle and high school students. Younger students—largely those who are on the fringe and struggling socially—are shepherded in and told that the reason they feel different is because they’re actually transgender. They’re told that they’re accepted and loved, just the way they are: transgender.

They learn about bisexuality, pansexuality, and zoosexuality; non-binary, genderqueer, and genderfluid; deadnames, transnames, and misgendering. GSA clubs teach that anyone who doesn’t kowtow to a child’s preferences is a homophobe, transphobe, bigot, and hater.

My child joined, and when I told the principal I’d like to visit the GSA club, I was deflected. I pressed on, and was given permission to attend once, on condition that I be chaperoned by the principal.

The parallels to cults are unmistakable. Cults draw in lonely people with love-bombing, or showering them with attention and affection. Cults claim to have special knowledge that is unavailable to outsiders. Cults have rituals and words that make one an insider. Cults sow fear and suspicion of others. And cults isolate members from anyone outside the cult.

6. There Is No Pot of Gold at the End of the Transgender Rainbow

Despite doing everything the trans movement dictates, even to the point of radical surgery, people still suffer. A 30-year cohort study out of Sweden, one of the most LGBTQ-positive countries in the world, is the most comprehensive longitudinal survey of transgender people to date. After following transgender patients for thirty years the study concluded that: “Persons with transsexualism, after sex reassignment, have considerably higher risks for mortality, suicidal behaviour, and psychiatric morbidity than the general population.”

In other words, attempting to look like the opposite sex did not alleviate the subject’s attendant psychological problems. Perhaps that explains the growing number of “detransitioners” who regret having tried to change genders. Their stories deserve to be heard.

7. The Only Effective Strategy Seems to Be Just Saying No

Cutting kids off from the trans juice seems to be the only strategy showing a good outcome. Parents of gender-dysphoric children must reject the unscrupulous and data-unsupported practices of the culture and strike out in a different direction.

Extracting children from the trans cult influence seems to offer hope toward undoing the brainwashing effect. Albeit anecdotal, because studies do not yet exist on this subject, these successes cannot be ignored. By cutting off internet access, withdrawing the child from public school, and curtailing interactions with trans activists and other victims, parents are seeing children freed from the tyranny of the trans lie and returned to being the people they were born to be.

The coming years will tell the story of whether our children are savable, or lost for good.