BONUS: Children in the Image of God

Welcome to a special edition of the Breakpoint Podcast. I'm going to have a conversation today about a book that came out over the last couple months. Really helpful. You might say it's overdue, but it ain't their fault that it's overdue. Parents have been struggling to help their kids understand who they are, made in the image of God, male and female.

With me, Dr. Jeff Myers, president of Summit Ministries, and Dr. Kathy Cook of Celebrate Kids. And together, they have written a tremendous resource. Especially for parents, but I guess also teachers, anybody working with students, youth pastors, and so on, raising gender confident kids.

And there's a lot to get to in terms of you know The on-the-ground explosion of this identity crisis that took place in our culture over the last couple of years. But before we get there, It does seem at least to some extent, like The foot's been taken off the gas. You know, we were headed to the. Kind of moral abyss, you know, in terms of our understanding of male and female. It felt like what might be called the trans train was going to run over every aspect of culture.

The medical profession was in on it, the schools were in on it, the government was in on it. And certainly we still have some state actors kind of in on the pressuring of it. But it feels like it's not what it used to be, right? I mean, did you see that change kind of as you were writing the book? I think we've noticed that shift in the last few years at some administries.

The student, we obviously get top student leaders, they're the most thoughtful young adults. And so they tend to help us understand cultural trends before they become a big cultural trend. And we noticed the rise, for example, of transgender about 10 years ago. And then we started to notice a falling off in the last two or three years. And the falling off, I think, is because young adults have just been so...

Overwhelmed with the agenda that you get to the point where you're just so chock full of it that you couldn't take another bite. And you're just tired of it now. What you used to love, it's that song you would hear when you were a kid, and you think, I can't wait to hear that song again.

So then you get the record and you listen to it 30 times, and now you hate that song and never want to hear it again. And you're life, that's it's just this phenomenon that's taking place.

However, what hasn't happened? Is that parents have not become confident in helping their children understand that this gender spectrum idea is a lie and that God made them male or female on purpose and being able to explain biblically and factually how that's true? Yeah. I had somebody just the other day say, you know, I was talking about this particular issue and they said, you know, well, that issue is over. I don't think that's exactly accurate either to say that suddenly this confusion about male and female is no longer an issue just because it's not over in schools.

No. One of the things we write about in the book, John, is that there's identity dysphoria.

So gender dysphoria is a clinically significant distress about your body, which we write about as actually very uncommon. Gender confusion is common. But the actual medical diagnosis, if you will, of gender dysphoria is uncommon. But identity dysphoria, kids don't know who they are in general. They don't believe that they're as bright as they've been told, or they think that they're stupid when they're not, or they think that, you know, XYZ, there's just so much confusion about identity in general.

And the gender confusion is a subset of that. That hasn't gone away. Identity confusion is still here. They don't know how to launch because they don't know who they are. And if they don't know who they are, they don't know what to do.

And, you know, they're being ignored at home. The schools are still maybe manipulating their belief systems.

So in general, there's still great confusion, even though we started writing the book, thinking about the book when we had a change in the White House. And that, of course, was a huge transition. As soon as President Trump announced that there were two genders, we saw a very significant change right away with the NCAA. And some school districts right away made changes, you know, praise God. But not everyone has.

And not everybody believes that it's different just because somebody said it could be. No, I mean, that's right. I mean, just what, 20 miles from here, there's a school district where they're having this fight right now over books and lines. Libraries and so on, and has everything to do with this issue. My take reading the book is what you just said in terms of gender confusion being a subset of a larger identity crisis.

I think that's absolutely right. And that part of maybe the nausea, the cultural nausea with this issue is that so much weight was put on self-identification, self-identification, especially in the sexual and gender areas. Like that'll explain everything. That'll explain learning styles, that'll explain fashion, that'll explain locker rooms and bathrooms and all that. And it just.

It just wasn't a big enough topic to carry all the cultural weight and baggage we put onto it. Trevor Burrus, Jr.: I think that's a profound point. There are a couple of things that have really given lift to the transgender movement and could and ultimately will give lift to all other kinds of movements that come along in the future if we're not thinking through them from a biblical worldview. But yes, one of them is.

Well, I choose myself who I am. And so I don't let anyone define me. Except the people who tell me that I get to define me. Whatever they say is what will now have to define me. And I think another thing that.

that really emerged in this is that Young men and young women have come to believe that being a sexual being. Being a gendered being is not relevant to who they are. as people.

Now that has its roots way back in postmodernism, you know, the whole idea that everything we do is a performance, therefore gender is a performance. And then, when people began to talk about the gender spectrum, they just thought, well, I guess I have to go along with this. And, you know, 60% of kids say, have told college students have told researchers, I say that I believe things in class that I don't believe just so that I don't get in trouble in class.

So it's very difficult to figure out where this all is, but I don't think we've gone back and asked the really significant question of. What does it mean to be? gender, confident, and to actually understand that God's design is on purpose. Is there something to the fact that we're biologically different as males and females?

Well, define the word gender confident. I mean, that's a really interesting choice in two ways. First of all, the idea of confident, which I think is exactly right. But there is a whole lot of debate over the use of the word gender versus the use of the word sex, right? And of course, in contemporary language, sex tends to connotate behavior, not identity.

And so it's only partially useful. But gender, I mean, half this movement just progressed with a bunch of made-up words and made-up concepts that should have never existed to begin with.

So define gender confident. Yeah, we actually do write about the language confusion, by the way, as one of the causes of the whole gender confusion. But yeah, we think that gender confidence is ultimately a confidence in God as a good, strategic, intentional creator who doesn't make mistakes and he thinks us into existence and he knows what he's doing. And the fact that it's the second thing we learn about ourselves, you know, Genesis 1.27, first that we're created in his image, which Is so glorious. Like, I wish everybody could celebrate that.

And the second thing we learn is our gender.

So it obviously is important to God. And again, there are two, as the scripture teaches, because we believe the scripture wins. And we're going to be led by scripture, not by what the culture would say for us.

So gender confidence, ultimately, a confidence in God is a good, strategic, intentional creator who doesn't make mistakes, knows what he's doing, and therefore I'm going to revel in that.

So confidence is what? Not questioning, you know, it's clarity, it's belief that takes us, you know, further, doesn't take us down, but lifts us up. I think has a lot to do with courage, which we write about in that first chapter. What would you add to that?

Well, there were a lot of people who said you should not be using the word gender. You should be using the word sex. But we didn't think that writing a book called Raising Sex Confident Kids would probably go certain segments of the population that wouldn't sell with. But gender actually is the appropriate word. And it's a little bit funny because we debated back and forth on this.

This book came out just before Charlie Kirk was killed. And I texted him, told him the book had come out. And he was teasing me. He said, oh, you should, you should have talked to me first because the word gender is a fake word. You know, LOL.

And we were just, you know, kind of texting back and forth. And he said, as soon as you get back from your vacation, let's do a show about it. And he was killed while we were on our vacation. But he, you know, he was one who thought you shouldn't be using the word gender. And it was going to be the topic of the show.

Basically, we're going to debate back and forth: should we have used it? I think we can use it as long as we understand that it's being deployed. in an awful, unhistorical, and propagandistic way. By many people on the left. But the word gender itself comes from the word genus, which is the kind of something.

We talk about God made them according to their kind. That's the idea. And there are different kinds of birds, there are different kinds of cats, but there are only two kinds of humans. People of different races aren't different kinds of humans. People who grew up in different parts of the world are not different kinds of humans.

Every human bears God's image. There are only two kinds of humans, male and female.

So we can, I think, use that term gender. I don't want that to be the center of the debate, though. I really want parents to feel like. I know now when my child comes home and says, mommy, why was that bearded man wearing a dress in the grocery store to know what to say? Right.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I thought about that as a parent, right? I mean, you know, I didn't have on my bingo card with my daughters that we were going to talk about same-sex marriage when they were nine or seven and five, but that's when the Obergefeld decision came out. And NT Wright says, you know, culture sometimes forces you as Christians to have conversations that you don't want to have.

Same thing is true on this issue of transgenderism and so on. It's one thing when it was an issue. It's another thing when it just seemed to be taking over everything. And everywhere you looked, suddenly it's commercials, it's TV programs, it's walking. Down the street.

So you actually have to have the conversation. The book that you have written is profoundly helpful for parents on the ground. And I don't want to miss that. But there's there's I guess a little bit of maybe just The way that I'm built, I want a deep six: like, what happened to us? And when you talk about, You know, raising gender-confident kids.

Really, the book is about making parents confident to help their kids. And I think that's really important. Cause I gotta, I mean, I remember 10 years ago saying, look, all this is gonna be over. There's gonna be dads of little nine-year-old girls, they're gonna be playing soccer. And they're going to get really mad and they're going to stand up and defend their daughters.

And that's not what happened. A lot of pastors certainly decided to sit it out. What it was was a bunch of mama bears that really, you know, jumped up. And then J.K. Rowling.

I mean, I guess the pushback came from unexpected sources. Is that helpful at all to think about that? Or should we move on and just help the parents we can?

Well, we certainly do want parents to be confident and grandparents and teachers and pastors to know the truth of the scripture and a biblical worldview and to act on that and to not worry so much about what the culture says and not be afraid that you might be bullied in addition to your daughter being bullied because you were careful enough or brave enough to go and talk to a librarian or talk to a school board or whatever. Super, super important. We've got to get parents out of the silent state, if you will, and get them to talk. And so let me just add to your conversation, John, if you don't mind, that one of the reasons I'm glad we called, that we used the word gender, I love what Jeff was saying about gender. We didn't want parents thinking that they had to talk to their kids about sex necessarily at the age of two, but they should be talking about.

Gender. Like it's super fun to say to a four-year-old girl, I love the way you twirl in that outfit. I love that God gave us a little girl. And we say the same thing to the boy because we don't believe in stereotypes.

So if you have a son who twirls and he loves the way his body moves in the wind or whatever, you say, Man, you look so great when you twirl. I'm glad you're a little boy. We got to start that when they're young so they begin to understand there's goodness in their gender. Where we wouldn't do that with sex, that we would wait for until a little bit later, I think.

So, although that's probably debatable in some cultures too.

So, it's important. Yeah, it is. And I don't, again, I want to focus on the content of the book. It just is stunning to me that the lack of confidence. In the church.

And I appreciated that you guys began with talking about having a confidence in the biblical story. And that that's really important because You know, maybe in a sense, the lack of confidence we saw from too many parents and too many pastors and so on was a lack of confidence in the Genesis account. You know, this is what you talked about in terms of how the Bible. Introduces human beings in appeal kind of to a creation. Theology that is part of our catechism, part of our cultivation, and certainly part of our Christian worldview.

Aaron Powell, there's a role for both moms and dads in this. Moms sometimes have a difficult time with this issue because they want to affirm their children. And they're told in the culture, if you want to affirm your child, you acknowledge. That they could be transgender, and that would actually be fine. In fact, for a while, it even became popular if you didn't have a transgender child, there was something wrong with your.

you're parenting and that, but then from the from the from the dad's side. I remember listening to someone who was an athlete who essentially was not rewarded with medals at a performance because there was a biological male who was in the competition. and had to be in the dressing room with this individual. And just the awkwardness of it all. And her main question was: where were the dads in all of this?

Where were the dads? Dads, why does J.K. Rowling have to speak up for you? She writes children's books of fiction. Why does she have to be the one to stand up and do what you should be doing?

And that, I think, is a huge question. I had written a previous book about gender identity from a legal and a medical perspective. It was distributed to every single state legislature in the United States. The main person distributing it was a lesbian feminist. Because she said if we can't get this issue right, then there won't even be a difference between male and female anymore.

And then all of our discussions about the patriarchy or whatever are irrelevant. Yeah. You know what I think often happens with parents is that they think they have to know everything before they can speak up. And that's not true. You can be a parent who knows that your daughter is a girl and forever and ever and should be.

And you don't have to understand it all medically or sociologically or anything. You don't have to be able to answer every question. You have to know some truth and you have to love your daughter well. But I think there's a tendency for a lot of parents and even educators, pastors. to be, they're fearful to speak up, for fear they'll be asked a question they can't answer, and then they feel like they look like fools.

Let's just know what we know and stand on the truth of the scripture and speak up. And then, if somebody's continually asking us a question, then we research it. That's what we did. When we started writing the book, we didn't know everything that we were going to put in the book, but we're capable of figuring it out. And parents can do that too.

Yeah. Let's start with like kids. I mean, part of, I think, the value here is how do we get ahead of any confusion that might come? What would you tell parents of young children? You know, the confusion hasn't come into their house.

Some of them, I've talked to parents, a lot of them are terrified that it will come into their house with their own kids and they're looking for all kinds of signs of distress or anything like that. How do you start with a good foundation for confidence in this area? I'm going to do it differently with different ages of children.

So smaller children, elementary age children, middle school children will be different, high school children will be different. And this may sound a little counterintuitive, but with the youngest ones, it's partly a matter of. removing from them the pressure to conform to any particular stereotypes. There are some boys. who are very aggressive and play football.

And there are some boys who are very emotionally intelligent and play the violin. There are some girls who play soccer. There are some girls who play with dolls. And sometimes girls play with dolls and then go play soccer. This whole idea that if you're somehow a tomboy, that you're actually more male than female is something that comes from a secular atheist perspective of psychology rather than from reality or from a biblical worldview.

So you can start that way. You can also talk about, as Kathy was saying earlier, affirming the things that you see in your child. The question will come up because little kids are the ones who ask all the awkward questions. That question of why was that man with the beard wearing a dress in the grocery store? And there's an appropriate place to say.

Honey, I want to sit down and talk about this as soon as we get home. Because there are a lot of people who are really confused about how God made them. They don't know what their purpose in life is, some of them don't even believe in God. They don't even believe there is a purpose in life. And some of them get so confused that they actually think they might have been born in the wrong body.

That's a very cruel thing to say to a person that they've been born in the wrong body because there's no way to fix that. It's not like you're saying there's something wrong with your body. You're saying that your body itself is wrong. I want you to know that God made you the way he did. on purpose.

And the way he made you is good.

Now when we meet people who are confused, We are polite to them. We don't say mean things about them or criticize them. Our hope is that they will somehow be able to get beyond their confusion too. I love that. I love confusion.

I love that they're deceived, but we don't call them stupid. We don't call them bad. It's really important. And I love that emphasis on they don't know. If you don't know your purpose, You know, why am I alive?

Why did God bother making me me now? If we don't know the answers to that, then anything is free. We can become anything. But when we know purpose, then we can develop that identity with more assurance. Yeah.

What about those parents who hope that their kids won't notice the man with a beard and a dress? I mean, it's one thing if they ask, but it's another thing if you're in a place and it happens. Do you let it become part of the background noise or do you point it out? That would depend upon the maturity of the kid. If the kid's already confused and doesn't believe much about God, then maybe I wouldn't bring it up.

Or I could so that I could emphasize the fact that God knows what he's doing. And this is why we dig into the scripture so that we know more about ourselves and about our Creator.

So I think it really does depend upon the situation. But the parent can't not do it because she lacks confidence. This is where the parent has to put children first. And if it's prevalent in your community, or you might even have a family member who's confused and the kids, can I still love my aunt when she looks like she doesn't think she's a girl anymore? Yeah.

So I think it depends on the situation, but you can't use your own weakness. To be silent. That's not going to be healthy. Children are supposed to learn from moms and dads. Moms and dads are supposed to be the first and forever security and the answer bank, if you will.

So if you don't know something, and we get that, that's why we wrote the book. If you don't know something, find out so that you can develop some confidence and learn together. You made a really good point in the book, Jeff, about it's okay to be ignorant. It's actually okay to not know everything, and then you can find out together. And I think there's richness in that.

You don't want to be debating with children about this. Because every kid knows how to Google. And all if they just type in the word transgender in a Google search page, they will be five or six pages deep into the search results. Nobody ever goes five or six pages deep, but you'll be five or six pages deep before you find any reference to any article that questions the transgender ideology in any way.

So, all of like the first page is: here are the facts your parents don't want you to know about transgender. Here are, here's a law firm that will help you legally separate from your parents. You know, here's a place where you can get cross-sex hormones without your parents knowing, all of that kind of thing.

So, we don't say, we say, don't debate about this. Just. find those right times where you can kind of talk side by side. And sometimes the intensity of parents does bug kids. If parents haven't really talked about something and then they start to, it's a little weird, especially if you're sitting down looking them in the face.

A lot of kids don't like to have that. They don't want to look at you when you're upset because it makes them feel upset and they don't want you to be upset.

So finding a time where you can be in a car riding side by side, not having to look at each other to talk about some of these issues is pretty important. And I think if parents do an excellent job of fighting back against the stereotype, we do write well about that, that, you know, a girl can like pink and a boy can like pink and a boy can like to dance, et cetera. It's important that we fight back.

So, what if we were better role models of security on our own gender? What if we told stories of our past that might surprise our kids and our grandkids? I saw that part in the book. Can we part there for a second? Yeah.

I think this is such a culturally new issue that that kind of story was pretty rare, you know, even back. You know, I'm super young. I mean, when I was a kid, just yesterday. But what kind of things are helpful in this area? What kind of stories are you talking about?

Well, it's something as simple as a man can be a cook. Like, if you watch cooking shows on TV, most of the judges and many of the chefs that are owners of these shows, if you will, are men.

So, if you have a young son who would rather help you as the sous chef cut up vegetables and wash the lettuce for dinner, rather than changing the oil in dad's truck, that's fine. You can't tease him and you can't say, oh, go play with you, go work with your dad. And you might have a daughter who does want to change the oil in the truck, either because she's mechanically oriented. Or she just loves her dad and she wants to spend time with her dad.

So it can be simple things about the way they use their time. It can be a girl who would rather wear pants than a dress. There's nothing wrong with that. It doesn't mean that she's born in the wrong body and you can't let her think that. You know, in my case, I'm tall.

I'm 6'1 ⁇ . I'm taller than even a lot of men today. I was the tallest kid in school all the way through the eighth grade. And if I was young today, I might wonder, well, maybe I'm born in the wrong body because as I look around, it's always men that are taller than women. You know, again, I have a low voice.

I'm called Sir. You both know that I've got what's called a good radio voice. I've been told by some of the best of the best, I have a perfect radio voice. It carries well in a room. I can have 500, even the summit kids in the balcony.

I love being a part of your program, Jeff. And as you know, John, there's 200 kids in the room and there's some in the way back far. They don't have trouble hearing me because my voice is low. I'm a female with a low voice. I'm not in the wrong body.

And so I can be a role model. And I have had, I've had young women, in fact, there was a single woman I was with recently at an event who thought she wants to write and she was afraid to be a woman author for fear she wouldn't be paid attention. To.

So she had just spoken with her husband the night before she heard me speak, thinking she was going to write under a pen name and would choose a male-sounding name. And then she met me and she saw that I'm an author of many books and I had credibility on stage. And I think, again, that's just my story. We all have stories, and I think we need to use them really well. I have a daughter who's a helicopter pilot.

She loves the mechanical aspect of it, she loves the technical aspect of it. And undoubtedly, if she grew up today, she would be told that she's a boy in a girl's body because 99% of helicopter pilots are male. Fortunately, she didn't believe that or sense that. And she understood. that this is not really the way it is.

But there are so many students. This is the thing that really grates on my nerves about propaganda, especially this cultish kind of transgender cult propaganda, is that it takes everyday situations and turns them into full-blown crises that a child must resolve now in a particular way. There's kind of this really hardcore evangelistic aspect to it.

So for example, I had a student at Summit Ministries who announced in her class, in her school, that she wanted to be an engineer. She was immediately told by her classmates, you're a boy trapped in a girl's body because no girl. wants to be an engineer. That's pure propaganda. When a child is going through puberty, boys and girls feel very uncomfortable in their body.

So the transgender ideology says, you know why you feel uncomfortable in your body? Because you actually are in the wrong body. And it uses all of these regular everyday situations that all of us have to go through. where we ought to be learning how to be comfortable being uncomfortable, and it uses them to try to recruit. Converts to a particular ideology.

I want to hit the propaganda side of it just quickly with girls. Because one of the things that I came across just a few months ago was a wonderful essay by the Anglican ethicist Oliver O'Donovan. At the time, he was writing about transsexual, that was the phrase. This was a essay probably 25, 30 years ago. And in the middle of it, he says, you know.

Just to be clear, what we're talking about when we're talking about this issue are middle-aged men who deal with sexual fetishes. Which he was right. I mean, that's what was being talked about. The Tavistock whistleblower, the University of Washington and St. Louis whistleblower, what we've seen out of the CAS report, what we've seen now out of HHS, there are two reports.

is that there is a disproportionate number of uh adolescent and pre-adolescent girls. Five to one, according to some. I mean, that should have, you know, made us believe Abigail Schreier, who said this was a social contagion a long time ago. But I want to ask a different question. It is a remarkable thing that this issue went from 20, 25 years ago being about middle-aged men to being about adolescent and pre-adolescent girls.

Why? What is it with girls? You write about the causes of this, but I think it's also kind of parents of daughters. They've got to want to know this. Like, why is this so you?

Uniquely challenging. Why is the propaganda so particularly effective for young girls? Jeff, answer that from the university standpoint, because I think you. What you taught me about the 50 year ago decision being made in our liberal universities and the women's departments, I think that's huge. And then there's other things too, but what do you think of starting with that?

Yeah, you can go back 50, 60 years. I'm thinking of the work of Michel Foucault, who was one of those postmodern writers who was trying to communicate that everything that happens is a performance. That gender is performative. He said the idea of male and female didn't really emerge as significant until the 1800s. And that it was put in place as a performance so that certain people could have power for their viewpoint in society.

So that's the way he framed it.

Well, it really led very, very quickly within 10 years of when he was writing this. To the formation of gender studies departments. They were initially called women's studies departments.

Now they're called gender studies departments. And they've developed an extraordinary amount of material, low quality most of it, unscholarly most of it, but enormous amounts of it. that have gotten into each aspect of the culture. And the main target, and I'll get to the point about the little girls in just a moment, but the main target of it is the patriarchy. Right.

So if you are a leftist progressive and you want to overthrow society because you believe that the power structures are colonialist, then you'll talk about the fact that America is colonialist. If you are a feminist and you want to overthrow America's power structures, then you talk about the patriarchy. Everybody's got this target of something that this is the thing that if it was torn down, then we could all live with freedom without feeling like we're being constrained by those who are in power at the present time. That then became the basis of Of sort of a social media campaign that I think was specifically geared toward young women. And I say this because in 2018, it's hard to believe, seven years ago now, Lisa Littman.

It was a scholar who began to look at this. She began to notice that it was happening among young women. What was happening? It was they were they were using the characteristics that. Women typically possess wanting to understand who I am in a cultural situation.

How do I situate myself around the other people who are around me? This is not something that guys think about nearly as much.

So they're thinking about all of this.

Well, what happens if all of a sudden your world is the entire world? not just your fifth grade class. But everybody in the world you feel like on your social media platform sees you and you're evaluating yourself against all of them.

So if you're feeling uncomfortable in your body, what are you going to do? I feel uncomfortable in my body. You just type it into TikTok. What's going to come up? Young women who said When I decided that I was a boy, I was better off, or whatever.

And it's just one after another after another.

Well, you're thinking, well, this must be the entire world because every single video I'm seeing has the same message.

So if I'm going to properly orient myself to society. Then I have to. acknowledge that I'm transgender. There was one middle-aged girl. We wrote about this in the book, but she said to me, I had to leave my school and go to a different school.

Why? I was the only girl left in my class. Every other girl in the class decided she was a boy. It's so disappointing, isn't it? Like we wrote really well, I think, in there's two chapters in particular about where we honor both of the genders.

Well, we honor the genders throughout the whole book, but we want girls to become godly women and boys to become masculine godly men. And we want women to value their gender and the other and men to value their gender and the other. Let's respect everybody here. And so it's, you know, it's just terribly disappointing. And I think there are girls who want to change genders because they think girls are hurt.

And boys don't hurt. I mean, so it's boys are the ones who do the damage, but they're not damaged.

So if they've been hurt emotionally, sexually, physically, mentally, then they're going to become a boy because now the boys are the strong ones and the boys are in control and the boys have power and I'll never be hurt again. That's a theme and that's so sad. It's certainly not true. And it's just sad.

So again, we've got to stand up and model. One of the things we wrote really well about, I think, Jeff, was let's use what God teaches us about our gender and not what culture teaches us.

So back to parents, grandparents, educators, pastors. If you know that there's a girl or a boy confused and owning the cultural narrative. You know, they go, no, no, no. You know, you're being deceived or you're wrong. You're reading something that appears to be true because the person wants you to believe it, but it's not true.

Why do I know that? Because the scripture says this. And it says is a weak word, that the scripture teaches us this, and this is how we're raising you to understand that the biblical account matters more than the cultural narrative. Yeah. So let me give a for example.

We talked about kind of how to get out ahead and start cultivating confidence from the beginning.

So, that when the false messages come, we can respond to it. But there's parents who just heard from their kid for the first time. I think I may be a boy, or I think I may be a girl, I think I may be born into the wrong body. Those parents are terrified. Those parents are.

Probably are having a crisis of confidence. What would you encourage them to say or to do?

Next. What makes you think so? You know, they might not think that they were born in the wrong body at all. They were teased.

Now they wonder if that teaser was right. You know, they ran and a boy would say, Oh, you run like a girl. And the boy is embarrassed and isn't gonna come home and say to his dad, Do I run like a girl? But is maybe going to say, You know, I think I'm born in the wrong body.

So I think one of the first questions is, What makes you think so? I might even be bold enough to say, What have you heard or what have you seen? Or who told you that that might be true for you? We have over 200. Questions, 200 discussion starters in the book because we know that if you can have a discussion, you can change perspective.

It's so important.

So, what makes you think so? Why do you believe that's true? I love Jeff's question: what if you're wrong? Such a powerful question. What if you start down this path and you find out that you're wrong?

I might ask, what's the real question under the question? And we write in the book about having a stone face, right, John? Don't panic. You know, your daughter or son comes to you. If you look like you're panicked, they might actually change the question and you're never going to be able to then administer hope to them.

So you want to try to, usually I say react and respond and let them know that you're really listening. But sometimes we need to really step back and not show the panic, even though we understand that this is a scary thing. We want you to be prepared so that you can act and not react.

So do the work, buy the book, read it, listen to this podcast again and again, and get ready for it. But I think those are some of the thoughts initially that I would have. You're looking for changes.

So you've been a classroom teacher and you can tell when a student comes in on Wednesday and they're acting very different from the way they were acting on Monday.

Something is wrong. And if you have time, hey, you know, can you help me understand what's going on? You look super stressed today or whatever. A story always spills out. You note it, but what you notice is there's a change.

So don't ignore the things you see that might be changes. Your child, who usually drops the backpack and comes straight in the kitchen and starts messing around and getting snacks and stuff, goes straight to their room. Or the child who's ordinarily patient with a younger sibling because they enjoy playing the same game, throws the game or gets frustrated and marches away or says something mean. Those kinds of changes tend to indicate something has happened. That's stressful.

And then it's a question of getting on their level, getting in a situation where they feel comfortable talking and just asking them to explain what happened. And we talk about being curious first. Can you help me understand what happened? Understanding. I've never faced this exact situation.

We didn't have a music video saying that you should be transgender when I was in school, but I sure remember times where I thought, I can't play that sport nearly as well as the other guys. There's got to be something wrong with me. Right. And then finally to envision. I envision a future for you where you don't have to just sit around and be obsessed with this kind of thing and what other people say about you.

I envision you being the kind of person who turns around and invests in and serves other people based on the way God made you. I know a lot of parents struggle in these sorts of situations also to find counselors that they can trust. Do you have any solutions for that? For finding the right voices as opposed to the wrong voices.

Well, there might need to be therapy involved. And we've spent a lot of time talking about this. And a therapist would need to be involved if what emerges is some kind of a deep-seated trauma that has taken place. Often, gender treatments are used as a replacement for trauma or as a shortcut to try to address things that. really needs kind of a talk therapy to get through.

So what are you looking for? You're going to be looking for Christian therapists first. Second of all, you're going to be asking that therapist, if when you're presented with gender issues, how do you approach them? And you can find out very quickly from the way they answer that question whether or not they're going to try to take the approach of affirming whatever the child thinks about herself. as opposed to trying to get to the root.

Of what actually happened and how we deal with that underlying trauma. And that's so important, John, because as you know from the reading that you do, the vast majority of the students who think that their gender is wrong have other mental health issues going on. Yeah, I'm just going to go there next. Talk about comorbidities because that's been a key part of this story. Absolutely.

The stress, depression, anxiety, suicide, loneliness, being overwhelmed, I think, in general, and they don't know how to cope. Maybe they're not problem solvers and they're not confident in themselves in general.

So a friend of mine who's a therapist with the American Association of Christian Counselors believes that every session should have about two-thirds to three-fourths of the time on all the other issues and the remaining time on gender, because gender isn't the issue. Gender is what the child thinks is the easiest solution. They think it's easier to change gender than it is to deal with the overwhelmed trauma that somebody's going to make them process.

So those would be other questions that I would ask a therapist. And in some states, they're really limited, which is really tragic.

So again, yeah, be really careful. And this is why we want the parents to be informed and the parents to gain confidence in scripture and in what we've written here so that they're able to really do a lot of the question answering for themselves with their kids. And then they find the right people.

Sometimes it's a pastor, not a counselor, therapist, or coach.

Sometimes it's a mental health coach and not a therapist.

Sometimes it's an aunt or an uncle or a best friend who will go on walks and talk where the kid has the safety to be communicative. I think that's such an important point because, you know, it's like Colorado, right? We've got a Supreme Court case that's being argued right now, the child's case, over whether or not licensed counselors can do this sort of therapy that actually helps people align with their God-given sex or their bodies. And you think in states, and we're not the only one. I mean, it'll be interesting to see how this one resolves, but.

In states all around many states, that same law exists.

So, it's a wonderful opportunity for pastors and for churches to provide, and for family members and extended family members to provide replacement, especially in a culture like ours that tends to go to therapy so fast, right? When, in a sense, what you need is. A truth teller. Right. And let's encourage everybody.

To understand that often they're reacting to the fact that they're uncomfortable with something. And Dr. Jeff's mentioned this. All of us have gone through life being uncomfortable more than once with something in our body that we thought was wrong. And we had parents who listened to us, or we were able to satisfy ourselves with a new understanding.

But what's the stat, Jeff? At least two-thirds of the people. Turn around by the time they're 18. If there's gender confuses, and even three-fourths, it's almost 90% of young adults who are able to go through puberty without receiving medical treatment. No intervention medically.

Resolve to an identity that's coherent with their biological sex. Yeah. So the longer we don't overreact. And we deal with the comorbidity issues. And we play with them and we walk with them and we watch soccer games with them and we go to the movies and we just we're parent-child the way that it's supposed to be designed.

There's great hope that they're gonna turn around and be okay. Is there a way you can help parents think through how to do that without necessarily pressuring the son or a daughter? to identify with the right thing. Long, long journey and allowing puberty to run its course, so to so to speak. Not that you necessarily just count on that to solve all the problems, but.

That is what the research points to. Puberty is a wonderful thing. Right. That if you allow it to happen, which is why puberty blockers are so damaging, is right now that we know. What does that look like for a parent who's maybe kid is really acting out or really Doing things that maybe are embarrassing or whatever in terms of not identifying with who they are.

Can you give them some words of wisdom? impatience and It's a hard one. It is a hard one. Yeah. We both have a lot of thoughts on this.

Yeah, I'll say first, Jeff, that. To be sad before you're mad. to really feel their pain and understand that this is real to them. But again, it's real because somebody or something in their social network has confused them. Who are they listening to?

What are they watching? What are they doing with their spare time? Who are they hanging with? Can we observe and really know our children well enough that we can predict what's probably caused confusion? And then we separate them from those causes as much as we possibly can.

I mean, that can cause a lot of conflict. Oh, it can. But it's their life that's on the line. This is where the parent has to be the parent, where ideally the parent stands up to the child and says, I know this is really difficult for you. We have decided that that.

Member of your peer group is unhealthy, or we have decided that that game makes you aggressive and controlling and dangerous to your siblings. We can't allow that. And God has ordained us to be the parents of you four children. And so we have decided, like, I would love that. I'm not saying that's easy, but I would love for the parents to understand.

And that's what kids mean. Kids tell me all the time they want their parents to be strong. Kids want to be able to go to their parents for truth. and they want to be heard and they want to have compassion that's why we start the book with be compassionate But that would be part of my gut response to that. This is a really tough one for high school and college-age students because.

From the transgender agenda's perspective, they are being told to cut off their parents. They're being instructed in how to cut off their parents and why they should do it.

So, every transgender program in school has a disclaimer: don't tell your parents. What has been happening here. And libraries and everywhere else. Yes. Right.

Because they won't understand.

So it's trying to create that gap.

So you're always at war against those forces that are trying to tear you apart from your child. And I think at some point the conversation is: look, there are going to be a lot of things where people are going to tell you things and they're going to say, don't tell your parents. And what I want you to know is. I want to be side by side with you. And moving into what's actually true.

And I can't say that I'm never going to react with grumpiness because you know me and I know you. And so that's going to be, I know but I but I want you to know that if somebody says, you cannot tell your parents about this. That's your first indication that You need to come talk to me about this, and then we will walk through it together. The reason we have so many thoughts on this, though, is because we've worked with young adults. who had to, for example, have a change of peer group, even a change of school.

The more transgender comes up in schools, and it's in half of all public schools in the United States of America right now. Today, as we're talking about this, they're not backing away from it. the discussions give young especially young men who are sexually aggressive. a feeling that they have a license to prey on other girls and boys. And so you're going to find this in their direct messages.

You're going to find it in their texting and so forth. If they're being groomed, you have to get them out of that situation. You have to have to get them away from that peer group. You have to take responsibility for the device that's allowing them to have access to those things. And then that might also be time where, you know, time with both parents if possible.

I know a lot of families that have a single-parent family, and that's not easy. But there are going to be good men who are coaches, and good women who are coaches or. You know, we like to trail life and American Heritage Girls. I'm not getting, this is not a paid advertisement, but they're scouting organizations that have biblical values at their core. The people leading those have been vetted.

You know, so that's another thing. But you're always trying to find those role models who can come along and be the people who also say so. And let me add real quick. I love all that. The earlier you start Being available to your children's questions, the better.

The earlier you start teaching the truth, even if it's hard to hear, the better. If your children are five, six, seven years old and they're confused about being bullied or they didn't like a babysitter or they're confused about why you always make them go to the neighbor's house or whatever, answer their questions and be the truth and model for them that the truth is good and righteousness is better and the narrow path is the place to be. The more that we do that, the more likely that they're going to come to us when they're 12, 13, 14. Because what I've had some kids tell me is, no, I know I can trust my mom. She does teach me the truth and I have honored my parents and followed their wisdom and it has been good for me.

So why would I stop doing that now? But if we haven't been available to the hard cry because we're not confident or we're too busy or we're on our phones. We're distracted by life. We're overwhelmed, legitimately so. I don't know how some parents do it today.

But if that's our story, then they're going to go somewhere else when they're confused. And then we won't have a chance. Yeah. My dad's hard sometimes, but my dad knows me better than the people on TikTok. They don't know me at all.

Yes. It is fun to see finally a pushback on the kids wanting to be on social media, which is really great because that has been a sore.

So, I mean, you know, if we went shorthand for a lot of this conversation, take away their smartphones and get them off social media. This is like one thing that everyone had. The final thing I would say on this, John, and I don't know how this fits, but kids have to have a place to be able to back away from something they've embraced. That they Don't necessarily embrace anymore. Yes.

This is one thing that the transgender agenda often does is try to force kids into a permanent situation where if they were to change or to say, I don't, I'm not really into this anymore, they feel pressured to stay in it.

So we have to give them a way to say, look, if you ever get to the place where this is just not working for you anymore, you know, let's talk. Yeah, I think that is a great point. We featured the story of Chloe Cole in the Truth Rising, a documentary and the Truth Rising study. And the voice of these people that weren't supposed to exist, right? Detransitioners, I think has been a really, really powerful thing.

Yes. Especially young ones like Chloe, who's just become so wonderfully articulate and talking about how she was confused and who she turned to. For truth and so on.

So, really good stuff.

So, the website is genderconfidentkids.com, the book Raising Gender Confident Kids. On the website, you've got, as I saw, an ever-growing list of frequently asked questions that keeps getting longer and longer and longer.

So, in addition to the book, there's an enormous amount of resources there at genderconfidentkids.com. Jeff, the book is available through Summit Ministries for free. It's available for free thanks to a very generous donor who said, I'm buying the first 40,000 copies. You just help distribute them.

So we have a lot of those copies available. If you want to come get one, we'd love to send one to you. If you want a case of them to hand out to everybody in your church, then pay it forward. Don't bankrupt me by ordering a case at a time. But individual books, we want to get in the hands of as many parents as possible.

Your youth pastor might need to have one because there are all kinds of questions that come up in church. Should we use pronouns that people tell us they prefer or not? And all of those kinds of things we address in the book and through the frequently asked questions. Again, genderconfidentkids.com. Dr.

Jeff, Dr. Kathy, thanks for joining us. Thanks, John. Thank you. I'm going to use a bottle of the same piece of the bottom of the column.