You're not crazy. You're not alone. You do not have to believe what people at school say to you. They do not love you. They do not know you.
God loves you and God knows you. That. relaxes somebody so they can think, okay, I just need a little bit bigger perspective. That's Dr. Jeff Myers with an important reminder that gender confusion doesn't define your identity or the identity of your child.
Dr. Myers and Dr. Kathy Cook joined us last time on Focus on the Family, and we're looking forward to more of their insights today. I'm John Fuller, and thanks for joining us. John, the discussion yesterday was really good.
I mean, we don't touch this topic very often, but so many parents write to us or call us or talk to our counseling team about these issues of their children who are experiencing gender dysphoria or transgenderism in school. It's getting reinforced in some schools, not every school, but it's an issue, and it's important for us as the broader community of focus on the family to know what's happening and to be able to help our parents better understand how to communicate with their preteens and teens. And so that's the spirit in which we're coming after this topic of transgenderism in the public square today. And that's the goal of our discussion. Again, if you missed it last time, you can go to the website, download it, get the smartphone app and listen to it that way.
That way you have access to all of the programs. But it would be good to listen to that after you hear this. Today, yeah, we uh we kind of eased into just some of the content from Dr. Kathy Cook and Dr. Jeff Myers, both youth experts.
They spend their time talking with thousands and thousands of kids and their families. And the book is called Raising Gender Confident Kids: Helping Kids Embrace Their God-Given Design. It's an excellent resource. We've got it, and you can learn more about our guests and the book at our website. The link is in the show notes.
Kathy and Jeff, welcome back. Thank you. Thanks to you. It's good to have you. Jeff, let me start with you.
Last time we didn't hit this directly, but the goal of the Christian parent is to say, you're made in the image of God. That means your identity is rooted in Christ. And, you know, he died for our sins. He rose again. He is in heaven.
Our aim is heaven, to have eternal life with him. And that's our identity. And speak to that desire of the Christian parent. And sometimes this collides with preteen teens' worldview and what they're getting at school. And do we need to talk about that again, mom, dad?
I mean, right? But that's just part of it. But how do we effectively communicate and live those things out in our homes so that our kids actually catch it? Mm-hmm. Every time something confusing happens in the culture, my instinct is to draw back, try to escape, get around it, not have to think about it.
Oh, you must be human. But in my better moments, I realized that every confusion presents an opportunity. And in this case, the fact that people are confused about their gender is an opportunity for moms and dads to help their children understand. You were made just the way God wanted you to be. Your gender is not something you have to become.
It is something that God gave to you. And our goal is to help you as a boy become a godly man or you as a girl to become a godly woman. That's the journey we're going to take and walk alongside one another. But you're right. A lot of young people, they're a little bit embarrassed to talk with their parents about things that are happening in the culture because they think it's going to shock them.
Or last time I talked about what they did at school, she freaked out. And so I don't, you know, I don't want to say anything now. Learning to ask a few key questions. And my core one is this. Please help me understand.
Help me understand. And then if there's any kind of indication at all, then to follow it with, okay, tell me more about that. I don't quite get it. Help me, what's going on here? What, you know, just those sorts of questions.
Uh As a dad, my best moments were when I just wasn't afraid to play dumb. Yeah, that's not a bad place to be because actually we probably don't know, right? We are dumb in that way. Kathy, let me ask you, again, we kind of kicked this around at the beginning last time, but again, this issue has just erupted since like 2018, 2019 with transgenderism and gender dysphoria. It just wasn't on the landscape that much.
What is going on in the culture that causes young people to be so questioning? their gender. I mean, it just, you go back 15 years ago, it just wasn't happening at the rate it is today.
So that would indicate, scientifically, that would indicate there's some pressure occurring, some change agent occurring that more young people are disturbed with their gender. It is confusing. And we do talk about that or read about that in the book. I think, so I would say we have a security crisis, and that's why we have an identity crisis.
Okay, explain that. And the model that we teach at Celebrate Kids, which is in the book, and I'm grateful Jeff wanted it in the book, is children are desperate to know who they are. That's because God makes us who we are on purpose, intentionally, with a purpose. He counts how many hairs we have on our head. He knows us intimately.
So we're drawn to people who know us intimately because of the way that we've been created. And when we don't have that, like if a mom and dad are distant, if there's been a divorce and there's an overwhelmed single mom, if the grandparents have stepped in, It can be a really, really hard time when we honor that. The gay and lesbian lobby, the transgender ideology, people who endorse that, they're loud and they're present and they're manipulative and they're good at what they do. Wouldn't you say that, Jeff? They know how to tickle the ivories and they know how to get a kid to go, whoa, you know me better than my mom knows me.
Like when the trans person says, oh, I know what it feels like to not like your body. Let's talk about that. And that person can talk about it with what appears to be great integrity and great authority. And that continues to, you know, discourage the child to believe in mom and dad.
So when moms and dads are security, when moms and dads tell the truth, when moms and dads have the guts to say, I don't know, but let's find out together. When a mom and dad will say, Whoa, I've never dealt with that before. Could I have some time to pray and then let's come back and let's go for a walk? Like, I'm so proud of everybody listening who's present to their kids and not afraid. Because we can't just go, oh, Genesis 1:27 says, You're created male and female in God's image.
Now go to bed. You know, no, that's a true. Statement, right? But Jeff, it doesn't sound simple to the confused kid, does it? It seems strange that we need to be talking about this.
But a very high percentage of young adults today identify as transgender or non-binary, either because they've believed that gender is irrelevant to who they are, or because they believe there's a gender spectrum where you've got G.I. Joe on one side and you've got Barbie on the other. And since neither one of us are really either, then we're all actually transgender. This is what a social movement does: it tries to put itself in a place where everybody fits into its grouping. That's how it gains power.
So it releases power when a parent can say, Let's talk about this. Let's talk about you. I know these people who are talking to you, they seem caring. They do not love you. They do not know you.
God loves you. God knows you.
So let's have a discussion on that basis. And when you do, When you begin to sort of break that ice to talk about these issues, if you do it in a way that shows caring, that shows understanding, that shows that you have a vision for your child's life. I just picture you being this someday. I picture you being the kind of person who helps other people. I picture you being the kind of person who isn't afraid to take risks and to explore things like that.
Then it begins to help that child develop the secure identity, which is an inoculation against some of the cultures. And I want to speak to that in gender terms. When you're a father raising sons, Jeff, speak to some of the goals in that relationship. What are you trying to say and to do as a dad transmitting what it means to be a man in this culture and to do it in a healthy way, not in a, you know, in a derogatory way? This is what it means to be a man.
We spend a lot of time in raising gender-confident kids on this because you aren't going to find the answers on the internet. If you Google trans. Gender, the first five pages are all propaganda. They will say, Here are the facts, quote unquote, about this, which are lies. And then they will say, Here's how to legally separate from your parents, here's how to sneak past your parents to get the drugs that you need to transition, those kinds of things.
So, what do we do? We go back to, as Dr. Kathy talked about, the core needs that every person has. For young men, first of all, it's to be a sage. The core need is to be a person who's wise because you're going to face all kinds of complicated situations in life.
There's a lot of misinformation. How do you discern the truth? A second one is to be an explorer. One interesting thing about boys is they don't get to know themselves by looking inside of themselves. They get to know themselves by knowing the world around them.
And so they have to be able to explore it. A third one is the warrior. We focus on this. And I don't mean it in militaristic terms.
Some people go to war by fighting against actual physical enemies. Others go to war. I have a brother who's an orchestra conductor. He goes to war every day against musical inadequacy by helping his orchestra be excellent in everything they do.
So we focus on that. One of my sons was having terrible dreams, and he asked if I would pray with them. And I said, Yes, I will. And I prayed, God, would you help him dream about puppies and kittens? And birds, and his eyes flew open.
He said, 'Birds aren't nice.' And I thought, Oh, Lord, forgive me. I was trying to psych him into having good dreams. I just said, Can I start over? He nodded. He closed his eyes.
I said, God, would you at this very moment, this very night, turn him into a man of courage? He was four. Turn him into a man of courage. Turn him into a man who helps the little guy, who takes his stand on behalf of what is right against what is wrong. And now that young man is in EMT training to be a firefighter, it literally has become part of his mission.
It wasn't my prayer, it was God. giving him this and then I was just identifying it and calling it out. Why do we let all these false prophets in the culture curse us with all of these things about us that are not true? Just believe what God says. Yeah, but it takes intentionality on the part of the parent to think these things through, be equipped, which is another good reason we're doing this today.
So Kathy, explain what the five core needs are. Yeah, thanks.
So security, who can I trust? Not what can I trust. Don't put your faith in yourself or your looks or your body even. Identity, who am I? Not who was I?
Not who do I want to be, but who am I? Belonging, who wants me? And so I can't have healthy relationships if I don't know who I am. See, identity is the core of the book, and really what we're talking about. Who am I leads to who wants me?
The fourth one is purpose. Why am I alive?
Okay, I'm not alive to change my gender. I'm alive to serve the Lord, to know Him, to let other people know Him through my behavior. And then competence: what do I do?
Well, okay. All things through Christ who strengthens me.
So, security, identity, belonging, purpose, and competence. And they're in that order. We have all five. They have to be met. We are very convinced in the research that young people who do not have them met in healthy ways will have mental health issues.
They will have an insecurity that can rob them of beauty. They're going to be less likely to believe scripture because they're looking for the scripture to affirm their lie, and it will not do that. And one of the things that we write about that's really strong, kind of to piggyback off of Jeff, what Jeff was just talking about, would be the stereotype of the identity, right?
So, you know, like boys can like musicals, sure, and girls can like Westerns, and boys can like cooking in the kitchen more than a sister, and girls can like helping dad change the oil in the truck. There's nothing wrong with that. And parents and grandparents and educators have to understand that. That it's okay if a girl likes to sweep out the garage, and it's okay if a boy doesn't. It's okay for a girl to be a tomboy.
Those stereotypes are damaging and dangerous. It's what causes the bullying. A little boy who wears a pink shirt because grandma bought it for him and he looks good in pink. It pops his blue eyes. But then he's teased when he wears it.
Oh, you're so gay, or you must be a girl. Boys don't like pink. You must be a girl. Goes home, cries in the bedroom, and like, what's wrong? And the boy is brave enough to say to a mom, because the mom has been loving, compassionate, and present, Mommy, they called me a girl just because I wore pink.
Oh, are you a girl?
Well, no, I'm a boy Well, of course you are, so they lied. You're a boy. Do you ever want to wear that shirt again? No, mommy, please don't make me ever wear the shirt again. And you don't make them wear the pink shirt, even though grandma bought it.
You wash it and you give it away. Because we don't set them up to fail. We don't set them up to be bullied, but we help them interpret the lie as what it is. You know, it's interesting. And I think you have a story like this in the book.
But Jean, my wife, said when she grew up in Southern California, she is very much a tomboy. You know, she wore, people may remember these hang 10 shirts and shorts, very surfer-oriented clothing. But she said to me, she said, you know, today, if I were still that sixth, seventh, eighth grader, I bet. School administrators would be recognizing me and maybe directing me in a different direction in my gender orientation simply because I wore. More like guys' clothing.
That's the kind of thing that we're concerned about. Yep. I know of a girl who wore a brother's old clothes. Like the family didn't have a lot of money. They had a lot of children.
And a shirt is a shirt, right? Jeans are jeans. And this girl, she would say now, was forced to wear her brother's clothes. And she got confused with her gender, and that's what she blamed. And then having conversations helped her to change.
To affirm our boys and girls, to respect their gender and to respect the other gender will change everything. Don't let them go to bed thinking that being a tomboy is bad. Being a tomboy simply means that you like to play outside, you like to get dirty, you don't mind. I mean, I don't even know what it means for sure. But to some of our kids today, it means that I must have been born in the wrong body.
No, that's not what that means.
Well, also at a deeper level, it's making behavior your identity. Bingo. Which is not where it's at. Or your interests. Right.
I had a student who was interested in engineering, and she was told right away at her school, you must be. A boy because you're interested in engineering. I have a daughter who's a bad person. That was the hook. Yeah.
Just because you're good at math, you're good at math, you must be a boy. I have a daughter who's a helicopter pilot. If she grew up today, she would be told, undoubtedly, because you're in a male-dominated field, you must be a boy trapped in a girl's body. I had two brothers who are musicians, highly emotionally intelligent. Both of them would undoubtedly be told today, you must actually be a girl trapped in a boy's body because you're so sensitive.
If we step away from those stereotypes and what we call and replace them with what we call immogotypes, who we are bearing God's image, then there's so much clarity and confidence that comes out of it. Yeah, there's great power in those different ways that we're wired. And my wife is a nature person, and she was the only girl amongst all these guys in a forestry program many, many years ago. Unsurprisingly, my three daughters are very into nature and very strong, very different. Talk, though, to the parent who might be feeling like.
Like, I see a tendency that makes me think they're sliding over to the wrong gender. I mean, I'm uncomfortable with that. How do I handle my own discomfort with my kids' wiring and uniquenesses? Yeah, the first thing is, John, to recognize that you're wired, not weird. God made you this way on purpose.
And he made you to be different from everybody else. It's helpful for a parent to be confident and know that there are 6,500 biological differences that have been cataloged between males and females. Is that odd? 6,500. 1,500.
It's not just a matter of secondary sex characteristics. Which is why they can't medically transition. That's right. It is impossible. And most young people, honestly, when we talk with them, they don't know.
They're not stupid. They just have been deceived. They don't know that it's impossible if you were a girl to become a boy or vice versa. Because they've been told all of this propaganda.
So be aware of that as a parent when you start the discussion. If you see, sometimes it'll be a child who all of a sudden expresses a sudden discomfort. They'd like you could see it within a week.
Something happens. They don't like their clothes anymore. They don't want to talk anymore. They're spending a lot more time on TikTok than they used to. Those kinds.
Of things to try to begin asking, hey, help me understand. The question I always use with young adults is: Would you be willing to share with me what happened to you that causes you to see yourself the way you do? Try to open up the conversation a little bit because there's usually a triggering event. And that's why you can see it so quickly with a young person, because there was a trigger. And you look back and think, yeah, it was that one day.
It was just that one day. What happened? What was the conversation? What took place? What did a person tell you?
Then you have the opportunity to begin to affirm the truth. And I would say, John, the parent doesn't have to be an expert. You know, you weren't an expert when the child said, Where do babies come from? Right? You just, you're in the moment and you pray that God will inspire you to teach the truth.
We would recommend that parents get ready for the question so that you can act and not react.
So, this is why we wrote the book, to prepare people for the conversation. And there's other resources as well that people can turn to.
So, get ready as much as you can. But it's okay, as Jeff said earlier, you can play dumb. You don't have to play dumb, just be dumb if you all say, Man, you know, I've never had to deal with this. I believe the scripture and I believe there's two genders, so I've never had to deal with this before. But man, I'm glad you came to me and I want to be a really good, effective parent in this moment.
Can you give me some time and some space? And let's figure it out together. There's nothing wrong with that. Jeff, in fact, you use a superhero analogy to kind of express why the two genders are healthy. Describe that analogy.
One of the core things we know about male and female is that they were designed to harmonize with one another.
So we focus on that word harmony. And I think of superheroes either with the DC franchise or the Marvel franchise. The superheroes are very strong-willed people, and they fight amongst each other unless they have a cause to fight for that is bigger.
So let me give an example of the harmony. We actually, as males and females, see the world differently. We have P cells in our eyes, which focus on color and texture. We have M cells in our eyes that focus on contrast and motion. Girls have a preponderance of the P cells that focus on color and texture, not just a few more, like 30% more.
So I noticed this when my children were little. I gave them paper and coloring pencils in church so they could occupy themselves while they're sitting in big church. My girls would always draw flowers, people, our house, animals. Abstract designs. My boys only needed two colors, black and red.
Black to draw the tanks and the airplanes, and red to draw the blood squirting out of people who were shot. The stick figures. In general, and again, I don't want to move toward a stereotype here, but in general, girls draw nouns, boys draw verbs. Why? Because they actually see the world differently.
Now, think about this. If you want to see the world accurately, you have to see color. texture, contrast, and motion. Males and females literally need each other to see the world as it actually is.
Well, again, scripturally, again, the two shall become one flesh. I think that's what the Lord is trying to say to us, that it's a good thing. When two people marry, come together, and then you see the world in a fuller way every day.
Sometimes it's good, and sometimes it's not so much fun. But that's the context for what I think God intended for us, and that's really the intimacy of a healthy marriage when you can rely on one another for those strengths you're talking about. I think it's beautiful in marriage. And as a single adult who's never been married, I would say it's just glorious in general. I think our book, you know, and I can say that, I think our book is better because it was written by a man and a woman.
We both have different skill sets and different life experiences that we brought to the book. And I think it was super fun for us to do that. I know as a single adult, the man who runs my ministry, my COO, is a male. And we do think differently, and we experience life differently, and it's been good for us.
So I agree with two becoming one in marriage. I know that God designed that, and it's beautiful. And yet it's not just in marriage that I see the differences harmonizing. Oh, yeah. And we need to teach our kids that it's good that God chose for you to be a female.
And it's good that God chose for your brother to be a male. It's going to be good. Live long enough to find out why it's good. Like right now that you wish you could play on that football team, but the team doesn't allow girls and we wouldn't allow it anyway. Your bones are different and yada yada.
But it'll be good one day. Just live long enough to find out why it's going to be good. We have to believe it's going to be good as the parents. express it as often as we can. You know, there's so much that we can talk about that we never use the word gender.
We just talk about living life on life. Just talk about what's good because God is good and therefore it's good. Can you believe that? Challenge them. I hadn't thought about this, but I haven't really co-authored a book before.
And I've had, there have been two authors on different things. But this was, it was amazing because each time I would challenge something that you had said or you challenge something that I had said, it was elevated because of the dialogue that went back and forth. We're seeing it as male and female and it's better as a result.
So I think raising gender confident kids is honest in that way. It comes to it with a woman and a man looking at, all right, how do we raise godly young men and women? There's so few models for young people to follow. And this gives you as a parent the techniques, the conversation. Even the way that we problem solve is different.
We write about that in the book, that men approach problems differently from women. women. And I think that's one of the things that happened because our book is about problems, right? Girls that want to be boys, that's a problem. Boys that want to be girls, that's a problem.
And we do approach it differently. Kathy, I want to ask you this because this came through in the book and we've only got a couple of minutes. You urge parents and kids to recognize that having resilience to face life's challenges is better than pursuing happiness. Absolutely. That's a big statement.
It is. And it was not hard for us to make because we've lived it out and we know that it's so true. Happiness happens. Happiness is circumstantial. You can't control your own happiness.
You can't, well, people think they can manipulate other people, but of course we're trying to teach against that.
So to be resilient, to walk out of valleys, to learn from those experiences, you know, Romans 5 and James 1 teaches us that we will have challenges in this life. And God ordains those for us and we grow through them. We all have a more biblical character. We all have a stronger faith in the God of the Bible. Because of the challenges we have successfully navigated, we all greatly appreciate the things we've worked hard for, and we have to teach our children this: that bumps in the road happen.
There are potholes ahead, and there are barricades and detours that we will have to take. And you will strengthen your life by doing that.
So, again, we can't over-protect, we can't over-parent, because if we bubble-wrap them and keep them so close, then when they're launched and are on their own and they haven't had enough experience coming back from difficulty, they may not come back.
So, it's very important that we understand that. And we don't want people to necessarily make valley experiences for their kids, like they'll have enough in just normal life, you know, living, but to walk with them, to lead them out, to be present to their questions, but not to prevent. Because happiness, we talk in the book about the study that proves that people who pursue happiness don't get it. You can't make it happen. But when you're resilient and you're not afraid of the difficulty, but you grow up, like, can you imagine the victory a parent will feel when a child is.
comes home and says, I get it now. I like being a boy. Men Like I made that up and it gives me chills. I can only imagine the victorious reality that's going to happen because you allowed us to be on the broadcast and other people are also talking about good truth. And we're going to raise up generations that are empowered to be who they've been created to be.
We have to do this. Yeah. What a perfect place to land with that statement. That is the goal. We need to be praying for miracles in the lives of our children every day.
Kathy and I, in our work with young people, we see miracles all the time. We see hundreds of them every year. Things that you never thought could happen in the life of a young person happen. This is why we never give up on people, even those who hate us, because God changes people. He does it all the time, and we should be constantly praying for that.
Kathy and Jeff, this has been great. Just a terrific discussion. And I hope people will get in touch with us to get a copy of the book. We can provide that, as we often do, for a gift of any amount. Make it a monthly pledge so we can do ministry together.
You know, our research shows about 1% of our listeners and viewers contribute financially to focus on the family. And that's great. I'm so thankful for that 1%. But imagine how much more we could do together with 2% or 3% of the viewers and listeners participating with us financially. More marriages strengthened and more parents equipped with the tools they need to raise godly children.
That's our prayer and vision for ministry. And with your help, we can move in that direction.
So make a monthly pledge today or a one-time gift, and let's see what God will do. We'd love to hear from you when you call 800, the letter A and the word family, 800-232-6459, or you can donate and get a copy of. This fantastic book, Raising Gender Confident Kids, when you click the links in the show notes. And if today's conversation has raised concerns about your own family, please know that we have a team of caring Christian counselors here, and we'd be happy to arrange a time for one of them to give you a call back for a free over-the-phone consultation. Just let us know that when you call 800, the letter A and the word family, or we've got details on the website.
Thanks for listening to Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I'm John Fuller, inviting you back next time as we once again help you and your family thrive in Christ. Your marriage can be redeemed even if the fights seem constant, even if there's been an affair, even if you haven't felt close in years. No matter how deep the wounds are, you can take a step toward healing them with a hope-restored marriage-intensive. Our biblically based counseling will help you find the root of your problems and face challenges together.
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