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Sept. 7, 2024 - Epoch Times
01:10:50
Gender-Affirming Care Turns Kids Into Lifelong Patients: Dr. Miriam Grossman
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This is a man-made catastrophe that we're in right now.
It's man-made.
It's not schizophrenia.
It's not bipolar disorder that I see so much of as a psychiatrist.
Dr. Miriam Grossman is a child and adolescent psychiatrist and author of Lost in Transnation, a child psychiatrist's guide out of the madness.
The last time, Jan, that we in psychiatry tried to help people with emotional disorders by changing their body, do you know when that was?
Lobotomies.
In this episode, Dr. Grossman breaks down what every parent needs to know about so-called gender-affirming care.
Know your rights.
What you want to do is put the school on notice, even if your child is only entering kindergarten.
This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Jan Jekielek.
Dr. Miriam Grossman, such a pleasure to have you back on American Thought Leaders.
I'm so glad to be back, Jan.
Thank you.
Congratulations on Lost in Transnation.
We've sat down before for a pretty long two-part interview.
We looked at a lot of elements.
Some of that is in the book.
I think you're pretty unique in this space of people who are, let's call it, standing up to gender ideology as a child psychiatrist.
I want to start here and just get you to tell me how it is that you ended up here.
Well, it really all started around 15 years ago.
I was studying sex education and I came across all this material about gender and gender identity and That the binary of male and female is false and that that male-female binary is actually oppressive and restrictive and it's something that we need to fight against and
As a child psychiatrist, I mean, I was astonished to come across such bizarre ideas, first of all.
Because it is a bizarre idea to tell children that they might be neither male or female, they might be something in between, they might be both.
That the way that they feel is more important than their bodies.
And I felt immediately alarmed because these are very destabilizing ideas.
Male and female is at the core of our humanity.
And I wrote a chapter In one of my earlier books, my book, You're Teaching My Child What?, which is a book on sex education, it came out in 2009, and I have a chapter there called Genderland, because I was comparing it to Alice in Wonderland.
It was so bizarre and so not founded in any biological truth whatsoever.
So I warned parents at that time, in 2009, that this will be a disaster for our children.
that this will be a disaster for our children.
And it took the calamity, I'm gonna call it, that we're now in with the, you know, hordes and hordes of tens of thousands of kids who are now proclaiming an identity hordes and hordes of tens of thousands of kids who are now proclaiming an identity other than being male or
demanding hormones and demanding that their puberties be stopped and asking for mastectomies and genital surgeries and all the rest of it, that people began to wake up and notice that people began to wake up and notice this.
People think that it happened overnight.
It did not.
I've been watching it in slow motion over the past 15 years, one step at a time.
It's important for parents to understand how long this has been around and, you know, where it came from, where the ideas came from, and how we've reached where we are right now.
And so I spell all of that out.
For example, in our previous interview, we talked about John Money and his role and his experiments.
I don't like using that word, but yes.
So I'll recommend our viewers to take a look at that interview as well as a compliment to this one.
You say something in the book which I thought was very interesting.
You say there's really three kinds of gender dysphoria.
There's two that traditionally we're seeing, And the third one is this new rapid-onset gender dysphoria.
It's pretending to be one of the first two.
I'll just start off with just making one point about John Money.
John Money spent his life promoting his theory that you could separate identity from biology.
And that it was how a person felt that took precedence over the particulars of their anatomy and their chromosomes.
Now he did do an experiment on those unfortunate twins.
In order to prove his theory, the experiment was the worst kind of disaster that you could imagine.
And yet, because we only knew after decades that his experiment was a disaster, a total failure, his theory took hold.
And people, you know, medical disciplines and in soft sciences, psychology, sociology, and numerous, numerous fields all adopted his theory.
And the foundation is just quicksand.
So You asked me about the different kinds of gender dysphoria.
Gender dysphoria is an intense feeling of discomfort with your sex, with your body.
It's also a feeling of discomfort with the sort of expectations that you might feel are placed on you by society, by the culture, by nature of being a boy or a girl, the expectations.
And we've always known that there are extremely rare individuals who have gender dysphoria, and they suffer.
And it can actually be a very debilitating condition.
We've known about this for about a hundred years in psychiatry.
And essentially, people with gender dysphoria, I'm going to sort of oversimplify here, but they fell into two categories.
And the first category were mostly young boys.
They were pre-puberty.
They were young, like preschoolers.
Well, really the poster child for childhood-onset gender dysphoria is Jazz Jennings.
Jazz Jennings You know, went to his parents when he was two, three years old and already at that time was insisting that either he is a girl or he's just he has to become a girl because he feels so uncomfortable with his body.
So that is classic childhood onset gender dysphoria.
Now, those kids were mostly boys, and we know from the studies that were done on them throughout all the decades that they've been studied, even though very, very rare.
So the studies are scarce, and the studies have a small number of kids in them because these kids were so rare.
So rare, in fact, that 20 years ago, Jan, we only had in the entire world three clinics And they weren't busy.
They did not see a lot of kids at all.
dysphoria, three clinics, Toronto, London, and Amsterdam, Holland.
And they weren't busy.
They did not see a lot of kids at all.
They may have seen 18, 20 kids a year.
And we know that the vast majority of these kids, if you adopt a watchful waiting approach, watchful waiting, meaning you give them support with their feelings, with how they're feeling.
You give the family support.
And you might allow certain behaviors or ways of dressing, but you do not...
socially transition the way that we are doing now.
So between 60 and over 90% of these kids, if they go through puberty and into young adulthood, they will outgrow their gender dysphoria.
A lot of them are gay and lesbian, but they are comfortable with their bodies.
So that's a majority of those kids.
The other group of individuals with gender dysphoria that we were always aware of are middle-aged heterosexual men who enjoy cross-dressing, wearing women's clothing, who as in middle age decide, typically after being married and having children, decide that they would like to go through the remainder of their lives presenting as women.
And so they are the second group, and they sometimes go through the medical transitioning so that they appear more like women.
Now, those are two unique groups, different demographics.
You know, like I explain in the book, gender dysphoria is a symptom.
A symptom, for example, like fever.
Fever can be due to many different conditions.
You can have a fever because you have an infection.
You may have an autoimmune disease.
You may have cancer.
Many different conditions cause fever.
Fever is not just this condition that you're going to treat all fevers the same way.
Absolutely not.
That's not medicine.
We don't do that.
We try to understand the source of the fever, right?
And then we treat it accordingly.
Now, what's happened is that with gender dysphoria now we have this third group, which we never saw before.
And it's really only been around, let's say, 10 years, 8 to 10 years, and we've had an explosion of gender dysphoria in teenage girls.
Not all girls, maybe 60%, a majority of girls, a lot of boys as well.
But what's new here is the demographic.
They're teenagers.
Most of them never had any issue with being a girl in the past.
They might have, in fact, been very girly girls.
And the boys as well.
Many of them never had an issue with being a boy.
And what we know about this particular group is that they have a lot of comorbid previous psychiatric conditions.
A lot of them are on the autism spectrum.
They have anxiety.
They have depression.
They have ADHD.
They have family issues.
They have a history of trauma.
All sorts of things.
We also know that many of them, before they come out as being transgender, they have spent an inordinate amount of time online.
And they have been exposed to these ideas through social media, through influencers on YouTube.
You know, YouTube has hundreds, if not thousands, of kids who document their transitioning.
And who will, you know, come on there once a week or once every few weeks and say, you know, I've been on testosterone now for two weeks.
My voice is starting to go.
They're documenting their journey and it's sounding very exciting and very positive.
And I know that many, many of these kids are binging on these YouTube videos and getting drawn into it.
Now, so there's a whole picture that is being formed about this new demographic of kids.
It was described first by a researcher from Brown University, Lisa Lippman.
She wrote a groundbreaking paper in 2018, describing this new group of kids, teenagers, mostly girls, and mostly with psychiatric comorbidities, and no history of being unhappy about being girls.
So So when we talk about the Scandinavian countries and England, as well as medical groups that have come out in France, New Zealand and Australia, urging caution in treating these kids with medical interventions, it's because they have realized that we don't yet have enough data On this young, on this particular group.
I describe this in the book, especially Sweden.
There was a huge case in Sweden regarding a girl that was placed on blockers and developed osteoporosis and spinal fractures after a few years.
And it was that particular case that really blew the lid off of the whole gender affirming care in Sweden and led them to an investigation.
An apology was issued to the family of that girl.
The hospital acknowledged their malpractice.
That was when they examined this whole treatment protocol and decided to essentially ban it until such a time as we have more information on this group.
What these kids need is psychotherapy.
They need to look deeply at their lives with somebody with experience and compassion and understanding who will help them explore where did this new identity come from?
What is it a solution to?
What is going on in you internally and in your life that living life as the opposite sex, in your opinion, will make life better or easier?
Now, we're told by the Crusaders, by the ideologues, and I, you know, I use that word Crusaders.
I don't use it flippantly.
I've given a lot of thought to this.
And I really do feel, as many others do, that this is a crusade, that this is a movement that seeks to impose a way of thinking on us, and especially on our children.
But when we are getting to the point where we're saying that we have to move in here with experimental medications, which puberty blockers are, and cross-sex hormones, giving girls testosterone at levels that they would never, ever experience unless they had some sort of an endocrine tumor,
and giving boys levels of estrogen that are harmful.
Well, there's a whole laundry list of medical issues.
To say nothing of the fact that some of these kids then go on and have healthy organs that are removed.
They end up disfigured, and they end up, many of them, sterilized.
So let's just hold on a minute.
This is all couched in the language of compassion.
And it's all packaged within the civil rights.
We have to be kind.
We have to be inclusive.
And of course we have to be kind and we have to be inclusive of many different types of people that exist on this earth.
No one is saying that we shouldn't be.
What people like myself are arguing, what I argue in the book, is that we should honor every person's mosaic of male and female without harming the body.
We should not be touching these kids' bodies with these medical interventions that are experimental, and we have no evidence that on the other side of all these interventions, the kids actually do better.
They possibly do worse.
One of the things that kind of just struck me after having been looking at this issue for a few years now is that it's this incidence of these psychiatric comorbidities that you described.
It's pretty much almost all of the kids that I've ever considered and all the studies that I've looked at, that's there.
So with this approach of affirming at any cost as the one way of doing things, And then all these very incredibly invasive treatments that are added on after that, including the social transitioning, they're still left with those original psychiatric comorbidities.
And that just makes it somehow extra horrific to me to even consider that.
It is extra horrific because when you listen to the detransitioners, the individuals who have been through so-called affirming care, and they're now late teens, Or 20s.
And they've had these treatments.
They had their voice lowered and their breasts removed in some cases, and their genitals sometimes also removed.
When they look back on their lives and how they got sucked into the ideology, they realized that they were looking, they just wanted to feel better.
They wanted treatment.
They wanted to just feel good and not feel anxious and not feel depressed.
And they wanted to like themselves.
And you know what?
They want to fit in.
They want to find a group that they fit in with.
They were drawn into this, the line that they're told.
Over and over again, that if you're not 100% comfortable with yourself, if you don't fit in, you haven't found your group of friends, you're uncomfortable with the changes of puberty, you know, you may not be a girl.
You may actually be a boy.
And that may be the solution to how you're feeling right now.
And it's worth just trying it out.
This is how kids start off on this pathway.
You get love-bombed at a lot of school, not every school, but a lot of schools when you come out as being transgender or non-binary or one of these other categories.
It's sort of instant status.
Instant points.
And that also can be a big motivation.
You know, we have to try and remember when we were all 13, 14 years old, you know, in middle school or high school, and how tough that is.
And how difficult the social situation is.
And you'll do practically anything to just, you know, assemble, have a group of friends to sit with in the cafeteria.
You know, you want to belong.
And when you become transgender, or if you're a member of the LGBTQ etc.
group, you see automatically, this is a whole other discussion, but you are no longer an oppressor.
Otherwise, if you are a white, heterosexual, middle class or upper middle class student, you're going to fall into that category of being an oppressor.
And believe you me, you don't want to be an oppressor, right?
So you can't change your socioeconomic status, but you can say, you know, I'm no longer... I'm non-binary.
I'm neither.
I'm sort of neither.
I'm in this gray area.
And that makes you an oppressed minority.
But just getting back to what you asked me about, this belief system is lumping together every single case of the symptom of gender dysphoria, lumping them together and saying, uh, okay, there's one path for all of you.
And this is a big mistake.
What is the current state of affairs?
You said there's this explosion.
The argument by the believers, as you described them, or the crusaders, is simply that this was just hidden.
People didn't feel comfortable to talk about it, so that's why it's all now coming out.
That's the argument.
I want to get you to respond to that.
There has been an explosion.
I mean, I don't know what, but it almost feels kind of… 5,000 percent increase.
Yeah, I was going to say exponential 5,000 percent.
Exactly.
And there's a whole industry that has developed around it.
I mean, a multibillion-dollar industry, by my calculations.
questions.
But on the other hand, there's also been, at least in the last year or two, a significant mobilization in the other direction.
Doing the sort of things you're doing.
So I guess I want to kind of understand how you see the field of play here.
At this time, at least in this country and in Canada, we are still very gung-ho with the narrative of you have gender dysphoria.
That means it should be affirmed, not questioned, not investigated deeply.
And the child should be put in the driver's seat.
The state of affairs in this country is to tell parents that puberty blockers are safe.
and that they are reversible.
Actually, I don't know if they're still saying that.
Maybe they stopped saying they're completely reversible, but they're certainly saying that they are safe and that there is a medical consensus that this is the best way of treating these kids.
to socially affirm them, to give them blockers that will prevent their natural puberty, and then shortly thereafter to begin puberty, a synthetic puberty of the opposite sex.
So I say in the book that it is an assembly line.
And the reason I say that is because we know that once kids are put on this path, certainly once they're on blockers, almost all kids on blockers go ahead further down the path to cross-sex hormones. almost all kids on blockers go ahead further down the Almost all of them.
Upwards 90% or up.
So we know that the blockers are a big deal.
They're not just buying time.
Because during that time, the kids are not changing their minds.
The ones that change their minds, it happens later.
Now I want to point out for your audience, I'm sure everyone knows this, but I will point out, That sex is established at conception.
There is no assigning anything at birth.
The egg unites with the sperm.
You have, in 99.98% of cases, either a boy or a girl at conception.
That condition of being a boy or a girl is permanent.
Every cell in the body that has a nucleus of all our many billions and billions of cells that make up every system in the body has a, our code, the DNA code is in that cell.
It is directing the functioning, the proper functioning of that cell.
So if you have a Y chromosome, every cell in the body is going to be impacted by the presence of that Y chromosome.
So, I'm just bringing this up just to underscore what the biological reality is.
Now, when you take that 10-year-old child and you comply with his request to be considered a girl, and you are following, of course, the directions of all the medical organizations, well, let's just call it what it is.
You're enforcing a falsehood.
He is not a girl, and he can never be a girl.
And by the way, in a developing brain, every experience in your life, everything you hear and you see and you experience, creates a memory.
And it actually changes the brain.
Okay, it has an impact.
We know this because we studied the brain plasticity, that the actual functioning of and the wiring between the neurons in the brain is impacted by our experience.
And I argue in the book, Don't we need to consider the impact on the brain of these young people?
Their brains are still developing.
Your brain is developing until you're 25 years old, or mid-20s, okay?
I can't say a specific age.
So being called, instead of Johnny, being called Emily, you know, hundreds of times a day by everyone that knows you, and being called she and her, by everyone that knows you at school, at home, everywhere, over and over and over again, and everyone trying to think of you as a girl, that's going to have an impact.
So, okay, an impact on the brain, that's one thing.
But what about an impact on, you know, later on, if the child, well, the child is going to have doubts, they may not express them or acknowledge them, but when they do have doubts at some point, do you understand how difficult it is
for a child who already is young, has premorbid conditions, might be on the autism spectrum, the whole, you know, all these various emotional conditions, to To stand up and say to the adults, you know, I'm not sure.
I'm not sure.
Maybe I am, Johnny.
We have to be thinking about that because we put them, with this social affirmation, we put them on an express way toward the blockers, toward these interventions that are going to have permanent effects and some of them You know, huge, life-altering effects.
Not being able to have biological children?
What's bigger than all that?
What could we possibly be doing to these kids that would be more massively impacting their futures, their relationships, the kind of lives that they're going to have?
So instead of being so careful and asking all these questions, we are instead, the professional organizations, just jumped on the bandwagon, affirm, affirm, affirm, everything on demand.
No deep analysis.
What's going on with this child?
What's going on in the family?
Maybe there was some trauma.
Maybe this girl was sexually molested and is afraid of growing up.
Afraid of growing up as a young woman.
I mean, there could be endless number of things.
And I've seen these kids, so I know this.
These are complex issues.
Is there some some opposition, clearly.
Finally, I have to say, there is more and more opposition.
And even within the medical organizations, for example, the American Academy of Pediatrics, which has now announced that they are going to review their policy that they came out with in 2018.
That policy written by just one doctor who was just finishing his residency.
And that policy statement 2018 from the American Academy of Pediatrics is basically just, you know, just a regurgitation of all the ideology.
It's just from A to Z.
So there were pediatricians that tried to question that, to try to debate, to have a panel discussion or what have you.
They were silenced.
You dedicate a whole chapter in Lost in Transnation to euphemisms, which I find really interesting because a lot of the whole kind of woke encroachment into essentially all of the institutions involves this redefinition of terms or use of terms euphemistically.
And this is, of course, you know, as you chart in intricate detail in this chapter, incredibly important.
Like, for example, top surgery, top surgery, you don't get the sense that this how invasive this is how life altering it is, it just seems like just something you could you could do.
Tell me more about this specific use of language that's euphemistic, or in some cases, opposite.
We could be here all day talking about the Orwellian terms that we have in gender ideology, the term affirming, which of course, if you affirm someone's new identity, it means you have to deny their biology.
But affirming is such a wonderful term.
So if someone is not affirming, well then, you know, what kind of person would not affirm a child?
That just sounds terrible.
Now that chapter that I have that's called euphemisms is specifically about the euphemism top surgery which to me as a physician who I just I'm enamored of female biology reproduction the the biology of reproduction the biology of pregnancy of maternal child bonding
You know the the magic if I could say that word of nursing and what goes on during nursing It's it is magical so to me that term top surgery is just particularly offensive as It leads young people girls.
Obviously, I'm primarily concerned about girls to believe that It's not a big deal It's the removal of, you know, they're led to believe that your breasts are unnecessary sex objects.
That's their purpose.
You're not a girl.
You're not a woman.
So you don't need these objects on your chest.
It's really, it's odious to get young girls and their guardians, usually their mothers, to sign on the dotted line and have breasts removed.
This is happening in girls as young as 12.
And I talk about the surgeons in the book who openly say, I have no lower age requirement in my office.
These surgeons presumably are getting informed consent from the girls and from their guardian, who also has to sign if they're underage.
And the question I'm asking in the book is, What kind of informed consent could this possibly be?
To get a valid informed consent, the person has to understand exactly what is going to be happening to them in this procedure, what is being removed, What are the possible consequences of the procedure?
And what are the other options that might be available to them to deal with the issue aside from surgery?
And what might be the long-term consequences of the surgery?
Now, of course, at the time that they're going for surgery and they're sitting with the surgeon, they're saying, as Chloe Cole expressed very well, Chloe Cole being the 19-year-old detransitioner who has courageously stood up and testified in Congress and in other places, and she had a bilateral mastectomy when she was 15 years old.
And a few weeks after that mastectomy, she was in a psychology class in high school.
And she learned about the experiments of Harry Harlow, who studied juvenile monkeys, baby monkeys, and the importance of maternal bonding and nursing.
And it hit her, it hit Chloe, that, oh my gosh, I won't be able to nurse.
I don't have breasts.
I won't be able to nurse.
Now, mind you, she had been told as she was going into the surgery, you're not going to be able to nurse.
But at that moment, she said to herself, she's 15, okay?
She said to herself, well, I'm a boy.
Boys don't nurse.
And she went through with the surgery.
It's caused permanent changes to my body.
My voice will forever be deeper, my jawline sharper, my nose longer, my bone structure permanently masculinized, my Adam's apple more prominent, my fertility unknown.
I look in the mirror sometimes and I feel like a monster.
In order to be truly informed and given informed consent, I'm arguing in the book that girls need to be educated about what these organs actually do.
There's a purpose to these organs, to breasts.
They are not simply sex objects that people stare at.
They are so much more.
Nursing is an incredible experience both for the mother and the child.
There is bonding going on, there's pheromones that are being shared, there's oxytocin is being released, the trust hormone and the bonding hormone is being released in the mother and the child.
There's all kinds of health benefits to the oxytocin in the mom and in the child, and it's just this wonderfully complex, awesome, you know, I call it an ecosystem.
I'm saying that kids are being told that the earth is a delicate ecosystem, right?
And we have to respect that.
And we can't assume to have an endless supply of clean air, right?
Or we can't expect to have an endless supply of natural resources.
We have to be careful.
We have to understand this ecosystem and honor it.
Well, you know what?
We, each of us, not only the girls, the boys, we are all delicate ecosystems.
And this whole gender-affirming care Is is just.
Erasing all of that and just, you know, steamrolling the entire medical profession and the educational profession and the mental health profession and just saying, you know, pump these kids full of these medications.
I mean, we've never done this before.
The last time, Jan, that we in psychiatry tried to help people with emotional disorders by changing their body Do you know when that was?
I have an idea.
Lobotomies.
Right, right.
Lobotomies.
A horrific chapter in medicine, not that long ago, when doctors, respected doctors, one of them the inventor of the procedure, got a Nobel Prize for coming up with this idea
That people who are mentally ill, and some of them were really not terribly mentally ill, they may have just have had behavioral issues, that the way that we can treat them is by inserting an instrument into their brain.
They drilled holes into the brain, or alternatively, they used the instrument and they entered the brain through the eye socket.
Barbaric, yes, completely barbaric.
And they would sever the connection of one part of the cortex, the prefrontal cortex, and the rest of the brain.
Very primitive, barbaric surgery that was actually done without anesthesia.
And this was done to nearly 50,000 people in the U.S.
40 to 50,000 people including Rosemary Kennedy.
Okay, the sister of JFK, the aunt of RFK Jr.
had a lobotomy and I've been thinking about it and you know because You know, the Kennedy family, obviously, with their standing and their wealth, they must have gotten, I mean, Boston, Harvard, they got the top, they must have had the top professors advising them on what to do with Rosemary.
Rosemary was a problem.
She had all kinds of mental health issues, behavioral issues.
And they didn't know how to help her, and they ended up giving her a lobotomy.
And the reason why this is important is because, look, I wasn't there, obviously, it was before I was born, but clearly the Kennedys must have been told, this is the standard of care.
There is a medical consensus.
This is what the experts are saying is gonna help Rosemary.
And they did it.
They signed on the dotted line.
P.S., she was forever, she was never the same.
And she was institutionalized for the rest of her life.
So it was catastrophic.
So we've had this before.
We've had medical trends in medicine, and certainly in psychiatry, in which doctors have come forward and aggressively promoted treatments And have said that there's a medical consensus and reassured families that were worried about their loved ones that this is the way to go.
That's what's happening right now.
I have so many parents who are contacting me who are desperate and just a few days ago I got an email from another parent, another mom, begging me, giving me the phone number of the surgeon that was going to be operating on her daughter that day, later in the afternoon.
She wrote to me an emergency email in the morning, and she begged me, here's the phone number of the surgeon, please call him, I'll pay you whatever you want, please call this surgeon, and I know you can do this, Dr. Grossman, convince him not to operate on my daughter.
Of course there's nothing I can do.
I can't pick up a phone and call a surgeon and tell him not to operate.
What I can do is come and do an interview with you, such as this.
And talk about what's going on.
What I can do is write my book and warn parents about this.
Not only parents that are currently dealing with this problem in their family, but parents who, in the future, might deal with it.
And I want them to be prepared.
And I want them to have the information and the knowledge that they need.
My book is not written for PhDs.
It's written for everyday moms and dads.
To understand the landscape.
Where did this come from?
What is it?
What can I do now to, so to speak, inoculate my kids against this ideology?
So let's jump into that.
I mean, it strikes me.
This is, I think, one of the most important parts of the book for me as well.
I recently read a book by the Pitt parents, Parents with Inconvenient Truths About Trans, 75 essays.
I mean, Shocking stuff.
And I hadn't really thought about all this really from the perspective of the parent until I read that book.
It's a very fraught, fraught environment for parents who are actually trying to help their children.
All the parents that I've talked to, and I've talked to hundreds of parents, were blindsided.
They didn't see it coming.
They never imagined that there would be such an announcement from their child.
And when it happens, they're stunned.
They don't know what to say.
And more importantly, they don't know how to help their child.
They don't know how to move forward and what to do.
And so they're at a disadvantage.
Like in any crisis, in any situation, if you're prepared, you're at an advantage, right?
So, what I want parents to know is that there's so much that they can do when their kids are still young.
And I'll just go through a few of these things.
I mean, there's a lot more in the book, but first of all, they can begin to expose their child to these biological truths of, for example, You have a daughter, let's say.
You want your daughter to know that she was a girl from the very moment that she was created, the very moment that she was formed on this earth, she was a girl.
And from that moment forward, she will always be a girl.
There's no assigning, there's no assigning that's going on in the delivery room.
And the reason I want even little kids to be hearing this from their parents, I want their parents to reach them first.
So that when the child later on, either at school or even in preschool, you know, there's a whole library of books now for preschool kids that push this in a very aggressive way.
So if your daughter, let's say, already knows well, has heard this many times from you, that she was a girl from the first moment of her existence, and that's true of course for everybody, boys and girls, when she's first exposed to that phrase, assigned at birth, You know, assigned female at birth.
AFAB is what they're calling it now.
AFAB, you know, or assigned male at birth.
Your child is going to say, no, no, no.
No, that's not right.
No, no.
I wasn't assigned.
I was.
I was always a girl, and I always will be a girl.
So you see, you're already in such a little way, but you're giving her already some ways of being a critical thinker.
So when she hears these things, it won't sound right to her.
And so maybe the rest of it won't sound right either.
And you want to keep on, there's many, many, you know, you want to explain to your child, for example, that We all have in each cell, you know, what DNA, it doesn't have to be sophisticated.
You can just say it's like the control center.
Like a computer has a program, right?
It has a certain programming.
If there's some little hitch in that program, if someone, the programmer made some little mistake there, that's going to be a big issue.
So our DNA is that programming.
I want kids to understand that every part of their system, their heart and their lungs and certainly their brain, is all impacted by whether they have two X's or an XY.
And we have to honor that.
The same way that we honor other things in biology and biological systems, and the other thing that's important to tell girls and boys from an early age, and the parents also have to absorb this idea and really believe it, is that there's many different ways of being a boy and a man, a girl and a woman.
We are all a mosaic of masculinity and femininity.
And you know what?
Sometimes the most masculine, football-playing, tough guy father has a really feminine son.
You want to understand that there are all kinds of ways of being a man or a woman, and you do not want to give your child negative feedback about being the way that they might be.
And then of course the child themselves.
You want the child to not feel badly about perhaps being a little bit different than the stereotypical group of boys in their class that's all talking about Whatever it is.
I mean, I hate these stereotypes, right?
We all hate the stereotypes.
But part of this ideology, part of why it's just awful is that it forces the stereotypes into the discussion.
But bottom line is, one of the other things that parents can do is plant seeds in the child's head that there are different ways of being men and women and that we never want to harm our bodies in any way in order to appear more male or female.
I mean, we can dress how we want and we can have whatever haircut we want.
All that is fine.
We do not want to play around with medicines and surgeries that are invasive and that are not good for us.
Now, Jan, I do want to add at this point, and maybe I should have said it earlier, there are extremely rare individuals for whom living life as the opposite sex and going through these medical procedures may indeed be the right thing.
And there are individuals that claim that it was life-saving for them to have the surgeries and the cross-sex hormones and that they can't imagine life without it.
The thing is that we do not have any evidence that these are the majority of people.
who go through medicalization, nor do we have any way of predicting beforehand who is going to end up being content and who is not.
Kids are on the internet a lot and that's only seems to be increasing despite more and more evidence of how addictive some of these programs are, that they're using the apps and everything else, how compelling that they're using the apps and everything else, how compelling some of the content is, If you're a parent today, how do you deal with this question of the Internet?
essays, we discuss prevalence of pornography and how addictive that can be and how that can get them thinking about their identities.
So what about if you're a parent today, how do you deal with this question of internet?
Well, I cannot underscore enough how critical it is for parents to be aware of what their kid is doing on the internet.
A Otherwise, it's as if you drive your child to the worst part of town, crime-ridden, drug-ridden part of town, and just leave them off there to go in and out of people's homes.
The internet is a very dangerous place.
And it's not at all uncommon for kids to explain that they were drawn into adopting a new identity because of someone that they had met on the internet.
I describe several kids in my book who became obsessed in relationships with people, strangers that they met on the internet who had such an impact on their thinking and on their behaviors.
One of the appendices in the back of the book is written by an expert on all sorts of, not only filters, but ways that parents can monitor the usage and can limit the websites, the contacts, but ways that parents can monitor the usage and can limit the websites, It's just, it's mandatory.
And I don't care, you know, you may have the best kid on the face of the earth.
There's temptations there.
One of their friends may send them a link.
You open up that link, and it could be the worst kind of pornography you can imagine.
And then they've seen it, and there's no erasing it.
So you really want to be on top of your child's internet use.
Another one is about how to deal with schools that may be basically fronting this gender ideology in the first place.
So tell me about that and maybe others that you want to mention.
I have two appendices that have been written by brilliant attorneys who are experts in this field of parental rights.
And so, one is on schools.
And this is not only relevant to parents who have a child currently questioning their gender identity.
This is relevant to every family.
Because, you see, radical sexual and gender ideology is being presented to kids at the schools in various contexts.
And what you want to do is put the school on notice, even if your child is only entering kindergarten.
You want the school to know that you do not want your child exposed to gender ideology.
You want to know about any instance in which this is going to be taught in class beforehand.
You don't want your child attending that class.
You don't want your child joining any club at school where these things are discussed.
You do not give your permission for your child to meet with the guidance counselor without your knowledge.
or with any other third party without your knowledge.
And you certainly do not give permission to the school to socially transition your child, meaning to use a new name and pronouns.
And there are numerous instances that I talk about in my book, and there are lawsuits against schools, not only in blue states, but in red states as well, in which schools are keeping this from parents and placing a wedge between the child and the parents.
So this-- So I have these appendices that are dealing how you can proactively deal with the school to avoid these kind of scenarios.
Put the school on alert.
Know your rights.
Parents have a constitutional right to be in charge and direct their child's education and health care and mental health care.
And the Supreme Court has been very clear on this issue.
So parents have to know their rights.
Another important appendix that I have there by the same attorneys is is on Child Protective Services.
Because we know that in some instances, unfortunately, Child Protective Services are being called on families that will not go with the narrative, the gender identity narrative, and they refuse to use the names and the pronouns and take their children to a gender clinic.
And this is now being called emotional abuse and medical neglect.
You know, I tell the story, a terrible story actually of something that happened, a child being removed for those reasons.
So, parents have to know their rights.
Now, what else do I have?
I have an appendix just with basic biology.
Okay, I want parents, again, not PhD level, this is for regular moms and dads, I want you to know what to say.
When your high school student or eighth grader or what have you comes home and says at the dinner table, you know, Trans is as normal as having red hair.
Or intersex is as normal as being redheaded.
Well, you know, that's not quite correct.
And I want parents to understand how the language and how biology itself is actually being co-opted and twisted and used for this agenda.
So I have that, the biology, schools, CPS.
I have a list of current key articles on this topic so that if you have an appointment with your principal, guidance counselor, therapist, pediatrician, whoever, you can come to their office if this is something that you need to be discussing with them and say, look, You may have not heard of the other side of the argument.
There's actually a debate going on, and I have done a lot of research, and I would love for you—here are some articles that have been written by leaders in the field.
that are on the other side of the debate, the gender-affirming care debate.
Please, would you take a look at these?
And then we could talk some more about it.
So I provide that.
And then, you know, what I'm really excited about, Jan, is that while I was writing this book, I decided to make use of all my connections that I have with the parents.
And I did a survey with the parents' help, an international survey asking parents These are parents that are now or did go through having a gender distressed child.
I asked them, what do you wish that you had known or had done before all this happened in your family, before your child came to you with the announcement.
What do you wish you had known?
What information would you want to share with other families who might go through this in the future that might make their experience navigating this great difficulty somewhat easier?
And I got responses from 500 parents from 17 different countries.
And so I have an appendix to the book in which I gathered some of the most, I think, valuable and touching input that I got from those parents.
And it's sort of like a parent-to-parent advice.
Because who knows better than the parents who have already gone through it, some of them for many years.
That speaks to my other question of what people might do when they are faced with this situation in their home.
That's not easy.
What you're trying to do is walk on a tightrope.
The tightrope is, on the one hand, I'm with you, and I'm connected to you, and I love you, and whatever you're going through, I'm a part of it, I'm gonna go through it with you, and support you, and do as much research as I need in order to become an expert in this.
That's the one side.
On the other side is, I'm not going to give you what you want right now, what you're asking me.
I am not calling you by a different name or different pronouns.
And I am not making an appointment at a gender clinic to get puberty blockers.
I am not doing that right now.
And so you're kind of balancing those two things.
And the advice that I give to parents is basically, look, Your child needs you.
It may not look like that, it may not seem that way, but please remember that your child needs you and wants your approval.
This is a difficult conversation for your child as well.
What you want to try and do is use this time to focus on the child.
This is not a time to argue.
This is not A time to run to the... and start googling, you know, and start getting data and information on suicide or on blockers.
No.
You want this to be a time that, you know, your child walks away from the conversation feeling, well, they didn't agree with me.
They're not giving me what I want right now.
But they also didn't at all reject me.
They didn't make me feel bad for the way that I'm feeling right now.
They seem to want to understand.
They want to learn more.
They're open to it.
And you want to model for your child that there can be big disagreements between people But that doesn't mean that you have to lose your loving connection.
And so this might be the first area with your child that you strongly disagree.
Because some of these kids actually have been, until this time, unbelievably compliant.
Perfect kids.
Never making any trouble.
And then the parents are hit with this biggie.
So, You want it, first of all, it's a conversation that's focused on the child.
Are you freaking out?
Yes.
Are you, like, can't believe that you're even having this conversation with your child?
Yes.
You've got to put that aside.
You can freak out later.
You've got to stay in control.
And like I said, I mean, it's not easy.
I have parents that tell me that when they talk to their kids, sometimes their kids say such outrageous things that they're biting their tongue, like their tongue is bleeding because they're keeping themselves from responding and saying like, are you crazy?
Where did you hear this?
This is impossible.
How can you even be saying these things?
You do not want to be saying that.
You're not talking like that during this conversation.
You're saying, oh, Wow, I didn't expect this.
You know, I'm surprised.
Tell me more.
When did you start feeling this way?
Where did you hear about this?
Could you explain to me what you mean when you say that you're actually a boy?
Because how could you know that?
Just tell me.
Educate me.
You know more than me on this.
Tell me how it works.
Now, the kid is going to often have answers such as, well, I don't know, I just feel this way, or I don't know, I read it somewhere, you know, it's on the internet.
You know, the child, I want parents to understand that even if the child is putting off this appearance of being 100% certain, they are not.
Trust me, they're not at all.
They want to appear that way.
They want to appear certain and grown up.
And I've thought about this a lot, mom and dad, and this is who I am and this is what I want.
Well, OK, tell me more.
Let's spend some time.
I'm going to do research.
I'm going to look at your websites.
I might find my own websites.
And you want to try to keep it sort of like you're not opposing the child.
You're not standing opposite the child.
You're walking next to the child.
The child has a struggle.
And just like any other struggle that your child may come to you with, you're going to be next to them.
You're going to be walking down the path with them.
That doesn't mean that you always agree.
You're not going to always agree.
But you want to hold on to them because, you see, what's so difficult, and I feel so much empathy for the parents, You see, as the child is learning about gender ideology and about being born in the wrong body, And all of that stuff.
The child is also being led to believe that anyone that opposes this, anyone that doesn't, quote-unquote, respect your identity or allow for you to express your authentic self, quote-unquote, is a bad person, you see.
Is not a good person.
Is a transphobic person.
Is a hateful person.
And so, you know, and I have a lot of kids tell me that, gosh, my parents were so wonderful on every other issue.
And my parents were always so LGBT friendly and respectful.
And then I came to them and I came out with my new identity.
There's a disappointment, but there's also this kind of like, oh my gosh, my parents, they're like those parents.
They're like those transphobic people.
It's black and white thinking.
The kids are indoctrinated to think in a black and white way.
And so that's why it is so difficult for the parents to both hold on to the kid emotionally, But to, you know, to refuse to go with essentially the lie, I'm going to call it a lie, of endorsing another sex, that the child actually is or could become another sex, and deny biology without paying a price.
They're going to pay a huge price for denying their biology.
So, I have that chapter called Lasagna Surprise, and I provide a model conversation.
It's an ideal.
It's something to strive toward.
Is it going to go exactly like me, the child psychiatrist, is saying?
No, of course it's not.
Parents are human.
Parents are going to make mistakes.
Welcome to humanity.
You're going to make a mistake.
You don't know what to say.
But they're kind of basic guidelines for those first few conversations.
Miriam, this has been a fascinating conversation.
Any final thought as we finish?
Well I guess what I want to say is that I've seen so much with these families and kids and I put my heart and soul into this book, more than my other books actually, because I so much want to prevent needless suffering.
This is a man-made catastrophe that we're in right now.
It's man-made.
It's not schizophrenia.
It's not bipolar disorder that I see so much of as a psychiatrist.
This is actually a man-made catastrophe.
And so, I want to prevent the needless suffering.
And I do believe that this book will do that.
I've given parents so much, so much information, so many tools, so many ways of protecting their families and inoculating their families against these dangerous ideas.
And I'll just finish by saying, you know, I don't want to have any more families emailing me and wanting an appointment for their kid.
I want their kids to thrive and do well and be happy with who they are and love who they are and grow up to be healthy, happy people with every option available to them.
Whether, you know, marriage, family, children, whatever it may be.
These kids that are going through gender affirming care, they become lifelong patients, they become lifelong consumers of pharmaceuticals.
Okay, we want to prevent that.
So thank you so much for having me on.
Well, Dr. Miriam Grossman, it's such a pleasure to have had you on.
Thank you so much.
Thank you all for joining Dr. Miriam Grossman and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders.
I'm your host, Jan Jekielek.
Hello, everyone.
I just want to take a moment to introduce you all to this incredible magazine that we produce every month at the Epoch Times.
It's called American Essence, and it celebrates American excellence and showcases the best of America, past and present.
The magazine is filled with incredible stories of iconic Americans, breathtaking American landscapes and historic architecture, and a celebration of American innovation and enterprise.
It's a magazine for everyone who loves this country, including me.
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