Parents today experience a phenomenon with their kids unknown to older generations. I’m not talking about little ones who think they’re cats, horses, robots, superheroes, or the sex they weren’t born as. Those childhood imaginations, which have existed since Cain was born to Adam and Eve, have continued through every generation.
The phenomenon I’m referencing is a trendy acceptance and endorsement of these imaginations about sex as if they are reality.
When Kids Want to Transition
Someone on social media highlighted one example of this in a video titled “Do you think she is old enough to understand?” (February 20). In the video, a seven-year-old at a gay-pride event talks about his journey from being born a boy to identifying as a girl. He says, “I was two or three when I first noticed that I didn’t feel comfortable being a boy.”
The child’s mother says he always wanted to be a princess and mentions his ideas about wanting to be and feeling like a girl. The child reports that his family and his school support him, but clarifies, “Except for my friends. I didn’t tell them that yet.”
The interviewer asks whether it’s wise for the boy to spend time on the internet talking about his journey if he doesn’t want his friends to know he’s transitioning to become a girl. He answers, “Yeah, I hope to be famous one day.”
This child is obviously craving acceptance and love, a desire all humans are born with.
Train Up a Child
Parenting has never been easy for any generation, but today’s mass confusion about “gender identity” doesn’t help. In a chaotic world with complicated responsibilities and overwhelming to-do lists, it’s easy for parents to lose sight of the importance of spending time teaching their children who they are. Parents often feel their identities are being overtaken by the all-consuming task of training tiny human beings in the way they should go (see Proverbs 22:6).
Children naturally imagine fantastical things and explore their world to understand their place in it. This is important for their development. But even more important is teaching your children that God’s opinion reigns supreme, and He already loves and accepts them as they are. God made your child a boy or a girl intentionally.
Without a basic understanding of their God-given identity, and without a personal relationship with Him, children remain chronically vulnerable to the enemy of their souls: the father of lies who first deceived Eve by questioning her identity, offering a way to become something other than who she already was.
Refuting Transgenderism
Struggling parents, unsure of how to respond to their young child’s desire to be the opposite sex, should read Proverbs 1. This chapter offers profound guidance for positioning them as blessed and prosperous. Parents and their children alike should receive teaching from godly people and meditate on the Word of God day and night. Psalm 1 says it like this:
Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law he meditates day and night. He will be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that brings forth its fruit in its season; its leaf will not wither, and whatever he does will prosper.
The ungodly are not so, but are like the chaff which the wind drives away. Therefore the ungodly will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the ungodly will perish. (Psalm 1 MEV)
The Bible says that ungodly teaching causes instability and confusion, like chaff being driven about by the wind.
Parents Must Teach Their Children About God’s Plan for Them
God has given parents the authority to teach their children about their true identity. Parents have a responsibility and are supernaturally equipped to fulfill this calling. Every human being on Earth has a God-given destiny, and God created each of us with purpose and intention. Parents must take responsibility to teach their children that God’s plan for them overshadows temporary feelings and childish playacting, that their sex has a purpose, and the sex God gave them is part of their contribution to the world, which is valued and needed.
If this responsibility seems overwhelming, remember the compassionate way Jesus simplified things when He visited the home of his friends Mary and Martha (see Luke 10:38–42). In all the bustle of the moments, he said only one thing was necessary: resting at His feet and soaking in the words He spoke. This “one thing” remains absolutely crucial to raising children in today’s gender-confused culture.
More important than providing food, clothing, and shelter is spending time with Jesus as a family. Parents should take what they learn from Him and model it for their children as they spend time with them.
Janet Boynes founded Janet Boynes Ministries in Maple Grove, Minnesota, in 2006. She authored the books Called Out: A Former Lesbian’s Discovery of Freedom, God & Sexuality, and her latest: God & The LGBT Community. Janet is an ordained minister under the Assemblies of God and travels the U.S. and overseas sharing a message of redemption and hope through the power of Jesus Christ.