It's definitely a thing, I know a school where the teachers had to have a meeting about it and some kids are dressing up as cats and foxes or whatever at the bairns school on some dress down days. My kids are in primary school but the other one is a secondary school in Sunderland (no I won't name it though). They are more than likely taking the piss however for the sake of inclusion they probably have to discuss it The world has gone mad. *Edit...the secondary school was for one kid doing it, not loads.
They are not taking the piss. I definitely won't go into details at specific places but it's common. As I said, most go grow out of it but for that phases it makes a lot of work for teachers and support staff.
It reeks of kids taking the piss if it’s happened at all. Reminds me of the time we told a supply teacher we were on a sponsored silence and couldn’t possibly do our French test. What it absolutely is not is an epidemic of children who genuinely identify as cats. A two minute google shows that there were some scaremongering articles in 2023 from the usual suspects and then nowt. I’d still be amazed if the school story you mention is anything other than hearsay and exaggeration.
I quite enjoyed the difference between the hysterical statement from Kemi Badenoch, 'Cost is no object, let's have an urgent Ofsted investigation' ... ... and the response from Keir Starmer, 'I think children should be told to identify as children.' https://www.theguardian.com/educati...ntroversy-from-a-tiktok-video-to-media-frenzy
I am not calling you out here mate, genuinely interested. Is this not just bairns playing at dressing up? My lads both dressed as spiderman or whatever when they were bairns. Schools run things like book days where kids dress up as characters. They didnt really think they were spiderman. When folk say they identify as X or Y, that is quite a bit different to kids play for me. Lets face it, we all probably pretended to be a dinosaur when we were small bairns. I dont ever recall thinking I was a real one though. One thing for sure though, I would hate to be a kid growing up now. So many ****e things to see and hear about. I wouldnt swap my childhood for anything, looking back. Imnocent daftness and all day footy. Perfect.
No mate this is something else, as ridiculous as it sounds and I thought it was made up...unfortunately it's not. It's certainly not like loads of kids though. Primary school is possibly just kids being kids or following what their parents do. We were talking about it at work and some grownups definitely do it as some kind of kink I'm sure. Kids are easily influenced. Supposedly Eldon Square is a meeting place for them too, older ones that is. Absolutely mental.
Definitely. I watch my 9 year old like a hawk on the tablet. Some of the stuff on YouTube and that is a slippery slope. A quick chat and telling him what's what is working so far.
2 biological males in woman's national final in pool. This just needs to stop man. https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/04/07/the-all-male-womens-pool-final/ Ripping up fairness for the sake of inclusivity. Cheating biological woman out of opportunities and prize money.
It's everywhere and a problem. If anyone values world class physiology and fact when it comes to sporting advantage, Ross Tucker is the best of the best.
It does feel like we are swinging back to fairness but it does really frustrate me to see females cheated out of opportunity and success.
If you identify as a cat or a dog does this mean that you can't eat chocolate and have to sit on the floor in pubs??? When i was a kid, many years ago, there was one lad in our school who was a Jehovah's Witness and because of this he was allowed to skip assembly each morning as it offended his religious beliefs. Me and a lot of my mates then went and persuaded our Dad's to sign a letter saying that we were also JW's so we could skip assembly - my Dad was a rabid atheist so me avoiding any form of religious instruction was a winner for him. The number of JW's in our school rocketed from 1 to 30+ in the space of a couple of weeks. The local school board were having kittens about this to the extent that they used to send us home with a letter every couple of weeks to reconfirm our new found religious beliefs. It made the local press and the JW's got a bit of backlash over it. Eventually the school made assembly non-compulsory for those in their final year at school (age 15+) and the whole thing just went away. We were never indoctrinated we were simply kids taking the p155 as we wanted to skip assembly as it was boring. The world can turn but kids taking the p155 will never change.
when this first hit the news my own thoughts were 'please nip it in the bud before it gets worse'...as usual, we were told we had to accept this because minorities get anything they want and no one is allowed to be offended (unless it a minority getting offended of course) but these women/girls have trained bloody hard for that chance to go against the best women/girls in whichever sport it is and see it being won by a man. now, i have a friend and he likes to dress up as a woman, in fact he turned up at the door once in full 'dress', he is comfortable doing it and it makes feck all difference to me, he is still the same lad and never demands that people suddenly use different pronouns etc so it 'works'. a lot of talk on here has been about kids, i obviously know quite a few 'modern parents' and i honestly think they need to go back to how things used to be, let them get outside and play rather than doing your hardest to get them placed in one spectrum or another then wondering why they do not mix too well...just let them grow up and learn, once they get old enough to actually make a conscious decision rather than a childs 'wannabe for a day' then we can all give them the encouragement and support they need.
