How Many Children Are Being Socially Transitioned by Schools?

The topic of discussion for tonight is social transition of children and youth without parental consent. In the news today is a case in New York and another case in New Jersey. Mary Margaret Olohan wrote about the case in New York here. 

A New York school district socially transitioned a girl without her mother’s consent, repeatedly lying to the mother about the child’s mental health and social struggles, according to a new lawsuit.

Represented by Alliance Defending Freedom, Jennifer Vitsaxaki of New York filed a lawsuit Wednesday against the Skaneateles Central School District and Board of Education, accusing them of violating her constitutional rights through their deception and their social transitioning of her 12-year-old daughter, Jane….

Though Michael Vitsaxaki and Jennifer Vitsaxaki are both U.S. citizens, the Vitsaxaki family had spent almost a decade in Greece, where the Vitsaxaki parents were from, and Jane’s primary language was Greek. The family decided to leave Greece when its economy collapsed and they realized that they could not continue raising their children there, but the transition from their closely knit community in Greece to the U.S. was disruptive to the entire family’s lives.

Young Jane Vitsaxaki had to adapt to a “new culture, including learning to go through each day speaking primarily English instead of Greek,” and her father’s job required him to frequently travel out of the country.

The complaint states that Jennifer Vitsaxaki began to be increasingly concerned as her daughter was exhibiting signs of anxiety and depression and occasionally refusing to leave home. The mother repeatedly asked school district employees about whether they had noticed anything troubling her daughter, but was met with denials and assurances that her daughter was fine.

“Those repeated reassurances concealed the truth,” the complaint states. “While school officials kept telling Mrs. Vitsaxaki that there was nothing to report, a school counselor was regularly meeting with her daughter and her peers to address ongoing bullying suffered by … Jane, and other girls in the group.”

Worse than that, the complaint said, the district began treating Jane as though she were a boy – “just as it had done with several other girls in her grade.”

“The same counselor instructed school staff to treat Mrs. Vitsaxaki’s daughter as though she were a boy by referring to her with a boy’s name and the third-person plural pronouns ‘they’ and ‘them’ – part of a controversial psychosocial intervention often called ‘social transition,’” the complaint states. “Then, a school psychologist, who told school staff to keep their actions secret from Mrs. Vitsaxaki, began meeting with Jane regularly without Mrs. Vitsaxaki’s knowledge….

Meanwhile, a father in New Jersey is suing a “school district after his daughter’s gender transition was allegedly kept a secret from him, according to S. A. McCarthy. 

The father, who is remaining anonymous to protect his daughter’s identity, found that New Jersey’s Delaware Valley Regional High School had been calling his daughter by a male name and male pronouns for at least two months, after a pro-LGBT student club’s staff adviser – who is not licensed to practice either medicine or psychology, according to the lawsuit – asked teachers and other school staff, faculty, and administration to refer to the girl by a male name and male pronouns and not to tell her father….

He said that his wife died when his daughter was only 4 years old, and his daughter has been in treatment for depression and anxiety since 2022. She has also been diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, and borderline personality disorder, prompting her doctors to agree to a ‘cautious approach” regarding her gender-identity confusion.

The father says he only learned of his daughter’s social transition when a neighbor and fellow parent accidentally told him. The neighbor referred to the girl by her male name, and the father asked, “What the hell are you talking about?”

The father removed his daughter from DVRHS and began homeschooling her. He said that LGBT activists in the school system showed her a “fantasyland” version of transgenderism, and once he showed his daughter photos and videos of the reality of gender-transition surgeries, she began crying…. The girl’s therapist and doctor both approved of removing her from DVRHS.

If these two children were the only ones being socially transitioned, it would be one thing. The fact that they are not the ones is quite another one. McCarthy reported that Meg Kilgannon, Family, Research Council’s senior fellow for education studies, made the following comments to The Washington Stand:

These cases are becoming more and more common. And while some of the details are the same, the overall situation is still shocking.

Children who have their names changed at school by teachers and are treated as the opposite sex or an imagined gender are not able to consent to these therapies. Social transition is made to seem harmless and reversible by school counselors and gender activists, but it’s neither of those things.”