New to Christopherus?

Dear friends,

I have worked with children from many different socio-economic and racial/ethnic backgrounds. I have worked with children in Waldorf and non Waldorf settings---with the full range of ages from babies to high school seniors. And I am the mother of two sons. 

One of the greatest joys I have experienced in working with and observing children has been marveling at the difference between boys and girls. From earliest babyhood, boys and girls play and interact with other people in different ways---obviously there are differences between individuals but on the whole, anyone who has spent a lot of time with children, knows that their boy-ness or their girl-ness is expressed and also affirmed and strengthened through their play. For example, boys of around 10 or 11 tend to be active and their play simple as they role play, chase one another and use sticks, guns or swords. Girls of this age can also be active but they tend to talk more---to discuss and argue through tactics and who is who and what needs to be done and so on. Girls tend toward being more disposed toward the inner realm, boys to the outer.  

Each human soul incarnates into a physical body and each body has a sex: it is a male body or it is a female body. For a minuscule number of people, this is not so---their body is somewhere between male and female or perhaps one could say, neither. It has always been this way and for as long as human beings continue to incarnate into physical bodies, presumably, this will continue. And of course there have always been a tiny number of men who role play and dress as women. Sometimes this is a sexual fetish and sometimes it is just an expression of their personality. When the former, until recently, this has been, like other fetishes, restricted to adult choices and adult venues. That sexual fetishes (and not just drag) are now a part of curriculum in schools and promoted as a normal part of what children should experience is a sign of how far we have sunk as a society.

For the vast, vast majority of people in every culture, in every race, throughout history, the incarnating of the arriving soul into a male or female body is clear and is marked by cultural/religious rituals. It has nothing to do with sexuality though gender expectation may be a part of this welcoming into the family, tribe, people.

That the coming baby will be a boy or will be a girl is often known far in advance by the mother. She might have had a dream or an intuition of the sex of the baby. The baby’s father might also have had such intuitions or dreams. The midwives and the female elders might also know whether a boy or girl is about to arrive. There is no ‘assigning boy/girl at birth’, the ignorant and horrible phrase used by trans activists to dismiss the girl-ness or boy-ness of the newly arrived human being. That such incredible cultural imperialism is now being normalized, that people can actually say that doctors (for instance) assign the sex of the baby is beyond belief. Gone are thousands of years of collective wisdom in cultures across the globe, the wisdom of women and the mysteries of childbirth.

We can talk about sex, gender and sexuality. As I say further on, one of the biggest impediments to rational discussion about these categories is the confusion---purposeful or not---between them.

Sex---male or female—is a given. Where it gets complicated---and very, very interesting---is when we talk about gender and about sexuality. 

Gender can be understood as the male or female roles that people follow (or rebel against) according to the cultural, religious and historical norms they are born into. The activists talk about gender being fluid----and when they mean the definition of gender I am presenting here, then yes, they are right. However, they usually conflate sex, gender and sexuality, lumping them all under the term gender and assert that all of this is fluid----and though fluidity definitely applies to gender and can apply to sexuality it does not apply to sex.

We all know that gender roles change and evolve. A modern Western boy can grow up to be a nurse, a girl can grow up to be President and it is ridiculous to have to point this out. Where it gets complicated is when the question of gender roles is applied to being a mother and being a father. Here we have to consider the spiritual realities of the human being and see that being a mother and being a father are not simply gender roles but are archetypal roles, filled with Divine intention. It’s great that a little girl wants to be a cowboy (‘cowperson’ just doesn’t quite cut it) when she grows up. And why shouldn’t she? But she cannot be a father when she grows up. She can talk about ‘parenting’ and being a parent….but if she does not penetrate the spiritual depths of motherhood if she someday chooses to have a child---something every culture, in its own way, has done since people first walked on this dear Mother Earth---then she is missing out on a critical part of being a human being. Thus we can see that the spiritual reality of being a human being does percolate into gender roles and this is most obvious when we talk about mothering and fathering. The notion of ‘birthing person’ is so ridiculous I’m not even going to comment on it.

Lastly we get to sexuality. Here we can say that for many people it is certainly true that their sexuality is fluid, not fixed. Human sexuality is unendingly complex and nuanced. But...what we can categorically state is that sexuality has nothing---nothing---to do with children and should in no way be brought to their consciousness before their astral bodies awaken in about their 14^th year. Even then, consciousness about their slowly evolving sexuality should be couched in gentle terms having to do with what will unfold for them in the future. Whilst acknowledging---to our adult selves not to our children---that many young teens are indeed engaged in sexual behavior, this should be understood to be a tragedy whereby those youngsters are being robbed of the latter years of their childhoods and not something acceptable. It takes 21 years for the human ‘I’ to fully incarnate. To shorten this by dragging self awareness and especially sexual self awareness to a child is to criminally short change the developmental needs of the child.

I cannot go into the details but if you wish to understand the horror of why Americans (and probably other Westerners) think that sexuality has anything to do with children, then do investigate the evil of Alfred Kinsey. To summarize and not exaggerate, he is responsible for the notion that very young children have orgasms and are sexual beings and this is based on the rapes of children he facilitated to prove his sick theories.



When I studied child psychology at college in the early 1980s, Kinsey’s work was part of the syllabus---it took years for the full depravity of what he did to emerge.

So sexuality---of any kind---should have nothing to do with children. Whether it is Toddlers in Tiaras or the 1990s craze of dressing one’s daughter to look like a prostitute or exposing children to the gyrations of half-naked men dressed up in a parody of women, children should be sheltered and protected from the astrality of sexuality. To bring a child into sexual awareness before s/he is ready is to damage the delicate sheaths of the ‘I’. When the ‘I’ has been damaged, the child---or teen or adult---is more susceptible to abuse and manipulation. Pimps understand this very well and part of grooming is the process whereby they foster dependency and manipulate their victims. Breaking down the ‘I’ by sexual and emotional abuse whilst fostering dependency is their key to successfully subjugating the girl or boy they use. For anyone who values human freedom, the protection of childhood is an imperative.

Children need to feel happy being boys or girls, not through self consciousness but through the actions and deeds and spiritual substance engendered by the adults in their lives. Sensitivity to the nuances and fluidity of gender not sex means that long-haired boys are allowed to play with all things pink and girls can have short hair and play with whatever is considered a boy toy. The reality of fluidity in children resides in the fact that 1) through play (NOT through discussion and self awareness) each child needs to explore every aspect of his or her being---and that includes the male element of girls and the female element of boys and 2) that just because a boy (for instance) spends countless hours dressing up in fairy princess clothes that has absolutely nothing to do with either his sex (that he is a boy) or his eventual sexuality (however that might pan out in later years). The archetypal truth of fairy tales---real fairy tales which have pictures of the human being in them, found in cultures across the globe---resonates deeply in the soul of every child of whatever background. Each boy and each girl has within a Hunter, a King, a Wise Woman and so on because these are not sketches of real people (or of gender possibilities) but are eternal archetypes of the soul. Each child needs to be able to be a Princess or a Warrior without the agendas of adults who have no clue about the developmental needs of children.

Part of the perversity of the activist crazyness of our time is the actual diminishing of possibilities for children, not their expansion.

I have a friend who is gay and he says with horror that he realizes that had he been a child now, because he loved to play with ‘girl toys’, it is likely that it would have been suggested to him that he was actually a girl. He is absolutely a man. He is a man sensitive to the feminine and he is a man who loves another man. He is not a woman.

Let’s think about that for a moment. What this means is that former moves to widen the roles (gender roles) children might experience has now, with the crazyness of trans activism, been narrowed so that a boy playing with what are usually seen as girl toys is now seen to point toward that child being in the wrong body----check out the zillions of ‘how do I know if I’m actually a girl/boy’ groups on social media if you think I am exaggerating. So no more feminine boys and no more rough and tough girls. What a crazy world we live in.

What to do? Make sure that your child never has a phone and never has internet access until s/he is an older teen (the older the better). And even then, make sure that tender teen has developed the strength of character and has a living relationship to the spiritual worlds so that he can safely navigate the predator infested world of social media. Never underestimate the persuasive power of social media on children---or young people.

All feedback welcome!

And if you support what I write and the perspective expressed through this newsletter, we would be grateful if folks helped us by spreading the word about Christopherus. Because of the things I write we have of course lost customers---and that’s ok---there are other curriculum providers which might speak to those folks better than I. But I know from the feedback I get from readers how valued my particular perspective is. So...if you want to help me continue to be able to speak out, please spread the word amongst homeschoolers, teachers and parents.

Do forward this newsletter to anyone you feel would be interested---here is our archive where I have written about the dangers of child sexualization, about the dangers of computers for children and much more.

Next month’s topic---the importance of disappointment or How Not to Try to Fix Your Child.

Til July,

Blessings on your homeschool journey,

Donna