How to talk to your kids about... gender

11-year-old daughter and I have a daily debrief at bedtime, where I hear all about her day. She tells me the banal stuff: which teacher she likes best, what she’s making in DT, who fancies who. But, most notably, since starting secondary school in September, she talks about gender. She confidently uses terminology that is still a little unfamiliar to me; non-binary, genderqueer. A straw poll of my friends with children of the same age confirms that it’s not just my daughter and her school – it seems that it’s every child in every school, everywhere. A quick search on TikTok and Instagram brings up a plethora of gender-diverse tweens using new pronouns, challenging my rather pre-fixed notions of identity. And in the past month alone there have been repeated headlines in which our political leaders are being asked challenging questions around gender identity issues that are causing quite the furore. If you want