A growing number of teens and younger children believe they were born the wrong sex. The medical journal Pediatrics revealed that with support from parents, more doctors are giving sex-change treatments to young patients.

It was reported to the Associated Press that an 8-year-old girl claimed at 18 months, “I a boy.” Although initially shocked by the statement, the family now refers to and treats the girl as a boy. Things are not stopping there. The child’s mother is watching for the first signs of puberty so sex-change treatments can begin.

It is not too uncommon for very young children to occasionally pretend to be the opposite sex. Yet, these children are not just pretending. They feel certain they were born with the wrong bodies. Several medical journals report that some children even resort to self-mutilation to change their bodies.

Psychiatrists label this condition as “gender identity disorder.” Dr. Norman Spack, director of one of the nation’s first gender identity medical clinics at Children’s Hospital Boston, estimates that 1 in 10,000 children have the condition. In a published interview, he stated, “If you open the doors, these are the kids who come. They’re out there. They’re in your practices.”

However, other medical doctors express serious concern in providing sex-change treatments for the young.

Shouldn’t such psychiatric diagnoses and parents’ motives be questioned?

All parents, psychiatrists and medical doctors need to recognize that a human baby is very different from every other creature.

God, the master designer, created human beings to be either male of female for a supreme eternal purpose. God is building His own family through human beings. Each role, the male and the female, is critically important to build healthy, vibrant families.

Newborn animals are born with instinct—the pre-programmed ability to know how to eat, walk and protect themselves. A human baby is different. The newborn infant must be taught from birth—how to eat, how to walk and how to talk. A child must also specifically be taught gender from very early on. Why? So the child can fulfill God’s intended purpose for that child.

This teaching must come from the baby’s parents. In fact, this is the beginning of true sex education. Parents must impart to their child a wholesome understanding of what one is—male or female.

Sexual identity is formed by the way in which a child is looked upon and treated by parents. Children need to be taught how to be masculine or feminine, and encouraged to positively embrace being either a male or a female.

Children are great mimics. Parents and other adults are models children imitate. When a parent is confused about his or her gender, it is only natural that a child will be confused about his or her own.

In mid-year 2011, the Toronto Star ran a story about one couple who were allowing their children to choose their own gender. Caught up in modern political correctness, the couple have not revealed the sex of their youngest child. They feel the child has the right to decide his or her own gender. Their two oldest children—boys—choose to wear long hair and girls’ clothes. Will visiting a sex clinic be their next choice?

The Word of God is not politically correct and is not in vogue today. Yet it thunders a message to parents to take on the responsibility to teach their children correctly. That includes gender. When parents do their job, no hormone change is necessary.