Psychologist Dr. Wallace Wong argued that three-year-olds know their gender better than their parents while defending transitioning young children, according to a video obtained exclusively by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
In November 2022, Wong was featured in a training video for the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), an international organization that trains medical and mental health professionals on how to treat transgender patients, including minors. Wong told the trainees that kids “are at your mercy” when it comes to convincing their parents to transition them, and claimed that three-year-olds “know their authentic self” better than their parents, according to a video the DCNF obtained through a public records request. (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: University With Gender Clinic Funds Study To See If Puberty Blockers Cause ‘Lasting’ Brain Changes For Kids)
WPATH’s Global Education Institute (GEI) Online Foundations courses teach medical professionals how to treat transgender patients in line with its Standards of Care. In the standards section on adolescent treatment, WPATH argues that while current research supports “early medical intervention” for transgender youth, there is a lack of studies to show the effects long-term.
Wong is also listed as the co-lead for WPATH’s GEI Diversity, Inclusion and Community Engagement committee, which is designed to “find creative ways to include marginalized or under-utilized contributors to the curriculum development and/or course delivery in every topic area,” according to its website.
WATCH:
Wong said that he had “quite a few” three-year-old patients, and that the “first thing” many children say is not “‘Mommy, I love you,’ but ‘Mommy I am not a boy’ or ‘Mommy, I’m not a girl.’”
“[Parents] really have that wishful thinking that ‘this is not true and I cannot let that happen.’ So they have a lot of different irrational thinking to deny it, undermining it, so having equal time with the parents is important,” Wong later said in the presentation.
During the training, Wong explains that when medical professionals work with families, it is very important that they “always” reassure parents that it is good to talk about sex and transgender issues with their young children. He said that often parents express fear that by introducing their children to these concepts that young they will “really become transgender” but Wong argued that is not the case.
“I wish it was that easy but it’s not,” Wong said to a laughing audience.
Wong also discussed the role schools must play in helping kids transition during the end of his lecture, saying that they need to accept using preferred pronouns and have resources for transgender students. He dismissed the idea that using pronouns like “they” would be confusing for other children.
“They need to learn,” Wong concluded. “They just need to learn. I’m sure [people] are confused when they call me by my Chinese name, I’m sorry … you cannot pronounce it, learn it, just like you have to learn [to] use they.”
Wong previously said in 2019 that he had treated a patient younger than three years old with gender dysphoria, according to a transcript of an event hosted by Vancouver Public Library.
In 2021, a Canadian father was arrested after refusing to consent for his teenage daughter to transition, according to City Journal. Wong was the doctor who encouraged the child to begin socially transitioning with the school’s help, despite the father not being informed and later encouraged her to go on cross-sex hormones.
Wong and WPATH did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s requests for comment.
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