Originally posted at David Horowitz’s Newsreal:

In times past, if a person exhibited persistent delusions, doctors and scientists would try to cure the person of their delusions. A person who saw themselves as an animal or a different gender or a different person needed to be cured of their delusions and made to accept reality: that a human is not really a rabbit, that a boy is not really a girl, and that Joe Smith down the street is not really the president of the United States. In our more tolerant, enlightened world though, we choose to indulge delusions. After all, who are we to tell someone what their reality is? Transgendered people say that they are, in reality, not the gender they were born. This is their reality, and we choose to accept and tolerate their perversion of the truth. Of course, an adult can also choose to do whatever they want with their own life. But should we still look the other way when a parent encourages a child to cross-dress?

Dyson Kilodavis is a five-year-old boy. His favorite colors are pink and red, and he enjoys dressing up in dresses and skirts, and wearing pink lip gloss. His mother, Cheryl, initially resisted. But then, she decided she just wanted to make him happy, and let him be “a princess boy”.

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As author Ken Corbett, who wrote Boyhoods: Rethinking Masculinities, noted in the video, this is about parents reshaping the social world our children grow up in. Is it for the better?

Dyson apparently started showing a preference for girly things at the age of two. He’s been dressing up like this for three years now, because instead of stepping in and telling their son no, his parents just want to let him be happy. Obviously, this must be the new job of a parent: give your child whatever they want as long as it makes them happy, no matter how wrong it is. A child of two or three or four or five does not understand what transgender or cross-dressing is. A two-year-old certainly doesn’t have any deep feelings about it. Instead of refusing to indulge the phase Dyson went through at two, his parents chose to go along with it, letting their son become a princess boy and showcasing it for the world to see.

Do they ever think about the life they are setting their son up for? The teasing, the bullying? How about the confusion when Dyson wonders why no other little boys at school wear dresses and lip gloss? What kind of psychological effect will this have on Dyson in the long run? None of these things matter, apparently — the Kilodavis’s are making their son happy in the short-term, and that’s all that matters.

There have been cross-dressers for hundreds of years, but they have always been the minority. Gender roles have existed for centuries, and now in our more enlightened age we’re just going to toss them out of the window on the whim of a child. It’s one thing for an adult male to decide to live his life as a female. It’s quite another for a parent to let a child do the same — you don’t play social engineer with your children.

On top of all of this, what does it say about parenting today when we are expected to give in to whatever our children want, just because it will make them “happy”? As parents, the job is not to give our children whatever they want. Sometimes, we have to say no. Sometimes, we have to make a choice that will make our kids unhappy, simply because it is the right thing to do. In Dyson’s case, he’s been robbed of a normal childhood, and potentially a happy childhood at that, simply because his parents would not tell him no. As the adult in the family, it is your responsibility to say no when your child makes ridiculous demands. Just because your son or daughter says they want something doesn’t mean they should get it.

What’s sad is that this isn’t a decision Dyson is old enough to make for himself. At eighteen, he’s old enough to understand the implications of dressing like a girl. At five, he has no idea what any of this means, which is why actual parenting would be necessary, and why letting him go through with this kind of behavior is potentially dangerous. He doesn’t know what this could do to his childhood. His parents do, and they apparently do not care. That’s not exactly responsible parenting.

But then, parenting would mean not indulging little Dyson’s delusions, which could make him unhappy, even though it’s the right thing to do. And we can’t ever have an unhappy child, can we?