A special education teacher in Humble, Texas, gave melatonin gummies to a few of her students, and CNN is mad. Not only were the students’ parents not informed, the outlet tells us, but the teacher didn’t even alert the school nurse or administrators either. It’s shocking, really, a teacher giving kids a hormone supplement without parental consent. We should really demand better of our educational system.
Though the teacher has resigned, we should all be flabbergasted and dismayed at this egregious violation of the trust between parents and schools. Today, melatonin gummies, tomorrow, the teacher, had she not resigned, may have done something especially horrific, like encouraging students to hide really big secrets from their parents. She may have even aided and abetted students in that subterfuge.
Except, had she, CNN and the rest of the corporate media would not be so perturbed. They would probably even cheer the teacher on. For example, here’s CNN on a policy adopted by the school district in San Bernadino, California, that would require educators to inform parents if their kids adopted a different so-called “gender identity” while in the classroom. It quotes a teacher who says, “We’ll truly hit a milestone in our district when ‘sensitive issues’ aren’t sensitive at all, and these children can choose to simply exist exactly how they are.” Read: We’ll truly hit a milestone when teachers can help students potentially destroy their lives without notifying the parents as to what’s going on.
It doesn’t stop there, though. Here’s another CNN piece on parents’ rights, this time about teaching kids how to be racists and also explore their “gender expression” and not the horrors of a melatonin gummy. Parents’ rights bills, we’re told, have a “chilling” effect on education. Laws letting parents know what’s going on in the classroom, the article continues, “have an ulterior motive driving them: to empower a vocal and censorship-minded minority with greater opportunity to scrutinize public education and intimidate educators with threats of punishment.”
If a “censorship-minded minority intimidating educators with threats of punishment” is what comes to mind when you learn of bills designed to keep parents informed about what their kids are learning, perhaps you need to eat a melatonin gummy yourself, if not something stronger.
And it’s not just CNN. Here’s ABC, in a profile of families with gender non-conforming kids who fled “anti-LGBTQ” states, including Texas and Florida. In the profile, we learn that “studies, including research in JAMA Surgery, have shown that gender-affirming care can be lifesaving for transgender and nonbinary children and adolescents, promoting positive mental and physical health and well-being.” Oh, OK then.
But what about studies regarding melatonin and its risks? In the CNN piece about the teacher in Texas, the authors state, “there are uncertainties about what dose to use and when to give it, the effects of melatonin use over long periods of time, and whether melatonin’s benefits outweigh its possible risks.” CNN also has an op-ed from June of this year that posits, “You might want to rethink taking melatonin as a sleep aid.”
Moreover, did you know that melatonin may cause headaches, nausea, dizziness, mild anxiety, and a host of other issues? You might if you read CNN. (Please note, I’m not encouraging you to read CNN. While the side effects have not been well studied, it’s a risk I’m willing to take for you.)
Are there any similar risks to transgender interventions — that is, years of wrong-sex hormones and genital mutilations?
According to CNN, it doesn’t seem so. Here’s a search for “risks hormones transgender.” Here’s one for “risks gender affirming care.” Here’s are the results for the same query on ABC’s website. Here’s what the search pulls up on the ABC site if you search for the former.
Notice anything about those results, like the complete lack of curiosity about what, if any, long-term side-effects there might be to pumping kids full of hormones or cutting up their bodies? Jesse Singal, who is in favor of transgender medical interventions but is actually curious about the fact that they are still experimental, highlights many of the problems with the literature surrounding wrongly named “gender-affirming care” in this article on his Substack. In short, merely waiving away concerns is a huge risk, much more so than giving kids a melatonin gummy.
Alas, very few other journalists, or “journalists,” are interested in such questions. Maybe when pharmaceutical companies start packaging wrong-sex hormones in gummy bears, more will get concerned, though the concern will probably be that the flavors aren’t as delicious as they could be.
It would be good for society if CNN, ABC, and other corporate outlets truly cared about the well-being of kids and ensuring their safety in all situations. Alas, they do not. Instead, they only care about kids in the same sense that Hamas does, as cannon fodder and human shields in the holy wars being waged by the supposed adults in the room.
