By Suzanne Bowdey

For most Christian moms and dads, sending kids back to school these days is a faith-building exercise. Any parent who’s followed the headlines about what goes on in America’s classrooms almost certainly has some anxiety about the environment their children are being exposed to on a daily basis. But if you’re one of those parents who’s concerned about how you can protect your children from the secular messages and ideologies your kids are going to confront, there’s hope.

One of the most frequent questions Dr. Jeff Myers gets is: how do I prepare my children for the radical ideologies they’ll be bombarded with at school? As the president of Summit Ministries and a longtime educator, he decided to tackle the dilemma facing today’s parents with a book he co-wrote with Dr. Kathy Koch, “Raising Gender Confident Kids.” On Friday, he sat down with Family Research Council’s Jody Hice on “Washington Watch” to flesh out some of the biggest takeaways for families with a pit in their stomachs about what their sons and daughters could learn that contradicts their beliefs. 

First of all, it’s important for moms and dads to realize that this isn’t just an issue for parents who send their kids to public schools. “I do emphasize to them, even if your child does not go to a school that fights against your values, they are living in a culture that fights against your values,” Myers stressed. “[If] you homeschool your kids, you still go to the grocery store. They still go through the checkout line. They still see the bearded person walking down the aisle wearing high heels in a dress. They are going to face things that are happening in the culture, and there are three things you do.”

1. Help your children take every thought captive.

While Christians might be familiar with the term “biblical worldview,” a lot of Americans aren’t, Myers points out. “They don’t realize that if you’re not operating from a Christian worldview, you are operating from some other worldview that either ignores the existence of God or discounts the existence of God.” A lot of educators today are working from the assumption that parents don’t have the best interests of their children in mind. In fact, he warned, a lot of schools believe that “parents aren’t the stewards of the children.” Instead, they think “the state is the steward — and therefore, the school can do whatever they want to the kids.”

Quite literally, Myers cautions, half of the schools in America are teaching radical gender ideology. They’re trying to rewire children into thinking that the God their parents told them about “is either non-existent or not good, and that they may have actually been born in the wrong body.”

That’s where the admonition of 2 Corinthians 10:5 comes in. “We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” (NIV). As believers, “We start from the idea that God designed us,” Myers explained, “therefore, every person has dignity. Nobody is a victim. We are victors over our circumstances. We treat everybody with dignity, but we also recognize that there is a truth that God has given to us — and we need to discover what that is to take every thought captive.”

2. Make sure they aren’t taken captive.

By the time people reach their mid-twenties, 70% of young adults who grew up in church no longer believe biblical truth. “They were quite literally taken captive by hollow and deceptive philosophies,” Myers shakes his head. As parents, he implores, we have to know the schemes of the enemy and what his lies are so that our children aren’t taken captive.

That said, Myers pointed out, the transgender ideology is probably the number one threat young adults are going to be facing in school this fall. And moms and dads can’t fall into the trap of thinking that just because their kids are in red states or conservative communities that their kids are safe. “They’re going to be told that there is a gender spectrum, and on one end is extreme masculinity [and] on the other end is extreme femininity. … It’s either G.I. Joe or Barbie. And since nobody is really either G.I. Joe or Barbie, we’re all kind of in the middle. We’re all transgender. Maybe you’re even born in the wrong body.”

Myers talked about how pervasive this agenda is when he talked to a grandmother recently who raised all of her children in the church and sent them to Christian camps. Despite that, five of her 13 grandchildren now identify as transgender.

And there are grieving families all over the country just like her. Myers told the story of a dinner he and his wife recently had with a couple whose daughter had to switch to a new school. When they asked what led to the change, she replied, “Because I was the only girl left in my class.” What do you mean, they asked? She astonished them by answering, “All the other girls in my class decided they were boys trapped in girls’ bodies, so they decided to transition to be boys.”

The reality is, Myers told Hice, “[Our] kids are going to face this ideology. And that’s why my co-author, Dr. Kathy Koch, who’s an educational psychologist, and I wrote ‘Raising Gender-Confident Kids,’” which they offer for free on their website. “We will show you how to — in a very natural way that builds a relationship with your children — bring up these difficult issues and help them come to a knowledge of the truth. … We do need to be equipped.” But frankly, Myers wanted parents to know, sometimes it’s as simple as having the courage to start a conversation with your kids.

3. Set the captives free.

Everyone in the schools who isn’t embracing a biblical worldview is operating on a false ideology, Myers reiterates. “We need to learn how to talk to them and help them come to a knowledge of the truth, as the apostle Paul told his disciple Timothy.”

While this may be a sinister movement, there is a way to confront it. The goal of the other side is to chip away at the foundation of faith that parents have so carefully built. And “if you wanted people to believe that there is no God or that God is irrelevant to anything that is important,” Myers underscored, “then you have to somehow tear down all of the categories of meaning that make them think about God. … [Y]ou have to get rid of male and female. And so that is the pressure that is being placed on children these days, not [to look at things through] facts or evidence, but with a bias based on a false worldview.”

One reason this generation has been susceptible to it, he notes, is that “we train our kids to not be bullies. We don’t want our kids to be the mean ones in school. We tell them, ‘If you see somebody being picked on, you need to stand up for them.’ What we didn’t realize is that our efforts to help our kids be kind have [now been] weaponized by people with a false view of the world who want to tear down any understanding of truth. I mean, after all, if you can get a little kid to look at a boy or girl and say they can’t tell a difference, then you can propagandize them to believe anything.”

Other common mistakes parents make when they’re trying to navigate this topic, Myers warns, is ignoring the issue of radical gender ideology — or trying to argue with their kids about it. If you’re a mom or dad who’s done either of those things, the point here is not to beat yourself up about it, he emphasizes. This is about moving forward.

In all fairness, sometimes parents don’t realize what a huge debate gender identity is. But, he argued, “young adults today are 1,600% more likely than people in their 50s or older to say that they identify as transgender. Up to 39% of young people say they identify as LGBTQ. So if you just say, ‘Oh, that’s so stupid,’ and you dismiss it, you will miss an opportunity for a conversation.”

Secondly, moms and dads should not try to debate the subject with their kids. Look, Myers said plainly, “You’re not going to win the debate. Your child is going to go to Google [and look up] the word ‘transgender,’ [and] the very first page — the first five pages of results — are all going to be things like transgender groups saying, ‘We’re going to tell you the facts about transgender,’ none of which is true, but they’re saying that it’s factual. There’s going to be a website there with a law firm to help you legally separate from your parents if they don’t approve of your gender identity. There [are] going to be organizations there to show you how to get cross-sex hormones without your parents knowing about it. Your children can see all those websites. You’re going to lose the debate,” he repeated.

What do you do instead? It’s pretty straightforward, Myers insists. “Look for changes in your child. If they come home and they’re a little bit down, you want to ask them, ‘Can you tell me what happened to you today that’s [causing] you to see yourself the way you do?’ And when they talk, just start asking, ‘Can you tell me more about that?’ Your affirming of the relationship with your child and helping them understand that God made them in His image is what makes [all] the difference.”

This is not about fear, Myers wants families to know. “It’s about giving your kids something solid to stand on in a world that keeps shifting. Let’s raise the next generation with confidence.”

For conversation starters, discussion guides, and free book and audiobook copies, check out Summit Ministries’ special website, Raising Gender-Confident Kids.

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.