Very sorry that happened. You're exactly right: the child's health needs should come first, including mental health. That's the necessity. And it applies to care and counseling for depression, anxiety, gender issues, dealing with bullies, whatever. No legislature should interfere.

> living with parents at age 21

Yeah, that's a "you" problem.

How are people who take their own life before 18 supposed to transition after 18?

How are people who are forced through unwanted irreversible changes that damage their health before 18 supposed to avoid them after they've already happened?

Very good and valid points. I went through the Leb school district not too long ago and even though we had decent programs, there were still flaws and things that should be changed or added. I was fortunate enough to be selected to go to the Hartford VT votech school in my junior and senior years but out of the 10 or so classes there, only 2 students from each school in the region can attend. This should be open to any if not all students which would be a stretch due to the lack of teachers, but it brings real world skills of the workplace and trade world to students and gives them the choice to choose a path that they have interest in rather than beat them to death with the college route stick. Learned how to talk to random people with respect, give good handshakes, think outside the box in situations where we may have forgotten a piece of equipment or the weather changed, and learned how to present ourselves properly in the community without being puppets or having sticks up our ass. Also learned a lot about the environment and the practices that we should be taking as both communities and states and the vast inaccuracies the media spreads.

For the sex ed programs, we had sex ed classes in 5th grade which were pretty informative and straight forward, then in 8th grade we had half a year of home ec which included a week of contraceptives and parenting including the dreaded mechanical baby that was a good way to instill the use of contraceptives into our heads. Then another weeklong class in 10th grade which was pretty good also.

Another class we had in both 10th and 11th grade was a few weeks in our government class that had us look into our future careers, a group project into starting a business and finding out what we would need legally for that business and a few other minor things we did but nothing related to preparing us for financial readiness in the workforce via teach us the breakdown of taxes and the different terms, what number to claim for taxes on your wages, etc.

Now for the GAC bill, I agree with the bill to ban that kind of care in the form of procedures or medication to anyone under the age of 18 even with permission of the parents. Young adults, teens and kids are very susceptible to believing anything they are told especially from very 1 sided political parents on both sides. But allowing the opportunity for them or anyone to affect their natural growth and possibility of permeant unreversible changes to their body's is unethical and Stright up wrong. Once they or you are 18, go ahead and do whatever you want as longs as it doesn't affect me, my kids or anyone else lives negatively. We should apply more funding to bring more therapist and phycologists to schools and the communities so anyone can get the mental help they need and maybe realize the effect of certain apps, social medias and fads have on the young population and maybe put more funding to the research behind those effects or limiting them in the schools or the state. There's good reasons TikTok is being looked into and not being banned weather you believe them or not.

Social media and more specifically snapchat at the time when I was in HS definitely had an effect on myself and my friends in HS and I was lucky to not let it and FB control my life and feelings and friendships. Didn't care how many online friends I had, or how many likes I had on IG or how many snaps a day I was getting, we just lived our lives having fun camping, building things like redneck paddle boats or ice shanty's, launching fireworks around the fire, going to the beach or hiking on the many trials around the upper valley.

Sorry in advance for the rant, don't find comments that often I agree with on reddit, and I'm bored at work.

Oh ok now I'm starting to understand. You don't want schools to replace Math and Science with these things, you think they should enhance sex education and add self care to curriculums, take kids on numerous field trips to showcase different occupations every year, and devote a whole semester to 1st aid. That sounds really nice as long as we dont do the addition and subtraction on how much money all that would cost. And this bill is good because it will keep kids from taking hormones which they wouldn't need if schools were better? Or is it gonna generate more tax revenue to pay for field trips and higher teacher salaries so that they can raise kids right while their parents slave away on the sales floor?

I agree with your overall point, I just get tired of the "schools should teach how to do taxes" example being overused and oversimplified as some kind of magic key to unlocking an easy transition into adulthood.