The concept of ‘age-appropriateness’ is an arbitrary signifier and yet it commands a powerful common-sense appeal (McClelland & Hunter, 2013) in governing the shape and content of sexuality education. The visibility of LGBTQI+ lives in primary schools is deeply impacted by the ways in which ‘age-appropriateness’ and ‘childhood innocence’ are mobilised; very often resulting in silence and delay (Robinson, 2013; Neary & Rasmussen, 2020; Stockton, 2009). The concept of ‘age-appropriateness’ becomes entangled too with moral panics about ‘promoting’ LGBTQI+ lives, or children being somehow ‘recruited’ to identify as LGBTQI+ (Gray et al. 2021; DePalma & Atkinson, 2010). This paper draws on a study with the parents of eleven trans and gender diverse children (then aged between 5 and 13) conducted in 2017, as well as a follow-up study conducted with the same cohort of parents and children in 2022. This paper explores how the politics of age and agency intersect and become intensified as trans and gender diverse children and their parents navigate and make decisions about their bodies, lives and everyday worlds. These stories of trans and gender diverse children — laden as they are with tensions and ambivalences— are an arresting invitation to adults to attend closely to the stories of children themselves in (re)considering the potential of sexuality education across contexts

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