4 yo told black preschool worker he "doesn't like brown people"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Don’t worry about it! My daughter who is of mixed Indian and Iranian ethnicity was terrified of old white people until she was about 2 years old! She would cry like crazy whenever approached by them in public. Tan or brown people didn’t scare her. Go figure!

I remember a kid telling my (white) mom that she was very old -- mom was in her 50s. Kids just say the most random stuff and sometimes have no idea what they said means or implies.

When I (white woman) was in my early 30's I went to pick my daughter up from elementary school. A kid took one look at me, knew I was there for DD but wasn't exactly her mom, and yelled, "DD! Your .... grandma is here!"

Thanks for sharing.

[Anonymous]

Get woker?

[Anonymous]

This tells me your preschool needs to hire more POC.

Based on your reaction to your conversation with him he said it because he's 4 and didn't like the new float missed his regular teacher he probably would have said I only like people with yellow or whatever hair if the float had been white with red hair.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Kids are struggling to express themselves. As a BIPOC, I would say just continue to educate but don’t project your white guilt/shame onto this situation and make this about whether you as parents are bad. Yes it is mortifying and I too have been mortified when my kids at that age said similarly cringeworthy things about, e.g., old people.

Social anxiety begins at this age and children are just trying to manage it all. Probably this person talked to him and he was having a 4 year old moment about not wanting to be engaged so he pushed back in this inappropriate way. I would suggest having him get to know more brown people as people/friends instead of trying to make some big amends to this one person. It’s not about this one comment per se, more about his environment and community.

Thank you for this! I am honestly not mad at my son because it was clearly very innocent and he seemed confused that we were upset about it. I realize I’m mostly upset because I’m just so mortified!!! I need to keep it in check.

[Anonymous]

Wow. So your takeaway from all this is to tell your kid that we shouldn’t say unkind things and that skin color is a sensitive topic?

You seem to have forgotten to teach that We're all different, but no color is better than another.

Instead you’ve taught that your color is better but don’t comment on it.

No wonder your kid says rude and racist things.

[Anonymous]

Ignore these posters who think this incident reveals something awful about your family.

You did great, and the fact is that 4-year-olds say insane things. He just as easily could have said he only likes people whose names begin with L. He didn’t know he was treading on a land mine, and I expect he won’t do it again.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Ignore these posters who think this incident reveals something awful about your family.

You did great, and the fact is that 4-year-olds say insane things. He just as easily could have said he only likes people whose names begin with L. He didn’t know he was treading on a land mine, and I expect he won’t do it again.

It’s not that what the child said. It’s about how the original poster responded. she honestly may as well have said “oh honey, we don’t say those things out loud”.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: Shall I tell you a funny story to make you feel better?

My White mother married my Asian father, back in the Jurassic era. When my mother's 5 year old nephew first met my father, he pulled at the corner of his eyes with his fingers to make them like slits, because that's what he noticed first about my father. That same year, when my parents visited my father's home country, my father's 5 year old niece first met my mother, and she pushed at the corner of her eyes to make them rounder, because that's what she noticed first about my mother!!!

They told me that story so many time when I was growing up, and I always thought it was hilarious.

Kids. What can you do?

Given the current context, your story isn’t amusing me and I’m not even Asian.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This tells me your preschool needs to hire more POC.

Based on your reaction to your conversation with him he said it because he's 4 and didn't like the new float missed his regular teacher he probably would have said I only like people with yellow or whatever hair if the float had been white with red hair.

The float?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: Shall I tell you a funny story to make you feel better?

My White mother married my Asian father, back in the Jurassic era. When my mother's 5 year old nephew first met my father, he pulled at the corner of his eyes with his fingers to make them like slits, because that's what he noticed first about my father. That same year, when my parents visited my father's home country, my father's 5 year old niece first met my mother, and she pushed at the corner of her eyes to make them rounder, because that's what she noticed first about my mother!!!

They told me that story so many time when I was growing up, and I always thought it was hilarious.

Kids. What can you do?

Haha! I get it. Back in the Jurassic era, when i was young, I grew up in Japan. I moved there as a baby, and lived there for 10 years. I'm German, so think blonde hair, blue eyes, the stereotype. My mom loves to remind me of how on one trip back to Germany, I hid from the other kids because they looked funny, pale hair, and the weird eyes....I apparently thought I was Japanese, since I was the only non Asian in my school and neighborhood. Kids are weird.

[Anonymous]

In my multiracial extended family, I see that some kids were taught skin color doesn’t matter, but only shown fair or very light skinned, more European-featured models of attractiveness. My own daughters are lighter skinned with curly or wavy hair and one doesn’t appear AA to most people, but I always made sure that they saw people who didn’t adhere to the European beauty standards. I complimented their friends on highly textured hair and showed them pictures of my mom’s Afro and my own cornrows as a little girl.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Don’t worry about it! My daughter who is of mixed Indian and Iranian ethnicity was terrified of old white people until she was about 2 years old! She would cry like crazy whenever approached by them in public. Tan or brown people didn’t scare her. Go figure!

I remember a kid telling my (white) mom that she was very old -- mom was in her 50s. Kids just say the most random stuff and sometimes have no idea what they said means or implies.

When I (white woman) was in my early 30's I went to pick my daughter up from elementary school. A kid took one look at me, knew I was there for DD but wasn't exactly her mom, and yelled, "DD! Your .... grandma is here!"

Darker-skinned mom to mixed kids who look white and yeah, I got treated like the nanny by other moms when DDs were little and in ES, I got a lot of "are you really her mom?" and "you don't look like her" when I picked up from aftercare. FYI - moms at the playground are incredibly rude to nannies.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: Shall I tell you a funny story to make you feel better?

My White mother married my Asian father, back in the Jurassic era. When my mother's 5 year old nephew first met my father, he pulled at the corner of his eyes with his fingers to make them like slits, because that's what he noticed first about my father. That same year, when my parents visited my father's home country, my father's 5 year old niece first met my mother, and she pushed at the corner of her eyes to make them rounder, because that's what she noticed first about my mother!!!

They told me that story so many time when I was growing up, and I always thought it was hilarious.

Kids. What can you do?

Given the current context, your story isn’t amusing me and I’m not even Asian.

Asian here, and I think that's cute. We're talking about 5 year olds here.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Ignore these posters who think this incident reveals something awful about your family.

You did great, and the fact is that 4-year-olds say insane things. He just as easily could have said he only likes people whose names begin with L. He didn’t know he was treading on a land mine, and I expect he won’t do it again.

Literally NO ONE said that. OP could have handled this differently -- you don't say "skin color is a sensitive topic" to a four year old. They're not going to understand that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Preschool that we love and have sent 3 of our kids to told me today afterschool that my youngest, 4 yo son, told a black "floater staff" that "he doesn't like brown people other than John (his bestie)." I am utterly floored and responded thanking them for alerting us, telling them that it does not reflect our values at home and we are very shaken by it and that my son would be apologizing and writing a card to the staffer. Ugh. We had a serious heart felt discussion about how we it hurts feeling to say unkind things to them about their skin or bodies and that skin color is a very sensitive topic. He was very upset and I think realized it was a big deal, but I'm jsut so taken aback by the whole thing. We are a super progressive family with diverse friends (who we haven't seen much of thanks to the pandemic). I just am floored that my son would say this because we definitely have talked about race and have diverse books. (older kids so we talk about race in appropriate ways in the family.). I am also just mortified about what the staff must think of us. Any advice, commiseration? Ugh. just feeling awful.

A lot of kids do this around that age. I don't think at 4 they can understand, or should understand, that skin color is "sensitive" -- and anyway it isn't, it's the treatment of people with certain skin colors that's the problem, not the skin color itself. So I'd sit down with him some time soon when he's attentive and not tired, and say "Remember how we talked about xyz and I told you skin color was sensitive? I didn't really explain that well. Here is what I meant ..." and then tell him, expressly, that everyone has different skin color, just like everyone has different eye color or hair color. And that none of them are any better or worse than another. All people are different and that's what makes us interesting. But we don't say unkind things about the way anyone looks, whether that's their skin color, or their hair color, or if they walk with a cane or use a wheelchair, or if they're short or tall or skinny or fat. Say "how would you feel if John said he didn't like your hair color? eye color? skin color? That's how it feels to other people when you say those things. We don't want to make people feel bad about themselves."

As he gets a bit older, like closer to 5, start talking about heroes. Superheroes and real heroes. Make sure you include women and people of color as real heroes. Pick up some books from the library that show them. The school may help out with this -- my older kid's class started talking about MLK and Rosa Parks in the oldest preschool class, when the kids were older 4s and 5s. We elaborated on that at home and each year have worked in a bit more. But nothing's perfect. He's 7 now and yesterday when we were walking home from school he pointed to a sign in someone's yard and said "That says Black Lives Matter. That means black people live there." And I said no, that's not what it means, although of course it's possible that black people live there, but people of all colors have those signs. And I tried to explain in an age-appropriate way about police violence and treatment of African Americans and what the BLM movement is about and why I support it, though we don't have signs of any kind in our yard or on our car.

We are Jewish so since he was 4, and now with my daughter who just turned 4, we talk in age-appropriate ways about Judaism and about discrimination against Jews. (I talk to my son about violence against Jews, like pogroms that our family fled from 100 years ago, but I don't bring that up with my daughter, she's too young. Haven't broached the Holocaust yet either, that will be later this year most likely.) So that gives him more context because we can relate it to other events in the world and violence and discrimination against other groups.

It's always a work in progress, at least for white families. I can't speak for others of course.