School overreacted ?

@piintheski are you saying that a 7yo shouting "poo!" at someone is not normal behaviour? It's naughty but it's certainly not abnormal.

Yes, of course they do.

Anything that makes us all step back and re assess the language we use towards others should be seen as a good thing. It's a learning lesson for your son OP. He now knows that sometimes we can upset people without realising the confirmations in our words. I don't think your child is racist, and in the future he will probably re consider how his words could be upsetting others and now knows a bit of the reasoning behind it.

My husband is white, I am of mixed heritage therefore my children do look 'different'. At 6, sadly my child did know a fair bit about racism. Or had at least experienced it in several ways or seen his family experience it. In turn my child's classmates soon got to learn more about racism as well. I think a lot of posters mentioning how their 6 year old don't know what racism is, are probably mostly white so they won't have ever experienced it.

I think those of you linking 6 and 7 year olds shouting poo, bum, willy at the Year 6s to endemic racism are being ridiculous.

The 11yo interpreted it as a racist comment and that should be addessed quickly and sympathetically. If it was "you look like poo" or "you're the colour of poo," that would be clear racism and completely unacceptable.

But 6 or 7 year olds shouting "naughty" words at the big boys to be outrageous is pretty mild misbehaviour that should be dealt with by the playground supervisors, not by 2 days of exclusion for one child only.

And yet you’ve been consistently using language more appropriate to a Court of law.

Always? Because the school obviously didn’t give the accused (in this case a little kid) the benefit of doubt! Obviously they should have had words with him about the older boy being upset. However the punishment is draconian.

It's excessive and misplaced punishments like this that cause anger and intolerance

This is absolutely right.

The best way to deal with young children being silly is to talk to the class about not shouting "poo", "willy" and "bum" at one another.

Bringing racism into silly childish behaviour creates problems that aren't there.

My 6 year old most certainly doesn’t.

Maybe he does, maybe he doesn’t. I don’t really see why he’d make the connection. When you have a bunch of little kids going a bit giddy and egging each other to shout naughty words to older kids, would they really stop and think ‘I mustn’t shout poo at the black kid as he is the colour of poo’? Even thinking that might be construed as racism in itself. No amount of learning a Rosa Parks or MLK is relevant to this situation.

I don't think my 7 year old knows a huge amount about racism to be honest.

Thankfully, you haven’t taught in infants school! At least I hope not anyway! You wouldn’t seriously expect a bunch Y7s to dare each other to shout poo bum willy to a group of 6th formers. Though I’m sure you must have heard worse language in in secondary, rough or otherwise!

Did your child call another kid a poo, or did he tell a brown kid he looked like a poo?

I can see why the second example could be termed as racist.

But why does your seven year old know nothing about racism?

If you haven't taught your child good behaviour and they think that insulting anyone is acceptable, then it's great the school is stepping up and doing what you haven't. At the age of 7 a child may not have a full comprehension of bigotry, but they are definitely old enough to understand the basics and to undertsand that it is not something adults condone.

I find it difficult to believe that a primary school puts a child into two days isolation over one incident.

A 7yo will have been taught about racism in school in within lessons, whether it be about Rosa Parkes, Windrush etc.
But, it sounds like the OPs son said "poo" as a rude word which was interchangeable with willy, bum etc.
The school are being ridiculous and I'd put in a complaint.

This is silly.
Kids are kids, daring each other to say what younger children think are naughty/rude words to older kids /adults is part of growing up.
I remember my children saying and calling each other poo, said because they thought it was a naughty word.
I think the child who reported it saying it was racist is in the wrong, he needs to be taught not everything said to him is meant in that way.
School over reacted by far, they should just had an assembly next day saying its wrong to call others names.

He’ll have covered it at school no doubt, as had my 6yo. It still took some explaining to help him join the dots between the stuff he had learned about Rosa Parks etc and an impulsive comment made in the playground.

Only way I could see this as racist if its an asian boy and you son called him"apu" like from the simpsons.

I’m not sure where you got that from. My understanding was that the little kids were running up to the big kids saying words like poo, bum, willy randomly. Where did OP say that her child specifically targeted the black kid?

It’s a silly game, and one that younger kids should be taught not to play. But singling out one child for significant punishment, just because the child he ran up to happened to have dark skin, is ridiculous.

They should be taught that calling other kids names, in general, is wrong. Labelling a child racist, when he probably barely noticed the skin colour, is excessive.

It's also relevant in a whole host of other situations in a primary school, for example, kids are playing football and someone gets hit in the face accidently during a game Vs a child picking up a football and hitting someone in the face with it purposely. Intent is hugely important

We assess intent all the time in our day-to-day lives @piintheski. Or at least try to. It's interwoven with our perception of things.

It's not irrelevant at all. The op has already stated they were calling loads of kids poo so the skin colour was not a factor.

Actually there are many incidences of racism directed at white children. Particularly in schools which are predominantly non-white. My friend works in an inner city school and most of the racial issues occur with insults directed at black children by Asian children.

Young kids know that saying someome looks like the colour of shit isn't nice.

We don't know that that was the child's intent though. As has been said many times, kids love yelling words like poo, willy etc for no other reason than that they're funny and rude to kids of that age.

OP has confirmed that her son and his friends were shouting poo to a whole bunch of kids, so it doesn't appear targeted at all. Which is why an explanatory conversation from a teacher should have been the end of it.

Indeed.

Would saying that a white child's skin looked like the colour of vomit be ok?

not in a school
not in a complaint
not in a police investigation

maybe in a court of law, but that is totally irrelevant here