I’m mortified by this and I apologise for any upset this causes.
We are a white family living in a part of rural Warwickshire with little ethnic diversity.
My autistic PDA 5 year old has been saying to us he doesn’t like child X at school because they have a “different skin colour”. I’ve been calmly exploring what he means and he doesn’t quite seem to know why himself. I’ve been saying for YEARS that people all have different hair, skin, people like different things, we’re good at different things, we have different types of brains etc all in preparation for him inevitably feeling different because of his autism. He says he likes people with different colour hair , different eye colour etc , it’s just skin.
I’ve said to him, how would you like it if someone doesn’t like you because of your skin colour or because you’re autistic and he says blankly “I wouldn’t mind” - and to be honest I think he’s being sincere. We’re repeatedly saying to be kind to everyone etc but this conversation has come up a few times in recent months.
We’ve explained the ‘science’ , that darker skin has more melanin which protects skin from the sun which is special.
He used to love the cartoon Nikhil and Jay so I put it on this morning and he literally ran out of the room screaming and pushing the hoover over.
Any advice?! I’m mortified. Partly because I don’t want anyone to think we are racist or have these views, but MOST IMPORTANTLY I would hate for him to ever say this to a person of another race , or for him to exclude or be unkind to someone because of their skin. I can’t believe my son is likely to contribute to child x’s first experience of racism and I want to do whatever I can to not raise a racist child