DD4 said a girl at nursery is brown.. what to say ?

[vangh]

I always ask my DD about her friends. I say stuff like ' who's your best friend ? ' ' who shall we invite to your birthday ? ' she is 4 in a few weeks.

I asked her about a girl in her class and she said ' yeah she's brown '..

Her nursery is pretty diverse and we've spoken about lots of other children before that aren't white, but she's never said anything like that.

I didn't really know what to say. I know that sounds really stupid probably. I think I said something like, everyone is a different colour.. not sure if that was the right thing to say.

I understand she'll notice that there are different skin colours but I'm a bit surprised she said that and I don't want to say the wrong thing.

For context, we don't ever talk about skin colour at home, so maybe we should. Maybe there are child friendly books that explain this ?

Has your child said something like this and what did you do ?

We’ve got the usborne “all about” books - families, diversity, feelings, friends. Good for conversations about all sorts of things.

As a white mother of white kids, I think it is very important that I actively talk about race to my kids. There is a high chance that they’ll come across racism at some point, maybe even from someone they respect, and I want their first encounter with it to be me explaining what it is and that it is wrong. Looking back I can see that I was incredibly naive well in to my 20s because I had been so protected from the idea of racism that I didn’t recognise it when I saw it.

So for an age appropriate suggestion - DS and I read a book with all sorts of different people in it, I asked if DS (5yrs) knew anyone with brown skin (yes), and explained that sometimes people are mean to other people because they have different colour skin, what does he think about it? (Bad) And if he ever hears anything like that he should tell an adult, just like any other bullying. We’ll get more nuanced as he gets older. We also make sure we have plenty of diverse characters in books, dolls are a mix of races etc.

It's a factual description of the colour of her skin. Its like when they describe a red haired childs hair as "orange".

Its completely normal. Less normal at that age would be to describe a child as "black",

‘Yes, her skin is brown. People come in lots of different colours don’t they? What colour is your skin?’

And move on. Not a big deal.

Bloody hard to get it right isn’t it?
i once had to describe one guy from our office of many guys to someone.
he is the one with the shaved head, brown eyes, facing this way, you know his girfriend, quite short, his desk faces this way, in the end I was nearly in tears of suppressed hysteria/nerves

turns out I could have just said ‘he’s the one with one arm’ but I was worried I’d be called out for using such an obvious descriptor.

political correctness is a killer

My son is brown. It’s fine and he’d agree.

This.

But with mine it was the supermarket. All around the aisles. ‘Look it’s that fat man again!’ ‘Why has that girl got green hair?’ etc etc

Many years ago arranging dc's birthday party he wanted some friends from preschool (fine, I knew all of them as v small preschool) and also a few from nursery. He was specific about wanting "Leo in the brown skin. I don't want Leo in the pink skin because he pushed me off my bike". I had to explain that to his keyworker when I gave her the invitations to put in their bags.

Agree with a pp who said it's not that little ones don't notice colour, it's that they don't care.

Nothing to worry about. I've heard this from my DCs when they were trying to describe a friend too. It's simply a factual statement for them

I am unsure which but you feel uncomfortable with. The fact that she used ‘brown’ or noticed that her friend had brown skin. Or that she mentioned it.

I think she probably mentioned it as she had just really noticed the difference and had been wondering about it.

I am mixed race. I remember when dd noticed. She was around the same age. I remember her looking at me for a while and then saying ‘mummy! You look like my friend. She is brown too. Will I turn brown?’ Like it was something she just noticed.

I explained why I was more (slightly) brown than her. And pointed out how my Dad was more brown than me. Don’t upset me. It wasn’t offensive. It was factual. Kids start noticing differences between people. We do talk about race at home. Where appropriate.

But then I also remember when she was about 2.5 and sat on my mums knee and all of a sudden noticed eyebrows and eyelashes and shouted ‘Nanny, you have eye hair’ then went round the room looking at everybody it’s then in a mirror at her own. She was blown away. She just noticed a detail.

Dd is now an adult and she is fiercely anti racist.

I think it’s really ok for kids to notice differences and describe them accurately. I think in certain context it’s ok to use them as a descriptor as adults.

My friends at work who would describe themselves as black women, would also refer to their skin as brown. If that’s your concern. I am south East Asian and white so someone else might clarify if that’s correct for wider groups. But, for example, we were looking for rights that matched our skin tone, in December. My friend told me the company she looked at didn’t have enough range for ‘my shade of brown’.

Shit that white people angst about.

What's wrong with saying she is brown? It's a child saying it like it is. My daughter has a friend who is mixed race (African and Greek) he said he has brown skin.

My (white) DD, when a similar age, assured me how her (black) friends hands weren’t dirty, and they had washed them, it’s just that their skin is a different colour to hers and the other white kids.

She was very earnest about it. Who knows what the conversation looked like at nursery as this was discussed amongst the kids / adults. And for the record she has close black extended family, and lived in a very diverse area..

I can guarantee there was zero malice behind these comments. It was just realisation that her friends were all are different in many many ways, and this was one of many differences they had worked out that day.

would it be an appropriate comment for an adult - of course not. But a toddler exploring the world - it will be one of many comments on appearance.

Perhaps, as she didn't reference the skin colour of the other black kids in her class, her friend has referred to herself as brown and she is just repeating her friend?

Yep, this.

Simple response and move on.

My daughter said the same about a girl in her reception class. “Sally is my friend, she’s got brown skin like Uncle Steve”. Her uncle Steve is actually white but had been working in Australia and came home with a really dark suntan
She asked the girl if she’d been to a hot country like her uncle Steve because she was brown like him.
I thought nothing of it until the girls mother, who is white, accused dd of racism and wanted this remark noted on my dd school record. I refused to let that happen, it was an innocent remark nothing racist about it.

You are overthinking it OP, don't worry.

I highly recommend the book 'Bodies are Cool' by Tyler Feder, perfect for her age and my girls love it.

'Is she darling, that's interesting, people have lots of different skin colours don't they?'.

OP, I think the fact that you're worried about getting such conversations right (or at least, not actively getting them wrong) comes from a place of caring and is a praiseworthy personality attribute. Your response was a good one - keeping it factual is definitely the way to go.

As an aside, I have endless conversations about race with my (very) white children at home when watching films. They seem to have difficulty (or are lazy about) noticing physical differences between black characters in particular. I generally end up saying (somewhat sarcastically now, because they are 11 and 12 years old) - "No, that is in fact a DIFFERENT black person. I know, right?!" when they mix up obviously different people like the black police officer who helps John McClane in Die Hard and the black terrorist who looks nothing like him :/ I shudder to think what hurt feelings they'd cause in school (and the backlash) if they mixed people up due to their skin colour. So I think such conversations do matter.

If you haven’t already, I do think it’s worth intentionally diversifying your children’s toys/books so they’re used to seeing a range of people in all contexts. There are some lovely books which have been a great addition to our collection.

My DD used to get very excited when she saw people with dwarfism. (There’s a married couple in our village who both have dwarfism) When she was younger she said it’s because they’re grown ups but they’re little like her. It’s just a natural curiosity about anything ‘different’.

People of any race who don’t grown up in multiracial environments struggle to pick out differences in other races. It’s been studied and isn’t anyone’s fault. As the racial majority in the uk, white people should make an addition effort so they don’t do it in real life though.

@HalebiHabibti that was supposed to be a reply to you ^

I think you're overreacting to this.

You are really overthinking this. Most early years settings have flesh-tone crayons in a range of shades these days and she has probably noticed that her friend chose a brown crayon to draw herself or her family. Don’t correct her that her child is Black as this will confuse the matter - she is giving a factual comment about the friend’s skin. Equally, it will confuse her if you describe her skin as white as it isn’t, literally. It is much more likely that it is pink or peach.

For books with positive representations of characters who happen to be non-white, I recommend Nadia Shireen, especially her excellent Billy books.

I agree Itsbeginingtolookalotlikexmas. I thought our environment was v multicultural tbh but I guess it isn't as broad as I thought!