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 ?

I don't agree with this it's normal development for children to recognise and identify what is different about themselves and each other. Being in a diverse nursery or school simplify amplifies this earlier than used to.

It doesn't mean 'I don't see race' which is proven to be untrue.

It means 'l acknowledge race as a difference between us' as a pre curser to learning that we shouldnt treat people differently as a result of that difference, which at nursery level isn't age appropriate yet.

I talk to my 3yo often about how everyone looks different and how all bodies are good bodies. Some books I like that show bodily diversity (but aren’t all necessarily about bodily diversity) are:

We’re different we’re the same
Our little kitchen
Sulwe
Hair Love
perfectly imperfect Mira
what happened to you?
These hands

We have conversations about skin colour in our home, normalising it. I'm white and my husband is black and kids mixed. They say I'm pink (say what you see!) and use pink when drawing me and brown when drawing them. Kids aren't racist so don't worry about observations like that

I reckon you are overthinking this.

My son was about 7 when George Floyd was murdered and I remember him asking about it as he'd seen it on the news. He couldn't work out what I meant when I referred to him as black. I then told him like 'XXX' in his class. His response then was 'what do you mean XXX is black ' the concept was fully lost on him and even now at almost 11 he really doesn't get the difference. We are all people! I'm more than happy for him to grow up this way and have no issue or discomfort with it.

You could also ask using another identifier e.g 'do you mean the girl with pink wellies / Frozen rucksack'?

I wouldn't think anything much about it. My two were about that age when they first asked/commented on skin colour.

When I was a new teacher, one of my first reception classes had this come up. I was chit-chatting with a small group, and one of the white children asked "Why is Emmanuel brown?" I explained that at some point his family lived in a place that was much hotter, and darker skin does a better job at protecting you from the sun than lighter skin.
The assembled group silently took in this nugget of information, and it was never mentioned again.

This is a dreadful "explanation" as the children will infer all brown people are recent immigrants from hot countries. Black and brown people have been here for generations now.

Young dc will usually pick up on using descriptive terms such as brown or peach, I can’t see that they should be told not to say what they’re seeing, the world is at interesting and learning stage including what people are like

I’m not sure how else they can talk about it innocently

Maybe your DD and her friend had been talking to each other about their skin colours which is why she’s mentioned her friend being brown but not the other children. I think what you said was fine and you don’t need to make an issue out of this, she’s just stating what she’s seen.

Colourblindness isn’t helpful and black people don’t want you to pretend you can’t see their skin colour. It’s something that makes us all different, much like hair or eye colour or anything else. At four, children have no concept of racism so your DD is merely pointing out a fact. Her friend does have brown skin and it isn’t offensive to say this, much like it isn’t offensive to say she has dark hair or eyes.

This^

Thank you

You're thinking waaaay too deep about the understanding level of 4yos.

But there's always someone ready to tell you how wrong you are. ;)