DS made racist comment at school

[ellie09]

I have a DS age 7 who has ASD and he struggles quite a bit socially.

I am utterly appalled and ashamed by what I have heard this morning. This wasn't any thing directly to me or by the teacher.

DS apparently made a comment to a girl in his class saying he "didn't want to play with her as she has brown skin". This apparently blown up in a private group chat on WhatsApp that I was not aware of. I hadn't had any communications from teachers or other parents, so I was confused.

His best friend at school is a Muslim boy and his granny is Brazilian. He has grown up around different skin colours from a baby. We have had a serious conversation today in which I have told him he must apologise to this girl tomorrow.

However, I am also angry that this has been put on a WhatsApp group before anybody has even spoken to me, I assume the teachers aren't even aware. Of course, this has caused outrage in the group chat (and rightly so!) but I can't help but feel this was wrongly handled by the other parent as this is a group of 7 year old children and issues like this can escalate very quickly.

How do I handle this moving forward? Do I request a meeting with the head teacher and make them aware of the incident etc?

I feel really sick at the thought of walking my child into school tomorrow, knowing that most will be judging based on what they have heard.

Btw, I'm not in the group chat - screenshots were sent to me by another parent.

Lots to digest here. Speaking as a teacher, albeit mostly of upper KS2, I wouldn't automatically classify this as a racist comment. To an adult it clearly is, but at 7 this is still a concept children are beginning to understand, and the ASD can't make it easier, although it isn't an excuse. I think the child's intentions need to be taken into account; and if they are picking up ideas like this home which in your case it seems not. Are they parroting phrases heard from another child?

The SM stuff is shit- parents should know better. Unfortunately not all do.

It seems like you are on the right track with making it crystal clear to your child that he needs to apologise and why he can't say these things. If appropriate I'd suggest as well as apologising he takes the lead and asks the little girl if she wants to play with him, although I would also explain to your son that she might not because of what he said, and how to deal with this appropriately. 'Ok then, see you after break.'

I'd email the headteacher- that way you can calmy explain what's happened. As a courtesy to the class teacher I would at a bare minimum copy them in too.

He didn't hurl racist abuse FFS. He's 7.

Or should I go and come down hard on my fat-shaming mysoginistic 6 year old who told me I had a big tummy and mummys can't play football.

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How about sorry for a little girl who’s had her first taste of racism at the grand old age of 7.

Yes but so can the damage of this child being ostracized. He's a seven year old, who made an offensive comment, and he needs to be shown the error he made and how he can make it right again. He needs the opportunity to apologise and be forgiven. He's a child for heavens sake.

WhatsApp parents groups can be an absolute cesspit.
I say this as a teacher of 30 plus years of experience.
There is a disturbing number of parents who've grown up with social media and so should know better, but seem incapable of refraining from posting inappropriate comments resulting in judging and pile ons.

I'm so sorry this happened to you OP. This is crap, immature reaction from other parents.
The matter could/should be dealt with amongst teachers and parents involved.

BTW, my, now adult, son has ASD. If he was asked to describe anyone at school he would do so
Literally. No holds barred. No nuance, no idea that he might be being rude. So it would be
The old teacher ( meaning an older person)
The fat one.
The one with the weird hair.
He really was just very plain speaking, absolutely no filter.
I wonder if what you son said was just descriptive.

He didn't hurl racist abuse.

I posted an update which he told me the sequence of events and how I think they came about. It started as a curious question (which shouldn't have even been asked - but I have told him this). Then a statement where he said he doesn't like brown skin, which is self projecting as he was self conscious and a bit distressed that he was tanning in the sun over the summer and didn't like this change.

It's just been a huge misunderstanding.

Albeit, I have now had a gentle but firm chat with him to let him know that skin colour is not an appropriate topic of conversation at school with his friends.

I’m sorry, but you don’t have a clue. Zero comparison. I say this as someone who is brown and whose child has also said similar. Although these comments did make me chuckle, they are really not the same, believe me.

That all said, this is a young autistic child who is clearly saying things without even knowing what he is saying. He is an autistic child. He tans easily and doesn’t like it.

I imagine it is bloody hard being the parent of an autistic child, and I feel for the op. This is a lot to navigate, but she is taking it very seriously, so I think it will all come out well. Good luck OP!

I agree, your son hasn't given you the full side of the story. My son is like this he will shutdown if he thinks he's getting told off even if he has not done any wrong. From my understanding of 7 year olds they usually run off and tell a teacher, if this was the case I'm sure the teacher would have told you about the incident if it was serious and racist comments would be treated as so. Op you don't know what really happened so yes speak to his teacher on Monday. Establish the facts first and go from there. If he has said it then you deal with it. Kids do say hurtful things, how else can they learn without making mistakes. If these parents want to judge a 7yr old asd child they are arseholes op. Who cares about what they think, you know your son! The mere fact they are on a school WhatsApp group makes them very sad in my eyes but that's just my opinion. It will all blow over and they will find something else to gossip about next week I'm sure.

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He might not have meant to, but that's how the little girl would have felt in that situation.

That's presumably not how you felt when your 6 year old said that, but hopefully you had a serious talk with her about not making comments about other people's bodies and have done some educating around gender roles and stereotypes, because you know that that's not OK for her to go around saying and don't want her to do that to someone else, who might be very hurt.

Her mother doesn't have to just hush up about that to avoid upsetting the white people in the situation. I'd also have been mortified if this had been my child. It sounds like the best solution is to have the two parents discuss this with the Head to mediate.

Whilst the OP can explain that her child being autistic might have influenced the situation, the worst thing she can do is make it all about how the other mother shouldn't have shared the incident with anyone else.

Given your son is autistic, other kids rile him up to the point of meltdown, and now parents are discussing him in Whatsapp groups, I think you need to involve the school and get mediation in place. Whatever the story is, it needs to be set straight between all parties. And, after it's set straight, you've got to come out swinging against your son being teased because it's only going to get worse/more subtle. My son really struggled in Y5 and 6. Other kids would call him a r*tard and do things like try to get him to say the n word. Which he never did because I had robust conversations from an early age about racism. My point is, if there are manipulative people around your son, he's likely to come off looking worse than others because autism reduces his social standing - and if he cries and can't get his story out, most people will jump to the wrong/worst conclusion. Tbh, I would be looking hard at whether you want to continue sending him to that particular school. I wound up electively home educating my son for a year.

Just to address one more thing regarding skin colour not being mentioned to white kids - not my experience. "Cracker" "Honky" "White fucker" were all terms thrown at me in school. There's nuance to it, of course, because white skin is far less othering, given things like media portrayal, etc. But I really need to mention intersectionality here because of autism. Autistic kids are at a disadvantage when it comes to communication, and while white privilege still applies, it needs to be adjusted for autism as a disability.

My dd is ND and when she was about 5, we were in the shop looking at dolls. I was mortified when she said out loud "I don't like that one, it's got brown skin". Her thinking is quite rigid, and at that age she just saw something that looked 'different' to the other dolls on the shelf and in her eyes (she has OCD traits) different was bad. She was very similar if we saw someone in a wheelchair or with an arm or leg missing. With ND kids, who are often also very direct and forthright (have no filter) in expressing their views, you have to take a lot more time and energy to explain things in a way they understand, and teach them how to respond more appropriately. With my ds, the understanding and connections were made much more easily, we experienced no problems of the sort and he's grown up (now 14) always calling out racism when he sees and hears it, is very challenging and forceful about it (which I'm very proud of). With dd, she learns through social stories, and experience, you can't just say "people come in all sorts of shapes, sizes and colours", she needs to experience personal connection in some way. I can't really explain it properly without sounding like I'm 'part of the problem' and making excuses. But she's now nearly 8 and the extra effort we've put in has paid off - she's become much more socially skilled and understands more about the impact of her words and actions on others and adjusts accordingly. She'd actually now be very upset at the thought of hurting someone else's feelings and is very sensitive to others.

What I'm saying is, 7 is very young anyway, and with an autistic child, their social and emotional understanding is often even younger. It absolutely needs addressing, but it needs addressing sensitively in order to be effective. An open and honest, calm conversation with them, in which they feel safe to explain how they feel without judgement is often best. You can challenge their thinking far better by approaching it this way than reading the riot act.

The headteacher at grandchildren school called in the admin of one WhatsApp group and said it's your group, you cannot dodge the responsibility of unpleasant posts and parents. That shook them up

No I didn't have a serious talk, because my 6yo is also ASD and talking about it directly just makes things worse. We educate her in other ways. Of course it's not a nice thing to say but kids can get fixated on things that you wouldn't expect and they don't mean it badly. It's not abuse, it's curiosity and limited understanding of the world and social interactions.
If she had called someone with anorexia fat then that would have a very different impact than calling me fat. But to my DD it's the same thing, she said exactly the same thing, she wouldn't understand why it's different.

The little girls mum has every right to be upset about her little girl being upset, but she was massively in the wrong to bring it up with other parents so publicly.

Well possibly not though that really depends how accurate their child’s report of what happened is I guess.

Sorry op, you should've been told first, imagine a bunch of adults gossiping about a 7 year old child, even worse that he asd, Anyway, he just needs a quick lesson on empathy and inclusion. This is especially important for him.

You need to check the facts carefully. A boy at a school I taught in thought it was a fun game to tell a vulnerable autistic boy in the class to say rude things to people. Things like telling the boy to go up to the Yr6s and say ‘fuck off’. They were actually both autistic but had very different personalities. I would definitely speak to the teacher about it.

I'm also sensing wider problems here and it's of course wonderful that your tackling the racism issue I strongly suspect he's at nasty end of disablism and nasty comments about his sen

My dsil works uh a college and she said you don't hear many racist comments if any, in day to day life.
However there is unfortunately plenty of sniggering and rudeness towards people with sen.
And misogyny is rife with many lads liking Andrew tate.. Unfortunately how hard teachers come down depends on their own personal feelings.

Thank goodness you’ve said that, I’ve been reading the posts feeling exactly the same and thinking ‘is it only me’. The little boy is 7, he is already coping with his own problems and he’s being called racist, it’s totally out of proportion, of course he’s not racist, he made an inappropriate comment but a racist … utterly ridiculous.

When my son was 4 in reception he bit another pupil (my son is quite behind and has asd/adhd).
The parent put it all over fb and he was called a little basterd, little arse hole etc.
That us as parents was 'dragging him up' and not one of them knew anything about us or my child.
It was really upsetting and a total witch hunt to a child that is not able to defend himself.

Your child shouldn't of said what he did but that's for the school and you as parents to sort out and to work with your child in a way he understands to know it's not appropriate.

He's not racist, but he said a racist thing. That's not acceptable in school or anywhere else and it is important he learns that. It sounds like OP has addressed it with him which is good.

What sort of person sticks this on a Whatsapp group rather than going to the school about it? It's just shocking to me that they would take their child's word for it and use Whatapp to name and shame a disabled 7 year old individual.

You need to complain OP, the school will probably shut the Whatsapp group down or at least speak to the parents about it if it is not a school thing. That is not ok behaviour no matter what a 7 year old has done, if he had hit a child, kicked a teacher, had a meltdown in class, no matter what, it is not appropriate to be putting it up on social media.

It seems the story has been relayed incorrectly to the other mother and misunderstood by the child which is not surprising when your child has a condition that centres around social and language issues. Honestly parents should know better. This is just disgusting behaviour.