Have a concern with nearly 5 years old dd. We have recently moved from an almost exclusively white enclave of the country to an area that's more ethnically diverse. DD is worrying the pants off me by saying she doesn't like people with brown/black skin or curly (ie afro) hair because they're "scary".
Obviously I want to nip this one smartly and don't know whether the best strategy is to not make a big issue of it, for all the reasons that making a deal out of something doesn't generally work well, OR, make a big fuss to show that it's unacceptable. I certainly don't want any of this madness coming out at school where, oddly, I thought she'd actually made friends with some children of Indian parents.
The ridiculous thing is that she has a black auntie and mixed race cousins, so colour really shouldn't matter to her, but she says they're scary too. The cousins are big boys and live in the part of the country we've just moved from, so lots of extra contact with them isn't an option. It's so sad apart from anything as the aforementioned auntie doesn't have daughters of her own and couldn't dote on mine more.
Anyone dealt with anything similar?