5 year old made inadvertently racist remark.

[carameldecaflatte]

My almost 5 year old son was looking at a book and saw a picture of a black boy and said, "I call him poo face" and when I asked him why, he said, "because his face is exactly the colour of poo". I was shocked to say the least and I would be utterly mortified if he said this in public!

I know that at 5 he isn't racist. We do live in a part of the uk which is mostly white so he doesn't see many black or brown faces (in his reception year - 3 classes of 30 children there are 97 white children).

Any advice? I told him that if he called anyone poo-face they would feel really sad and might be angry with him and that people come in all sorts of lovely colours. Is this enough?

Yes I think that sounds great. You could also use smarties to illustrate that everyone comes in different colours but we are all the same on the inside. TBH I think you've explained it well.

Thank you for replying Della. I love the idea of the using smarties, I'll give it a go.

That's ok. I used to be a Primary teacher and I remember doing it in assembly once.