DD, 4 yrs, asked me today "Are you White, Mummy?"

[VeniVidiVickiQV]

I was a bit taken aback tbh.

It's not a phrase or terminology we use in our family thats for sure!

I suspect that its another thing she's picked up from pre-school. What concerns me is in what context she's learned it.

Also, I'm pretty sure I cocked up my response.

Opinions warmly welcomed please!

Oh damn

DH will be disappointed

Mind you I expect your C/Mer will be disappointed too - I bet he thought he was the only one too

ds1 started with this a bit ago. According to him, he & ds2 are 'little brown', daddy is very very darkest brownest (said in very impressed voice) and I am yellow.

Kids are weird.

Maybe it's a caribean thing DH is very chilled too

The kids love him 2 left today and he was so upset

Sorry for the hijack

i admit im stumped with this one.

as an example: when i was a child, it was considered very offensive to call someone black, it was polite to call them coloured.

now im an adult, to call someone coloured is offensive, they are black.

ds (aged 10) came back from school the other day and said he had had a conversation with a boy at school who "looked chinese". he told me he had asked the boy where he came from and the boy replied "xxxxx" (our local town). ds didn't get this but didnt pursue it.

so he asks me well why, if he looked chinese did he say he came from xxxxxx. i replied well he was probably born here i expect so that's where he comes from, maybe his mummy, daddy or both havent always lived here, or maybe they have but their mum and dad didnt. i mean, how do i explain this to him? i just ended up rambling on and on and on and not really getting anywhere for fear of somehow saying something that could be offensive to the lad if he goes back and repeats it.

Walnutshell -

My dd mentioned that a boy in nursery had a dirty face (he's coloured) to which my response was that, no, it wasn't dirty but simply that he had ancestors or relations that came from countries where people had coloured skins as it was very hot there and the pigmentation in their skin protected them more against the heat and Albert had inherited this colour skin since he was related to them.

I wondered afterwards had the child in question been white, if I would have responded in so much detail? Or simply assumed that Albert's face was dirty?

oh by the way katymac, hows that big spreadsheet going

Badly - thanks for asking

you ask for too much you see

I think I'd have just said 'because he does, silly!', nightowl. And done a 'everyone looks different, daddy's got brown eyes but has blue eyes and gone on to cite other differences in appearance including skin tone, tbh, nightowl.

I must admit I do tend to give full-ish answers where a one-word answer or none would suffice. I chased her down the road once to explain that 'a baby tree' was in fact known as a sapling .

i can see your point edam but it was clear to him the lad looked chinese and he was genuinely interested. they are taught about other cultures anyway so its surely not a bad thing if he's curious about it?

Nightowl
Do you have parents or family that live in another town, you could explain it that way i.e. you're from xxxx but i'm from yyyy and live in xxx and granny is from yyyy.
At 10 you could also try and talk to him about why families move across the world to live and the many countires where British people have "originaly" come from Germany/Scandanavia/Midlle East/Eastern Europe/Asia etc. etc.)

Many years ago our eldest had a best friend at nursery whose parents were from India and my daughter was talking about colour. She was 3 or 4. She said there are people like mummy (me, white) people like her friend and people like daddy (who is white but he gets tanned in the sun). And it was true I am very very white with brown spots (freckles) and her father tans. All children notice differences between them and others and it's a gradual process the older they get as to what they notice and when.

Ds says I am yellow. And he's right. Daddy is whitey pink.
A little girl at his nursery was black and her - I think - stepfather was very white indeed. I remember ds's astonishment and excitement at noticing that 'Emily's daddy is PINK!'

I do cringe when dd says loudly (of a woman with short hair walking down the street in trousers) 'Dat's not a lady! Dat a MAN!"

My mother is convinced we adults are too keen to interpret things in line with our own concerns, concerns that just don't register with small children or reflect their perception. She always relates the story of my sister trying to invite a child to her birthday party.

Sister was going to be five. Mother worked so didn't know all her friends at school by name, or their mothers. So she turned up at the school gates to hand out invites. Sister had described all the children she wanted. But my mother couldn't spot one of the potential guests. Sister had described this child down to the ribbons in her hair. Mother asked her for more info, sister got very cross as small children do when adults are being dense and said, look, she's got short white socks and shiny black shoes, etc. etc.

Penny finally dropped when my mother realised the one fact that my sister hadn't mentioned was that this girl was black. Something that was so noticeable to my mother just didn't register as at all important to a five year old and certainly not as important as ribbons or shoes. Even though there were very few non-white children at this school.

Agree with Edam's mother.

dd (3) told me today she was 'pink', after carefully staring at her arm. This in the context of her watching something on Nick Junior and talking about people in America, some of whom, according to dd, were 'brown'.

Its the first time she's talked about different coloured skin at all - so we had a chat about people at her pre-school, listing all the different shades we could think of. I asked her who she could think of with dark brown skin (I was thinking of her favourite teacher) and she couldn't think of any: she just doesn't notice. Her teacher is not the lady with brown skin, she's the lady who teaches her lovely songs and how to dance, the lady with the shiny purple top, or the lady she wants to invite to her birthday party.

My adult ds2's best friend is of Caribbean/Scots descent and is the adopted child of a white couple with three children of their own. The boys met when they were four.

Ds2 came home from school one day when he was about 7yo, bursting to tell me something exciting about M. Uhu, I thought, time for some explanations about why M was black and siblings white. But no, what ds2 wanted to tell me was that M was adopted . Ds2 had had no idea his best friend was adopted because no one had ever told him! He simply didn't see M's colour, M was M and that's all there was to it and they're still best friends, over 20yrs on.

LOL had to laugh at this. My DS is the only white child in his class once playing around with him his uncle said well if i do come to your school trip how well I know you? Ds replied tut uncle m I am the only one with blue eyes..

however when he was about 2 yrs old he made me cringe on a bus when at the top of his voice he stated "look mummy that lady is chocolate" I went red the woman winked at me and him and said "yep but you can't eat me" lol

My dd refuses to accept that she's white, insists that she's 'blonde coloured'