Do your children have good friends of a different race?

[TheDullWitch]

Or are their friends mostly same as your family? David Cameron says racial communities should stop leading parallel and separate lives. But haven't we always?

you're telling me - I was only 22/23 at the time - and still looked very much like a teenager still.

i think kids see it, but dont give a monkeys about it. kids make judgements about people on their own merits. for a bit anyway. like we all bloody well should!!

kids generally take after the example of the most influential adults in their life.

Even more LOL then! FWIW my 'baby' sister used to find it very amusing to call me mummy when we were out in public. I'm 14 years older than her so was about 16 when she decided this was a funny game to play. Bad enough when it was just the two of us, but when I went out with my dad and my sister you should have seen the looks we got ? dad, 39, me, 16, sister, 2...

ha! was mistaken for my dads girlfriend (or wife) when i was about 16. my bro and sis were 13 and 10 respectively, and i looked about 12 myself. i assume they thought i was a new Step-mummy, but was v strange nonetheless!

was a waiter in a resaturant who said it

DD1 once said "daddy" to....

....Saddam Hussein on the telly.

The area I live in is fairly white, middle class for the most part. However, there are quite a few families on our street of Pakistani descent. What I have noticed is that the children seem to only socialise with children from the extended family - never see them having friends around to play (from any race). Don't know if this is commonplace? The families are friendly enough on a superficial level but don't seem to want to encourage anything deeper.

My ds has 2 couisins who are mixed race - their Mum is Iranian. He started school last month and made a beeline for a mixed race boy who's Father is an Arab. They are now the best of friends.

He went to nursery with a black girl whom he adored called Samantha, when he started school there are 2 black girls in his class and he exclaimes 'Oh look Mummy there are 2 Samantha's in my class!'

In DD's class there is an Asian girl, a black Girl and a Chinese/American girl. Have had the latter two rouund to play eithe rhere or at local park. DD hasn't mentioned the first girl much.

I remember in primary school one of my best friends was an Asian girl - Hetal she was called.

But TBh with DD I don't really think of it like that. She just invited round, or goes to play with, the girls she likes most - colour, etc haven't really ever come into it.

Well, only time it did was when she was at nursery. For DD's party when at nursery - two of her friends were muslim so had to make sure theyr food boxes didn't have ham in. And at nursery there were two non-English speaking children - French and Spanish - so made sure DD could say hello to them fine.

Ditto MI (1.47.58pm)

Also.... yes they do! I love the fact that they do and in fact my DD1 goes to a senior school where the colour mix is fab! No one colour is dominant. Not many girls with green and purple spots though. I find that rather sad!

When I first read this title I thought, "No, not really" as most of the DDs' friends are white. It took me a few minutes to turn this on its head and think "yes, almost entirely" because of course racially the DDs are SE Asian (adopted). But I think think my first reaction wasn't just being Friday-afternoon-stupid; it is probably the right one as mixing across communities seems to me to be less about skin colour and more about culture. So the DDs are racially Asian, but they are culturally white.

One of DD1's school friends is Indian racially and, at least in part, culturally. The DDs have a couple of friends also adopted from SE Asia but they are within white families and somehow I don't feel that they 'count' either.

well my children are mixed and have been to school in 4 different countries, so the answer to the original question is yes!

My DS's school is a very mixed race school, so he has friends from lots of different back grounds, some of which speak little or no English, and they all get on with no problems. I wasn't sure if DS had even noticed that some of his friends were a different colour to him, but he did ask me a few weeks ago why some people had brown skin. He has never heard (well not whilst in my earshot) anything to make him think that different races/nationalities/colours/anything is anything to give a seconds thought to.

However, without trying to rile anyone, despite trying to break the mould as it were, I do find that the parents stick to their own little groups which do always seem to be groups of colour. And in fact on a sheer politeness scale, the children are better at saying hello or excuse me, or thank you or whatever than the parents!

My kids do play with Asian and black kids at school - they go to an international school so by its very definition, there is a cultural and racial mix but I must admit that their closest friends are all middle class and white, coming from very similar backgrounds to our family. There is a strong sense of identity in our community and whilst the kids do mix in school and there is no racial tension, the Indian parents socialise with other Indian families, the French with other French speakers, Japanese the same etc etc. Even the Brits and the Americans have their own friendship groups, although less pronounced as the common language is the same. I guess its a comfort zone.

We live in an area which is predominantly white and it is quite unusual to see people of a different ethnicity. DS2 has 2 best friends. One is white and the other is of Indian descent (his father was born here but his mother came here when she married, speaking no English). His worst enemy at school is of possibly Middle Eastern origin. I think he may be Muslim but his mother wears western style clothes so it's difficult to tell. She did try to accuse DS2 of being racist because he and her son do not get on, but, when I pointed out that one of his best friends was the same colour as her son, it rather scuppered her argument.

So I think DS2 treats all children alike regardless of the colour of their skin.

DS3 has a little black girl in his class and I think he plays with her occasionally, as he plays with the other girls - but, being a boy, he tends to play with the other boys.

I'm not aware that DS1 has any boys in his form that are not white and I don't think there were any in his year throughout primary.

I should add that DS2's friend's younger sister will be 5 soon and she has specifically asked DS3 to go to her party (DS3 is 8.5 yo). DS2 is going too to help run it with his friend.