DD aged 3 recognising different skin colour

[madamy]

Hi, am new to this board so bear with me!! I am white and my DH is from St Helena (mid atlantic, british colony, dark asian type skin colour - hope that's ok to say!) and we have 2 DDs - aged 3 and 11mths. DD#1 is quite fair skinned and DD#2 is darker.
Recently DD1 has started pointing at people on TV and saying they are 'chocolate'. Naturally, this has filled me with complete horror and I don't quite know how to address it.
So far I've said that chocolate is a food to eat and we don't use the word about people - instead say brown. This kind of registers for a day or so!
I guess what I'm after is any tips for dealing with her now that she is recognising skin colour and how she can deal with any comments about her/DH etc. She goes to private nursery 2 days a week, and I've mentioned it to them too.
Angela

I don't really know, except that I am sure your dd is just saying what she sees at this age, with no prejudice, so maybe it isn't that horrific. Maybe talk about how people are different - ie some have blonde hair and some have red or brown or black, that people have different eye colour etc, but keep it all quite low key and easy. I remember my own son (white) being fascinated by a black girl at his nursery having a very white stepfather (very blond and fair) and saying in amazement, 'Sophie's daddy is all pink!"

I think my dds were about this age when they first noticed that my best friend (black Zambian)and her sons (mixed race) had brown skin. I just answered every time, and there were many , that people come in all shapes, sizes and colours of skin and after a while they just stopped mentioning it. dd2 did yearn for skin like "Auntie M" for a while because she liked it better than her own!

My son is 8,and has made friends with a new boy in our street,the boy is from africa and very very dark skinned,my son informed me his new friend is japanese,i dont know where he got that from, so i just said oh is he!! wasnt sure what to say,he then informed me he can speak three languages,english his mothers language ,and japanese !!

My nephews are mixed race (white British and black British), and once when we were sitting next to each other with our arms on the table my youngest nephew (who was 4 at the time) sighed and stroked my arm and said "I wish I was pink". I just said I thought he was just perfect as he was, but I was really sad, and cornered my SIL for a rant about the evils of internalized racism etc. She agreed that stuff is v bad, but pointed out that earlier in the day he'd been telling a Chinese man in the supermarket that he wanted to be Chinese when he grew up.

When he was a bit older he explained to me that he's black because his daddy's family came from Africa originally, and their black skin works better in the sun. He seems quite happy with that.

The sun explanation and where some familes originated from that pinkyred mentioned is a good one. I always planned to say something similar when I am asked for explanations some day. Same applies for disabilties, I have thought about that as well as I really don't want my child to ever believe that he is superior to another because of something like race etc.

When we moved back from Asia our son was at a stage he kept telling everyone how he was brown and Singaporean It was cute, but I told him that he was English because he had been born in a place called England and caucasian and this means the colour you are (which is pink to him) Didn't get into the term of white because he thinks pink and don't want to complicate things.

I would also agree with another post, your little one isn't being nasty by referring to people as chocolate.. it makes sense, they say what they see.

Madamy,no problem with noticing differences (it's what makes people interesting!)
Just a case of them learning appropriate terminology.

St Helena! Wow!
Have you been there?
Where did you meet your dh?

My father was offered a job there but couldn't take it up for some reason.We all gotvery excited though,and read a lot about it.

Hey, Journey. You're not the same journeyx from the expatsingapore board are you?

Slightly different angle on things.My children are mixed race white Bagladeshi. DD3 is the darkest and she is 4. This year at nursery she started to comment about how blonde and fair skinned the other girls were ( and they all have very blonde/white hair and very pale skins). She was upset because she wanted to be the same as them and felt the odd one out. It took a while to have her accept that she should be proud of her colouring.
I was suprised that she was aware of differences in herself at such a young age. I'm glad to say that now she is happy with her gorgeous honey -coloured skin and big brown eyes!

oldnewmummy. No, I am not the same Journeyx from the expatsingapore board, recognise that Post name though.
Was registered as something else.
Journey2.. picked as it's just one big journey too who knows where and for how long!
Are you still out there, or got a slight tendency to check out the flying insult threads that occur once in awhile now you are not there any more.

Hi Journey 2

Yeah, I'm still out here, and the expatsingapore board is just as argumentative as ever, and the BM still deletes any useful references. However, if I don't like it, I know where Changi airport is ......

oldnewmummy - Laughing a lot over the Changi airport remark
At the end of the month I'm accompanying my husband on his work trip back there, so this time have a suitcase laden with UK goodies (wish lists) for all my British friends.
Funny what you miss!

Kittywits, tell your daughter that she has a built in tan so wehn she is older she will not have to waste money on fake tan lotions like her classmates will do when they are older.

Lol!

madamy, my dd has recently said the exact same thing - pointing out a ladies skin she said, "that lady looks like yummy chocolate"
She has since said it about some black dolly's we have also.

Each time i have followed up with "yes we all have different skin colours don't we"

I am not sure whether i need to differentiate between black and white - i kind of like the fact that 'we are all different' is enough for dd rather than distinguishing between two races as our community is far more than just two! But i do wonder how to steer away from using chocolate as a word to describe someone.

Would people be offended if a child said something like that to their face?

I think children are just inquisitive about such matters and as long as they know racism is wrong and it is just questions it doesnt really matter. Our childminder is black (we are white) and ds did comment that the childminder was black (which made me cringe a bit) but he hasnt said anything since. I think it was mainly because he is in awe of most black sportsmen, like sol cambell for instance

If you kids are dark tell them it is because their mom/Dad is descended from whatever country and that it is a beautiful thing. Chocolate does not offend me, sometimes use it myself to describe myself and my son at home, we look like spaniards, always used to call him my chocolate baby, with chocolate button eyes (maybe im odd) Always made him proud and explained it from a young age as my hispanic Mother was in denial-thought her and my dad had produced a white daughter and told herself and me I was white and I am not, am brown with black hair and brown eyes so you can imagine the shock I got when we moved back to scotland in the 80s and everyone treated me differently and gave me racist abuse at school when i never had really realised I was that different,
to avoid my son getting the same shock from a young age he has been told he is a quarter spanish but mainly scottish but came out brown like me and granny and should be proud as Spain and latin america has an amazing history and has great artists and thinkers and writers and a rich culture and that being Scottish is important too, I was not taught any spanish but have since learned a lot and use as much as I can with Ds, he also met all his spanish family and I point out famous latin people on tv to instill a sense of pride, as obviously he suffers from racism from time to time and has sometimes wished he was white like his dad , so 'people will be nice to him' All you can do is be truthful, explain things and make them proud of who they are

We live in a pretty racially mixed area and so when we go to playgroups or school the children and parents/carers are all different colours.
I too have had comments/questions from my children and I have answered similarly to others here, that there are lots of different coloured skin just like there are different hair and eye colours. It seemed to do the trick after the first few times

DS2 spent out entire time on holiday saying "look there's another daddy"........and then squealing in delight when he "saw another mummy".

We were in Zimbabwe and 99.99% of the people we saw were black (same as DH) while we only saw a tiny majority of white people (and an even smaller number of white women) LOL.

HRHQueenOfQuote thats pretty amusing, is good to go where they can see lots of people who look like them and the family and see that it is normal to have all different types of people , not rare. Taking my ds to mexico and belize ot meet his multiracial fmaily was the best thing I could have done for him and his self esteem

DS1 was just amazed that there were so many black people that we visited (all but one of the people we visited were black - and that one person was an old colleague of mine). I'm the only white person in DH's family (so easily remembered and stand out well on the photos' LOL).

the same with my ds he was amazed that the world is not all like in scotland

When my son was younger, he described his dad a banana coloured and me as brown. I asked him what colour he was. He said Banana coloured with a bit of brown. And he pointed to a small place on his rounded preschooler arm to indicate the bit of brown (prehaps a freckle, but more likely a flight of imagination).