I was taking my dd home with another girl from school and they were playing with a school friend and his sister. All of a sudden a fight erupted and when I asked what was going on, their school friend explained that dd´s friend had called him a racist name. It then came out that dd had copied the friend and had also called him the racist name. The boy´s slightly older sister had given the two girls a talking to. I then explained to the two girls that that was completely unacceptable, that I was really shocked and this was a terrible thing to say. I made the girls apologise. I told the boy that I would spend some more time explaining to the girls at home how wrong it was to make sure that they understood it must never happen again. The boy (who I know quite well) was happy with this. When we got home, we had a big talk about never teasing other children because they are different from you. We talked about ways in which we are all different. I felt that they weren´t realising how bad it was. In the end I said to them that black people have been killed or treated very badly by white people because of the colour of their skin and we have to fight to make sure no one suffers because of the colour of their skin or their religion or where they come from - and that that includes suffering because of teasing or being called names. I told them that if they ever hear anyone else saying something like that, they must take the side of the child being teased and do anything and everything they can think of to stop it.
So what should I do next?
I have always made sure that we have lots of books at home about different cultures (the Unicef Children from around the world book, "My Caribbean Family History" from Heinemann etc etc etc). At school the teacher has discussed where all the parents come from because it´s quite an international school and everyone´s parents come from somewhere else and a lot of the children have lived in other countries (we live outside the UK so I´m an immigrant here).
I would appreciate any tips as to what to say to my daughter now to make sure that nothing like this ever happens again.
I would also appreciate any background tips to make sure that she grows up able to recognise her own prejudices and work against them.
I would also appreciate criticism of how I´ve acted up to now - how should I have acted?