Skin color and little kids

[krebscout]

We recently moved into an almost entirely black neighborhood, and of course my three-year-old notices differences and talks about them, including saying things like, "that brown woman" and "when I grow up to be brown," in front of our neighbors. Of course he's just observing things around him and he couldn't be more innocent, but it embarrasses us as his parents, and I'm afraid of what our embarrassment will teach him. We've told him that we don't talk about people's colors (or their bellies...he likes to point out big bellies that might have babies in them), but that doesn't stop him; it usually ends up being, "That brown lady...oh, we don't talk about people's colors."

Is this an okay approach? I feel like an outside source puncturing his purity, and I feel very strongly about not teaching my kids to feel shame but rather respect for things that ought to be respected. Should I just let my kids talk about it? Or if I just want to say, "we'll talk about this later, not in front of this person," how do I do that without making it a terribly awkward situation?

[Fredjikrang]

I don't really have any advice, but I wanted to say that I really wish the US was more like the DR in this regard. There, you can say that someone is brown, black, white, fat, thin, whatever, and no one gets offended. You are just describing how they are.

Well, I guess I do have a little bit of advice. How do the people that he says these things in front of react to it? If they seem fine with it, I wouldn't make a big deal of it. If you make a big deal of it then it could seem like skin color is "taboo" or important in some way.

[Whistler]

I babysat a half-black boy and he frequently referred to himself as brown. So I think it's okay with other kids, but you might want to explain that it's more polite to point people out by their shirt color, for whatever reason.

[Katya]

Someone more ethnically aware than I am is welcome to come in and correct me, but I don't necessarily see what the issue is with a three-year-old pointing out that his neighbors have brown skin. If I was in that situation (because I am a perfect parent in my head), I might be very straightforward and acknowledge that everyone looks different and, yes, some people have skin that is brown.

It's considered rude in our culture to call someone fat, so I agree with you when it comes to the big bellies, but having brown skin isn't a bad thing, so I'm uncomfortable with the idea of treating it as a taboo topic. I would probably feel different if you had just one neighbor who was black, because then you're getting into the tricky territory of singling them out for being different (although, again, it's not like the only black guy in a white neighborhood doesn't know he's black).

But, like I said, people who have actual experience with being parents or being non-white or living in ethnically diverse communities are welcome to show me the folly of my ways.

[Imogen]

Kids say all sorts of things at three that people usually just write off. My friend's daughter called me fluffy the other day because my hair is big (and oh my goodness IT WAS SO CUTE!!).

If a cute little boy called me brown, I wouldn't be upset at all. I think the best way to handle it is to do what Katya says: acknowledge that people have different skin colors, but ultimately we're all just people who have a lot of things in common. I don't know if you know these people at all, but if I saw a parent get uncomfortable about it, I'd probably kneel down the kid and tell him that myself and thank him for thinking my skin was pretty. If they don't seem offended, don't draw attention to it too much because then I think it'll make him feel badly and feel like it's taboo.

Funny story: My friend Christina has a dear friend who has gorgeous dark skin. She looks like an African queen. When her oldest son was younger, he would stroke the friend's skin and he just loved it. When Chris got pregnant, he was CONVINCED his little sister would be black because he wanted a dark dark little sister. When Niki was born, he was SO DISAPPOINTED that she was not black, and Chris had to explain to him that's not how it works.