[tonyy]

Yesterday while in line waiting for my kids to go into a moon bounce at the mall --- a girl about 7 or 8 years old asked my son who is almost 5 if my son and my daughter almost 3 are brown people or white people! I just stood their thinking "oh I cannot believe you just asked that!" I was so in shock! I know this will happen and that kids are curious, but I was still surprised. My son answered - "I don't know"...and then started jumping around happily....not even phased by the question (as I was).....I felt so sad that someone would even ask that. Again, I know it will happen, But I was so shocked and saddened. I really wanted to cry.

Have any of you encountered this? At this young age my kids don't even notice color (or if they do have never mentioned it). What do you say? What do you teach them to say?

Thanks,

[P.E.Z.]

I am very white , when I was ateenager, I laid in the sun for hours trying to get the skin color of Hayle and Loida ,( never did work , all I ever got was burnt and now have to worry about skin cancer) so when somone ask about it, I take great pride in saying "beautiful brown".
People pay a LOT of $$$$$ trying to achive the color of skin that God has blessed my 2 youngest girls with.

When we got off the plane from our pick up trip with Hayle ,
my friends daughter who was adopted from India said to her Mom
WOW ! Hayle has brown skin like me !
I think sometimes it's more an obsevation than a rude comment .

[SisterBear]

I am completely white and I am thrilled to have children with beautiful brown skin! I think if an adult asked this question, I might say, "Yes, doesn't she have beautiful brown skin!" and leave it at that. I probably wouldn't worry too much about a child asking about skin color as he/she is probably just curious and there is nothing wrong with noticing skin color. It's negative comments/reactions to the skin color that is a problem. I do know about that as I cannot tell you how many people in my life have rudely commented that "you need a tan" or "why don't you go outside" or "why are you so white".

Lana

[lmitchem]

Don't know if this will help you or not but its not usually a racial thing for kids. I kept my 2 granddaughters this summer (I'm married to a man with grown children..so I'm a granny before I ever was a mommy). They are 7 and 10. We were at the beach. They were playing with some friends that they had made. Can we go outside to play with the brown girl? I said "what?" They answered, "You know the little brown girl." I said "why are you saying that" They answered "because her skin is brown." I looked out on our porch and there stood a beautiful African American girl. They had no idea what race she was and didn't care thats just how they explained her to me. I asked them "What color are you?" Curious of what the answer would be. They said "Brown too." They are caucasians with good tans!
My nephew went through the same thing. He came up to me one day and told me he was brown (he's caucasian) and I was flesh. I asked him why are you saying Aunt Lisa is flesh. He ran and got his box of crayons and showed me his flesh colored crayon. I knew then I needed some sun!!!!

Hugs,
Lisa

[ez4me2remember]

I agree that kids are usually just curious. When my husband was a little boy he saw black people and said to his mom "Look mom...monkeys!" You can imagine how bad that sounded. I remember when my little girl saw a bald man in Wal-mart and said (very loudly) "What happened to his hair?" I am glad your son was not phased by the question though.

[acjmn4ever]

I may have a different take on this. Kids are usually just innocently curious. Us adults usually read into things. But, I would be concerned that he doesn't know what color his skin is. Or was he just too excited to take his turn on the bouncer, to answer the question. MoMo

[Gabri]

Kids just say what's on their mind. My son has given me a few embarassing moments already (he's 3), and I'm sure there are many more to come...

My nephew (7) ran up to my husband on a family vacation and said, "If you're white, how come you adopted a black kid?" My husband (a little stunned) said, "He's not black." A little while later our nephew came back and said, "I'm sorry that I said that he was black... but if you're white, how come you adopted a brown kid?"

It cracked us up.

[mgd]

When I was a kid, I had a friend who was adopted from Africa and she was darker than anyone else in our school. Mom tells me about a time when we were around 5 years old I guess. My friend, me, and both our moms were in the bathroom at McDonald's or somewhere. As Mom tells it, I was waiting a while for my friend to finish washing her hands and I said to her that no matter how long she scrubbed, the dark color wasn't going to come off. I was horrified when my Mom told me this story as an adult. Mom said my friend just laughed and we went out and played. I guess it goes to show how things like this are just matter-of-fact to kids - they don't understand the racial implications yet.

[LostMangoInParis]

Yes and with so many tanned people around and possibly in her family maybe she thought your daughter was white but had been in the sun a lot.

Also whilst one is making judgments one needs to be careful. My nephew who suffers from Asperger's Syndrome would often say things like, "Why is that person so fat/tall/thin" often to the horror of the person concerned. Especially as he is like any other child of his age physically speaking. It was too hard to explain to a stranger that his medical condition brought about his difficulty in knowing what to say or not say when facing an unusual event.
Alex

[2bASingleMom]

kids are usually untouched by racial bias - they just call them like they see them. My cousin and his wife (white - extremely fair skinned) adopted two girls (black - very dark skin) domestically. My 4 yr old niece ask my sister (her mom) if the two girls parents were at the family party that they were just leaving. She said "yes, you know who they are". And my niece looked confused saying "yeah, but...they don't look like <the two girls>". Curious, my sister asked 'what do you mean?'. My niece said "well <the mom and dad> don't have curly hair."

What a hoot!

[TerriBB]

There was a wonderful episode of Sesame Street that has always in been in the back of my head. One of the monsters was talking to several kids and the little one with blonde hair and blue eyes was considered pink! (As a person who grew up with a "flesh" colored crayon in the box of 64 )

Our son refers to people by the color of their hair or hat...which was quite confusing the first couple of times! His daycare has quite a variety of skin tones...he has a friends who are asian/dutch...asian/african decent...2 very fair German decent...Guatemalan...very dark South African...India/Irish. They are quite a beautiful mix of kids!!

Right now they are described as what they like "power ranger people", "train people" or "princess people"!

[WVUMom418]

I agree with the others, kids are just curious. I have an uncle who has polo, as long as I've been alive he's been a wheelchair. In a way I feel blessed to have been raised with someone like this because I never felt it was out of the ordinary. I remember one time my uncle saying he loved kids because they would just come out and ask why was he in a wheelchair or what was wrong versus adults who go out of their way to pretend not to be staring.

I have a 3 year old bio daughter and Mia is 1 1/2 and we have made it a point to always say how beautiful Mia's brown skin is. We have a book of colors and every time I get to the color brown Mia points to her arm. We also always discuss the color differences in our eyes. My 3 year old and my husband have blue eyes, Mia and I have brown eyes. We want the kids to know that all colors are beautiful.

[lisam00]

Our very good friends have a bio daughter that is verrry white and a domestically adopted daughter who is AA and verrrrry dark.

When we adopted Ava, the 5 year old said "wow, she's brown like my sister. She then studied her a little more and said "well, she's just kinda brown". For about 4 months, she would introduce Ava to everyone by saying "this is my new friend Ava and she's kinda brown". People had no idea what to say! It was cute.

God bless,
Lisa

[crathke]

About a year ago, DH and I were in the car with DS#2 (from Guat), who asked "Daddy, why is my skin brown and your skin isn't?"

DH told him that God made him brown and made the rest of the family "not brown".

DS#2 thought that over for a moment and then declared, "Well, I like mine better!"

And it hasn't come up since.

[romee_1101]

How I wish I had brown skin, but I have white, freckly pasty stuff - sigh. However, my brother was blessed with this great tan (long eyelashes, curly hair...but I digress).

Well, his six year old son takes after his mom (also fair with freckles) and just the other day he asked his daddy "Will I be brown like you when I grow up?"

I doubt children so young really understand the negative connotations of such a question. They are just curious.

Lesley