[adoptnky]

Alex first verbalized his awareness of his different skin color back in March. We were flying to Florida to visit my parents. Alex and I were sitting beside a Caucasian man who was traveling with his African American girlfriend and their 6 week old baby girl. At one point, the guy was holding the baby in line to change her diaper. Alex was looking at her and then rubbed his face and said, "Mommy, she has brown skin like me!"

I was surprised to hear him say it - but it seemed to be on track with articles I've read about awareness at his age. And he seemed to be very excited that he noticed it and that he saw a white person with a brown baby.

Fast forward to last week. Alex was commenting on his skin (brown) and mine (white) and that they were different. Here's how the rest of our conversation went.

Me - Alex, mommy really likes your brown skin
Alex - <grinning>
Me - Alex, do you like being brown? (I couldn't help it - I was so curious!)
Alex - No - I don't like my being brown
Me - (kind of shocked) Do you wish you were a different color?
Alex - YES!
Me - (now getting very worried about how I was going to handle this) Honey - what color do you want to be?
Alex - I want to be Pink like Courtney's favorite color or PURPLE! I LOVE purple, purple is my favorite color.

Sometimes it's nice to deal with a 3 year old mind.

Kim

[mommytoEli]

.....cute

[SKL]

According to my intelligence sources, my younger daughter's name is Purple [Lastname], her sister is Pink L., and I am Green L. One of their aunties (the fairest person I know) has been declared to be Black L.

My kids DO know their colors very well. But they love to pretend! (Purple is VERY big with a certain someone, who even asked for purple tickles today.)

They do know they are brown. I asked them once what color I was, and the "serious" answer was "pink." Which makes more sense to me than "white."

My girls don't seem to care about skin color, but once when I remarked that something was black & white "just like your beautiful eyes," my daughter smiled, looked into my eyes, and said, surprised, "your eyes are blue and pink."