My oldest did when he was about 4. Such innocent questions about why the color of his skin was different than the boy around the corner.
I found a book at the library called “All the Colors We Are.” It explained why people who’s ancestors are from certain areas of the world have more melanin in their skin than others.
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My son is not race obsessed or racist. In fact he worries about people being left out and always has. He is curious, observant, introspective and an old soul. He has asked me many a difficult question that I have had to struggle through answering. He means well. He is a good kid. He asks curious questions about classmates with disabilities and physical deformities as well. Like his mother he has a zest for learning. He won an award for empathy at school 2 years in a row and I am so proud.
Have your children ever asked questions about skin color?
Where I grew up I had a group of about ten of us Asian black Mexican white but as we got older every body went their separate ways most joined their gang and became enemies even 2 of my good childhood friends beat up another one of our good childhood friends gave him bad brain damage for life and started a bad war between their gangs that still is a volatile subject that you don’t talk about due to fear of jumping it off again a handful of my good childhood friends died because of it. It’s hard to beat racism when in some neighborhoods you almost have to join a gang in my day you pretty much had to and the gangs were basically all blacks joined this gang all Samoans joined that gang all Mexicans it was the neighborhood they grew up in or even the street us white kids had it rough which made me hate but in my mid twenties I started to see how misguided that hate was and could see the mistakes I made. I wish I knew the answer to fix it but definitely teaching our kids to understand where and how it started and to teach them that we’re all the same we bleed red we cry tears and we love our families and we should all give every man woman and child the same respect we want for ourselves and learn to accept our differences
First of all, I gotta say your son is very smart. Most kids do notice ethnic differences, but they never really point them out. He's asking questions out of curiosity because he wants to learn. I was told that I was that way as a child, but I was the Black kid lol. I think at this point it's your responsibility to educate him about such issues at a very young age so he can learn about what's going on in society from home, rather than what he sees on the media. The future is bright.
Thank you so much for saying this. He is indeed intelligent. His best friend in 4th grade is black. I think they may live in isolated innocent bliss at his elementary. His best friend in 4th grade is black. Also, my sweet child told me he thought Martin Luther King eradicated racism. I sadly had to burst that bubble. My kind-hearted gentle-souled child cried.
I live in an extremely racist area. Skin color has been very serious here. I made a post on my previous account before i closed it talkin about it. Where a white friend's mother told her she can't be friends with me because black people are the devil.
I remember walking in the store when i was like 7 and a white boy like 5 said mom look "it's one of them n*gg**s.
She was trying to hush him saying we don't use that word outside the house.
We got a couple young white kids at daycare who says things that parents don't want getting out the house.
Kid: Are you lazy?
Me: no I'm not.
Kid: my daddy says black people are lazy?
Me: what?
Kid: he said black are too lazy to work.
Me: this daycare is full of black people working.
Kid: it is?
Me: yes.
I got a million stories of little kids bringing race related questions that their racist parents teach them.
@shamiah02 that is really sick and twisted. My son was just honestly curious. He is very observant and introspective and asks a lot of questions that are hard to answer. But he means well. His best friend in his 4th grade class is black. 🤷🏻♀️
Oh my answer has nothing to do with your kid. He was raised by you. Racism is taught, so I know he was just curious. Because i know you are as far from racist as it gets
I think it’s a matter of curiosity. There’s no harm when it comes from the innocence of children that’s why it’s our job to explain to them what diversity is and means in a respectful way so that they are accepting of all people/cultures and prevent racism. ❤️
Precisely! I 100% agree. Thank you for saying this. I honestly taken aback by all the people on here saying my child is obsessed with race. He is not, he is observant, curious and inquisitive.
That would be quite a feat, since I don't have any (although traveling back in time specifically to ask me awkward questions DOES sound the kind of thing my theoretical kids would do- "Didn't I tell you never to play with the time machine?" "Not yet!"). But I do have an amusing related story.
My parents were both born in 1955, and saw the race-related stupidities of the sixties firsthand. One day, a few years before I was born, something came up in conversation, and mom decided to talk my siblings about race. She told them that you should always treat everyone the same, no matter their skin color. They thought about this for a second, and then my brother asked "What if I'm running a drug store [you can tell how long ago it was because they were still called that], and a black and a white person come in and both ask me what kind of sunscreen they need?". And mom said "Um...". And then my sister piped up "And what if I'm running a clothes store and a black and a white person come in and ask what looks best on them?". Mom clarified that it was probably okay if it was something DIRECTLY related to skin color, but always used the story afterwards of evidence. Not of some kind of racism being inherent to humanity, but of why you should think twice before wishing for smart kids.
No, never. But, I suppose that's because I never had any kids! I'd LOVE to have some but, I just haven't got any womb for them. If they DID ask, I'd just tell them that skin could DOESN'T MATTER!1 ALL LIVES MATTER!!! You treat EVERYONE else on the planet the way you treat anyone of your own colour! You're no better than them and they're no better than you!! we are ALL just human beings and doesn't make a diddley damn bit of difference what shade of pink or brown anybody is!! They can''t help being born with their skin colour any more than YOU can help being born in YOUR skin colour! Same goes for what you've got between your legs. You are a HUMAN BEING, FIRST!!! YOU are that glob of gray matter inside your head and the rest of your body is just the car you're destined to drive around in the rest of your life. NOBODY should give a flying fuck what colour it is, what colour you want to make it or how you want to dress it or decorate it!!
I don't have children, but when I was in I'd like to say 4th, grade? I asked my friend who had a Chilean mom and Korean dad, why his dad wasn't White. The kid had a clear Korean skintone and features, but since we didn't have very many Asians where I lived, he honestly just looked White to me. 😂
He told me, because his dad is Korean. He also happened to be wearing his US army uniform, and I asked him why his mom married a Korean soldier. 😂
That's the closest example I can think of. I don't remember asking my parents a specific question about skin color, but I'm sure I did.
My first 3 crushes were all Latinas. Jessica, Claudia and Indiana😂
I also remember in 6th grade asking my Black neighbors, why their cousin is White. 😂
I was more confused by interracial mixing (except Whites and Latinas), then I was by why other races exist.
Not as funny as my cousin's who went to a zoo in Poland. She saw a Lion exhibit and then as they were leaving a Black guy walked by, and she asked my uncle, "Tata, jesteśmy już w Afryce?"
I don't even think I need to translate that one.😂 But I need to applaud her geographic knowledge and how she was able to connect the two things. 😂😂😂😂
As a small boy I grew up in south central Los Angeles. This was at a time when that area was roughly 50-50 black and white. My playmate was a little black girl named Dana. I knew that there was a difference in skin color (she was very black), but it was meaningless to me and I never asked about it.
As an adult, I'm color blind. I've dated black women. Color just doesn't matter to me.
I don’t think colorblind is a thing. Like I acknowledge we all have different skin pigmentations. My school was like 30% white, 30% Hmong, 30% black, 10% other. 🤷🏻♀️
I think one issue in race relations is that society does not cultivate a culture of philanthropy among adults, children welcome racial diversity because everybody teaches them to love and respect others while adults are not taught to love each other, they are only taught that their lack of love is punishable by law, if we tried as hard to teach adults racial inclusivity as we did children, not just at a representational level but to have real love and compassion and concern for each other, we could reduce all the racism in our world.
No. Not at all. In my experience, it's mainly white children who feel the need to ask why another kid is darker than them. Even as a kid in the playground, it was ways the white kids othering and asking black kids why they were dark and picking apart our facial feautres and hair while we never even cared to ask them why they were light. It was always very unpleasant. I don't know why to this day.
Well my son is still little, he's 2 and a half but he has no problem playing with black kids. 😂 I wish we could all be like that, have that childlike innocence, not be biased about anything. Racism is fucking stupid. People are people, we're all the same on the inside. We all bleed the same.
Mines two and I was so embarrassed we were on the train together last week and she kept asking me why is that man dirty and he needs to wash his face (towards a full on black guy) and I just didn't know what to do how do you explain that is the way his face is, kids aye always put you in hard positions
Kids say the darnedest things! My son once asked a lady why her teeth were crooked. 🙈
My mom said when I was little I was obsessing over a guy who had a nose piercing at the grocery store. We kept bumping into him and I would say “there he is again!”
That's one more perk of having Latino family members: Latinos are not obsessed with race. My son is more interested in telling me that he will be the next Messi, in asking me when I will play soccer with him, in sending me drawings... He never demonstrated any interest in political bullshit, as this is an adult thing.
He never asked me why I'm white and why his mother is Latina, to him we're just the ones who he loves the most.
White people are just cringe and obsessed with race.
My son never won an "empathy award" (whatever it means) at school nor talks about race with me and his mother. Sad...
Maybe if he had a narcissistic white mother using him to pat herself on the back, he'd be more concerned with race and politics than with soccer and kids' stuff.
Sitting in a hospital waiting room in the middle of the night with my daughter, she’s maybe 4 years old at this time. The only other person in the room was an elderly black man. My little one turns to me and asks “mom, why is that man chocolate….. and why are we peach?” Both I and the man smirked at each other. Peach huh? Here I thought she was all intuitive, calling white people peach (which we are, really.) But no. It was much simpler than that. She described us as peach because that’s the color pencil crayon she used when drawing her family. ☺️
Your son sounds awesome. I hope nobody ever dashes his curiosity and eagerness to ask questions and learn.
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I think that's nice that you got a book to explain to your children about different skin colors and when the time comes and they want to know about the Birds n Bees, then explain it to them also If I had a child who wants to know things, I would want to tell them and explain things to them.. One time I was age 12 and was masturbating and I got scared when I first released semen and I thought I needed to go to the ER I was scared but afterward, I realized what it was all about.
I have an age appropriate book about the birds and the bees too! For the kid who wanted to know how his brother got in my belly.
I have heard other men say their first ejaculation is scary. It should never be a surprise. My grandma thought she was dying when her first period started.
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No, they never asked that. When I coached soccer there was a kid on the team that had some kind of birth defect. I was curious how the other kids would treat him. I can remember growing up if anyone had something wrong with them there would be constant teasing from other kids. I am happy to say that none of that never happened and I asked my son if anyone ever teased the kid at school and he said " why would anyone do that?"
There is a kid with facial and limb deformities in my son’s class. He asked him about them and he was happy to answer his questions. The kids don’t tease him either.
@loves2learn When I was in school in the 80's anyone something like a disability would be teased. Looking back it was really pretty bad. It's nice to think that it is not like that anymore.
per your update. :At first I didn't know what to make of having an empathy award at school. I always figured the schools would be better off teaching math and science and leave empathy to the parents. I sort of changed my mind and think it was a good idea to give that award and make kids think that empathy is something we should aspire to.
It’s funny. I’ve never had to have that conversation. We live in a diverse area and my kids are always choosing to play with the kids who look differently than them. If we go to the playground, they’ll just naturally gravitate to the Indian or Middle Eastern kids.
Mine too! It was a purely innocent question from a very curious and observant child. He was truly curious why his friend around the corner had skin a different color than his. They have been friends since they were one.
I don't have kids but I've had this conversation with my father. Since I'm blasian who grew up predominantly in Asia, I was confused as to why I didn't look like every other kid in my class or like him and why I was the only one who stood out. Then he explained and taught me why I my skin wasn't like the other kids and made it clear to tell me that didn't make me less Asian or lesser than the other students.
We never made it a point to discuss skin colors. I don't recall my kids asking about skin color. I don't recall them asking why some people have blue eyes and some have green or why some people have long hair and some short. I think they were more concerned with, "Does the other kid like superheroes?" "Does she like to make bracelets?"
When I was a kid, we really didn't see color. If someone was a person of color they were just another friend. They say that "racism starts at the dinner table". My parents were not racist and we didn't grow up that way.
That's an important concept, that "racism starts at the dinner table", that a lot of people overlook. I don't believe that children are naturally racist. I don't think they would come up with racism on their own unless influenced by someone else.
I dont have kids but I've helped my kom with children of all ages (12 and under). Skin color was never a topic until the chikd was maybe 10-12. And its often because of stereotypical bullshit they hear their parents say. So i do believe children are color blind and innocent until they near the dating age
Yea im just saying in general. I was also observant but never quite curious. I didn't ask things i didn't care to know. I just enjoyed life. It was until i was 10 that i heard lightskinned, darkskinned, pale, mixed, etc
We’ve grown up with diversity too. Most diverse school in the district actually. He is a very inquisitive child. My other son never asked anything like this.
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