I dropped Eli off this morning at school, and since his teacher's on vacation (which they've apologized profusely for, multiple times. How different is this place!?) we were trying to figure out which room he was going into. A little boy wearing Spiderman snow boots runs up to me and says "He needs to be in this room!" Now, I love bossy little kids about as much as I love the cat but I don't want to be a witch so I asked this little boy "Why's that?" "Because he's my friend!" he responded, and then he and Eli proceeded to show off various pieces of Spiderman clothing and have a dance-off. Take that "I'm going to cut your mom"!
Completely unrelated except that they also happened this morning, I was taking the kid to the doctor's office and he started talking about a friend of his who's skin is a different color. I was explaining that her skin is a different color but it feels the same, just like his hair felt like his dad's but was a different color. He of course argued and I explained that he had brown hair just like me. Seriously, it's the exact. same. color. He says "No mommy. My hair's brown and your hair's gray." Awesome. Then at the doctor's office (which was not the doctor's office at all and led to a frustrated, semi-frantic set of phone calls and no preschool papers signed but I digress) I look up and what do I see but my son, peeing on the front lawn of the freaking hospital complex! We are Classy. With a capital C.
Hahahahaha!
ReplyDeleteGad you like the new school!!
I just read Nurture Shock and one of the chapters talks about how well meaning white liberals don't explicitly discuss skin color, telling kids "everybody's equal" and other vague things. As a result, kids pick up the racist attitudes of larger society b/c they don't get explicit discussions at home and are confused as to why people don't all look the same.
I love your explicit convo-- we've been saying the same things. Harry told a little girl that she was pretty like chocolate milk and he describes himself as pinkish.