So after a conversation with some friends recently it was discovered that 3 year old little boys are very curious things. They are already noticing things that us moms hoped they never would (mostly about girls :) Taylor is no exception, however he has also noticed some other things I wasn't sure how to respond to lately.
Taylor has gotten very good at knowing his colors. We have quizzed him so many times that now he quizzes us on what color the trees and flowers are. Well the other night when it was just Taylor and I at dinner he suddenly asked me what color my arm was. Well I turned it around and asked him to tell me what color my arm was. I was hoping he'd say brown or something as I thought I still had a little bit of a summer tan left. :)
Well he said my arm was white like his. That wasn't really what I thought he'd say, but he did (and he is really more brown than I am right now). But immediately after he stated that his friend D***** from preschool was black. Oh boy. He's already noticing skin tones. I had hoped that he would actually go his whole life oblivious to that kind of thing. So I made sure he understood that it didn't matter what color we were that God loves us all and we sang "Jesus Loves the little children of the world" song then and there.
All that to say...have any of you had this kind of experience? What did you say? Taylor knows so many people that are from different backgrounds that I really don't want him to notice color, but I guess it is the first thing people see. We have so many people from other countries stay at our house too. I'm just praying that one day he doesn't go up to one of them and say "hey you are black and I am white". I hope they would understand a 3 year old's curiousity.
As long as Taylor always understands its more the inside that counts maybe this won't be a big problem. Thanks for listening to me ramble on. :)
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3 comments:
For what it's worth....he's going to notice, nothing wrong with that! I just kind of down play it like "yeah, God made everyone different" and move on. Unless they need to talk about it more or say negative things (which we dealt with with D last year in preschool- I freaked out but I think we figured out that it was that she spoke different too and he was a little scared) Anyway, I think you handled it well.
For us, it was also never a big deal. We just taught Andrew to not describe anyone by skin color. Hair and eye color, yes. Clothes and shoes, yes. Thus far, we have had no issues. It helps that Andrew has grown up surrounded by people of various sizes, shapes, and skin tones (he still laughs when I describe myself as albino).
Now Will may be a different story. He just turned two. We had actually already had this discussion with Andrew by this age, due to his weirdo advanced verbal skills. It may still be a while before we have this talk with Will!
Owen was also 3 when he started noticing skin color, but our conversation was a little different. It started with him proclaiming to me that he wants to be black. So we had a long discussion about the fact that God made him white ("But why?") because his mommy and daddy are white. For months he'd still insist that he wanted to be black. I think he's finally forgotten about it now.
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