Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Mom Am I Brown?


That was the out of the blue question from Lucas this evening. Sitting down looking over their school papers after their showers and from somewhere this question pops into his head.

We've talked about skin color and culture before. The differences in our families' skin colors are wide ranging but it never seemed to be of much interest to Lucas and Eli so we decided to wait and take our cues from them. Well cue #1 slammed home tonight.

I said, "Yes you're brown." He then asks, "You white?" Yep I sure am. Then in typical little brother fashion he throws his middle sister, Rachel, under the bus by saying, "Rachel, she really white." Rachel is our very blond child from her hair to her skin. Once again I said, "Yes Rachel is very white." He said, "this ok, she white, me brown, I like brown". As he should.
So I dug through my supply of children's books to one that I had bought before the boys came home. "The Skin I'm In" by Pat Thomas. It's one the boys have looked at several times but I'll put it back on top of the books to see what other questions and observations they come up with. It's never dull!

1 comment:

  1. Random thoughts...gotta love them! We were walking the other day and Jay-R says out of nowhere, "Mommy, I have brown skin." It is good that they realize that differences are okay. I love your stories about the things they say! Keep sharing!

    ReplyDelete