Okay, so I have an almost five year old daughter and today we had lunch at a restaurant with an indoor playplace. She happily played with a handful of kids for nearly two hours.We are white, two of the kids she played with this whole time which were siblings happened to be black. My husband and I were sat at a table nearby so not quite in earshot but in eyeshot, the mom of those two kids, her youngest was quite young so she was right up close and my daughter went up to her at the end of the time playing and I saw her talking to her.I saw the mothers face kind of get.. nasty, like some attitude in responding to my child. I could sense her displeasure. My kid isn't one to be mean or rude or anything so I didn't know what she might've said to get such a reaction so I went nearby, told my daughter to get her shoes, we were heading out.The mom looked at me and said, kind of aggressively, "your daughter came up to me and asked if I was their mommy because they have brown skin and I have brown skin. She said I must be, because no one else here has brown skin like them, but I do. I said to her, gee, I wonder who would've taught you to say things like that." And with that, she got up and moved away from me quickly, with an eye roll and clearly done talking, with an air of disgust.That left me standing there kind of taken aback, because I couldn't see the source of such a defensive response. Like yes, my four year old made an observation, I get it's not totally polite to comment on a strangers race or familial composition but she put two and two together there based on appearance and asked what I feel was a pretty innocent question. I couldn't discern the source of such disgust, she didn't say anything derogatory unless noticing the similarity in skin color was taken that way?I walked away from that exchange feeling like that lady was just particularly sensitive to the topic of race coming from a white commenter of even such a young age, which I get wouldn't be appreciated, but she reacted like my child made a racist remark and then that she basically felt I'm raising her to be racist? So I was a bit confused and offended, and she walked away so rapidly I didn't even get to respond to the accusation, not that I would've known what to say beyond I'm sure she didn't mean any offense, she just noticed you all have the skin color and asked if you were their mom.So what I want to know: what kind of discussions about race should I be having with my four year old? On the way home I casually said, it's not really nice to comment on people's appearance in any way, skin color, weight, hairstyle, and sometimes people might not like it like this lady. But I didn't phrase it like she did anything wrong because.. I don't think she did.On previous occasions we have had talks on a very basic level just that lots of people have different colored skin than us, it's just based on what your parents are, it doesn't mean anything beyond that, we treat everyone the same. For her age I felt that was appropriate but as she gets more social I guess I need to expand on that but how?Just looking for some advice on discussing the topic and if anyone has input on the actual exchange. I tend to feel the lady overreacted quite a bit, but if you feel otherwise and I'm somehow being insensitive please let me know that too. via /r/Parenting http://ift.tt/2FjQ2WP
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