My child didn’t want to play with white kids. Here’s what I told her
“Mommy, I’m only going to play with brown kids, not white kids.”
Monica Richardson, managing editor of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, said her "heart and my head hurt instantly when my 4-year-old daughter made this statement earlier this week. It felt like she'd said a curse word, a really bad one.
"Where had she learned such a thing? Was it something I said or did? Certainly not. Had she absorbed something from television? I hope not. My response to her that morning was sharp. I admit that I didn’t handle it well. I yelled at her: You never say that, don’t you ever say that again. Tears filled her tender eyes. She didn’t understand my sharp reply. I immediately changed my tone and told her it wasn’t a nice thing to say. She said she was sorry and I apologized for yelling.
"As much as I hate to share that story about my daughter, I think it is the best example of where change starts in the home. Even with as much influence as I have in my child’s life, she’s vulnerable to the world I can’t protect her from."
This isn't the end of Richardson's story. To read more about how she handled the situation with her preschooler, click here.
