If you are interested the book is called Celebrating Identity A Resource Manual. Both that and The Incredible Years have come in very handy with bringing up my two, I highly recommend them : )
Good reply, Bubblegum :D
jeejee I am shocked that your boy is being told such things. If it continues then I think you should approach his dad and say that you are concerned that he is being exposed to inappropriate language and attitudes. If neccessary, do this through a solicitor!
Hi jeejee
Apparently the new way of describing a person who has different race parents is now 'dual heritage'. That is the new accepted politically correct version.
When my daughter was small, she always called herself brown, in fact I think she still does (she's 15 now).
I agree with bubblegum, there is no point bringing it up with your ex unless you feel he would be considerate and understanding. :? My daughters once came home telling me that her dad she was a milky way (choc bar), cos look she brown on the outside (she pointed to the back of her hand) and white on the inside (now pointing to the palm of her hand). I was infuriated with him, because as an adult, I know what he was trying to say and I didn't understand how he could be soo nasty to a small child, let alone his own daughter.
Thanks for the book info bubblegum, I am going to have a look on Amazon right now!
When my daughter was small, she always called herself brown, in fact I think she still does (she's 15 now).
Mine refer to themselves as brown too... they don't go on about it all the time but I'm pretty sure they have noticed ;)
Mine still want me to see their poo, at least that's the only explanation I can come up with for them never flushing the toilet.
Yeah, that's not the half of it, sometimes I look and I think OH MY GOD! how in the name.. did my little baby pass that without screaming.
:D Bubblegum, that still happens when they are teenagers!!!! :shock:
:lol: :lol: lindsay gii
Girls need to "engage" with you so they are always disputing things and wanting combat whereas boys in general want to escape and not engage. There's a great book about this: "Get out of my life....but first take me and Alex into town" by Anthony Wolf and Suzanne Franks.
Back to the topic of mixed race children, has anyone got experience of having children who are by different dads/mums and so one is mixed race and one isn't?
Back to the topic of mixed race children, has anyone got experience of having children who are by different dads/mums and so one is mixed race and one isn't?
I grew up in a family like that, didn't notice anything, it just seamed perfectly normal to me, I didn't get on with my step mum at times, I do now very well but at the time I couldn't get my head round some of her bizarre behaviour, to me bizarre anyway, she was from a very remote part of Zambia and basically very culturally different. Now on reflection I can see that it must have been very difficult for her coming from the African bush to North Wales and my teenage behaviour must have been very alien to her and it probably didn't help.
Funny how hindsight is a wonderful thing :-)
I have a friend with a daughter of mixed race and alhough separated from the dad, my friend makes a lot of effort for her daughter to spend time with her extended family and retain an awareness of her cultural roots
Girls - complicated, analytical, clever, can see right through you, sexually knowing, vulnerable, use your stuff, mess with your head
That is my beautiful, wise, all knowing, in control 15 year old daughter!!
"Get out of my life....but first take me and Alex into town"
:lol: Ha ha ha, must read this book!
African bush to North Wales
- HUGE culture shock!!
FWIW I was always a bit jealous of how much prettier she was than me, as mixed race kids so often are (they always seem to get the best of both, not the worst, don't they? Or is that generalising a bit too far - not sure?)
I read something some place, cant remember where but it went somewhere along the line of mixed race children having very smooth features in that the extremes from each parent were smoothed out and made features that were not exaggerated.. and this is something to do with why we find small babies cute like we find puppies cute because they don't have any exaggerated features like adults do.. or something along those lines, I forget where I read it.
People often openly comment on how beautiful my children are, and hay! they don't need to tell me as I think they are the most amazing, beautiful children in he world, faultless and perfect : ) and yeah yeah I'm not biased, but I have been looking at them a lot for a while.. ^^ since they were born actually, in fact I stood holding and looking at my son when he was just born until the nurses had to wrench him from my hands and put him in a plastic cot thing, at which point I went and had a fag. But anyway, they have very nondescript features, symmetrical, without exaggeration, sort of smooth, like babies, like puppies, with big eyes, I duuno... but ultimately they are different and biological, evolutionarily we are programmed to seek out differences, so as to spread out genetic make up, diversify and all that, as on an evolutionary level a stagnant gene pool leads to anomalies. It's kind of the opposite of why we find incest abhorrent if that makes what I'm trying to say make sense.
Sorry if I'm rambling but it's Friday and it's wine night and I have drunk nearly a whole bottle.
P.S. I love you, you're a great mate, slobber, slobber....
P.P.S OI! are you staring at my kebab!!!?
:D
I originally heard that as.. when can you tell an Essex girl climaxes?
(and she dropped her chips)
:)
Disney goes for the mixed race dollar. Coincidently that is my daughters name too :)
Hooray! About time too! I shall definitely be getting this film for my daughter, even though she is 15! For all of her life we have talked about the rarity of cartoon/film characters that look like her. It first dawned on me when she was about four there was an advert for the zoo with a 'brown' girl with 2 pom pom bunches and my daughter said, she looks just like me and was very happy! She cut the picture out and kept it on her pinboard.
If anyone has mixed heritage children have a look at the Amy Hodge Podge http://www.amyhodgepodge.com website, I think it is great! Also I wonder if you have seen http://www.intermix.org.uk/homepages/homepage_default.asp. I love this site, they have stories, photos, events and discussions all about being mixed heritage. Have a nose and let me know what you think about it. i notice that May 2010 is mixed race month, I wonder how we at One space could celebrate this? any ideas?
That's why I wanted a boy. I figure, if I *have* to share my home with a teenager, I'd rather it was a boy one than a girl one...
Girls - complicated, analytical, clever, can see right through you, sexually knowing, vulnerable, use your stuff, mess with your head.
Boys - really fancy pizza for tea.
:lol:
My daughter is such a tomboy...
HI..
My son went through a questioning stage at about your sons age, he wanted to be white. I eventually traced it back to my wife having innocently asking him during contact whether he was being picked on at school for his colour.. this escalated in his little mind until he though people didn't like him due to the colour of his skin and the fact that he had curly dark hair.
It's best not to make an issue of it, don't let him see that it upsets you anyway.
I read a good book about dealing with issues of race and colour with mixed race children, I can't remember what it was called though, but basically it's best to explain that everyone is different, there is no black and white and brown we are all varying shades in between.. and it's all that diversity that makes the world a wonderful place. Also to expose them to as many people of mixed race as possible in real life and in films and TV, positive ones only though of course.
My brother is mixed race and once at school his teacher was giving a lesson on race issues and names, whether it should be mixed race, black brown or what ever and all that... she asked my brother what did he like to be called, to which my brother replied.. Clive, miss. I expect she felt very silly, but it does make a point, like Martin Luther King said about his dream and when a person would be judged by his actions and not the colour of his skin.
If your X did say that then he's completely out of order, he's basically telling his own son that he's a monkey, but there's not much you can do about your X's behaviour really, just don't get into a situation where you are talking negatively about him to your son.
If I remember the name of that book I'll post it as I got a lot from it on how to deal with my two.