JoeC wrote:Interesting how kids in nurseries don't even notice the colour, accents or physicality of other kids. They just play or don't until parents/adults start pointing out differences and relative values.
True, but I think only up to a point.
By the age of 4 or 5 kids intellect is normally at the point they'd be commenting on physical differences whether or not any adult has pointed it out.
Certainly watching my kids develop, keeping in mind that both my wife and I did degrees in psychology, I watched with some interest how this stuff evolved.
My younger boy was in a creche group of about 20 kids - he and one other boy were the only Caucasian.
Indeed, they all played/fought with zero concern for “race/culture” etc. Male/female differences in temperament were evident much earlier than I expected, and I don’t believe for 1 second that’s via parents or staff (my daughter was playing with shoes and handbags at 9 months – my wife is definitely not “girly” in that respect!)
At pre-school, my youngest boy’s best friend is part West African part Belgian. My son did ask at one point (3 and a half I think) if he’d get dark skin like his friend.
We explained a few things, and that was it.
Don’t forget that kids can be horrible little sheets – they will pick up on differences all by themselves and be quite “mean” without any adult prompting.
Older ones will also pass down “bad examples” and younger kids latch onto these “new” things also.
From what I’ve seen as a parent – it’s almost universally schools and parents conditioning OUT kids natural tendency to pick on differences, not parents feeding innocent little minds their bias.
Of course it does happen though, I grew up a Catholic in the West of Scotland in the 70s....