Chocolate and Vanilla

The other day as Romy was watching a cartoon she says to me, "Mom, I like that chocolate girls' curly hair but I don't like her skin. And I like the vanilla girls' skin but I don't like her hair." And SMACK. There it was. All of a sudden she was noticing skin color. This was the first instance of this or at least the first time she had verbalized it, so when I relayed the conversation to Mason he suggested that our next Family Home Evening be on being different, etc. etc.

So that's what we did. My mom had just given the girls two little mini dolls and Ivy had chosen a black girl and a white boy. She calls them Bick and Bick. We laid them side by side and the conversation went as follows:

Mason: Romy, what is the difference between these two dolls?
Romy: One is a boy and one is a girl.
Mason: What else do you see is different?
R: The girl has on red shoes and yellow pants and the boy doesn't.
M: What else? What about their skin?
R: The girl Bick is dark and the boy Bick is light like me.

We then proceeded to talk about what was the same about the two (2 eyes, 2 arms, etc.) and that Heavenly Father loves all of his children no matter what color of skin or differences we may have. At the same time, Ivy was dancing around naked and proclaiming, "Nake nake!!!" Hopefully SOMETHING sunk in and we did an okay job of explaining things without drawing too much attention to the issue.

Bick and Bick