solve this one sherlock

The backstory: yesterday, Lauren came home crying. An older boy from up the street yelled at her, "Your freckles are ridiculous." A bunch of kids laughed. This crushed her. She's the only one in her class that has freckles and it makes her feel different. After a few minutes I was able to calm her down. I thought about going and talking to his mom but didn't want to give it more attention and chalked it up to mean kids.

Today, I got a call from the Vice Principal of Lauren's school. He had called Lauren, the older boy and the older boy's brother into his office. Apparently there was more to the said incident the day before. Here is a retelling of what happened as far as I, the VP, and the boys' dad could determine:

Lauren and the younger boy, Ben (also 7), were sitting together on the bus reading a book together. Lore and Ben are really good friends. Ben's older brother came over to them and began to tease them that they were boyfriend/girlfriend.

Lore is not allowed to have a boyfriend and isn't interested in boys yet. So the teasing offended her. She protested several times. To which Ben asked why she wouldn't be his girlfriend.

And she responded, "When I have a boyfriend his skin won't be brown." Did I mention Ben is black? Yeah.

Naturally this hurt Ben's feelings and then now you can understand why his brother made the freckle comment.

Well this also put Ben's parents out of sorts and they ran to the school to complain. I understand their anger but they could have come over to our house instead of the school. Whatever. Lauren was devastated to be called into the VP's office. When they talked it out, they all apologized. And then I went over and talked to the parents after school. Everything is fine.

Lore wasn't trying to be racist (she doesn't even know what that means). And I think they understand this.

The crazy thing is, we've tried hard to teach our kids that skin color is no different that hair or eye color. If we were all the same, life would be boring. But it still backfired.

Innocently,Lore was just thinking that when you have a boyfriend then you marry them and she wants to marry someone like her dad who happens to be white. This of course came out wrong. And in the future her response will be: I don't want a boyfriend because I'm not allowed.

uggh. rough day.

How in the world do you teach your children that everyone is equal without having to explain racial sensitivities?

We basically told Lore that just how she was hurt by them making fun of what makes her unique, she had hurt Ben's feeling for same reasons.

And I'm still a bit upset with the VP for calling me about race but not calling the boys' parents about name calling (which he knew about). When I mentioned the freckle/skin comment to the dad it was news to him. And obviously the freckle comment does not weigh the same but it made Lauren cry just as much. Her self esteem is just as damaged. What's a mom to do?