My Daughter Is An Accidental Racist

My 4-year-old daughter has always been full of energy but since she started Junior Kindergarten a few weeks ago, that energy has become even more intense. And she’s also started shouting out a rather constant stream of gibberish. My husband and I are super annoyed by this — the loudness and the non-stop nature of it. But little did we know it could get worse.

Inbetween the gibberish — the ‘bippity-boppity-boopity-coopity-seppity-zoopity-mippity-mockity-rackety-tackety’ stuff — she has a couple of favorite phrases. One is “YOU! SILLY! GOOSE!” and the other is “Stinky Donkey!”

So yesterday I took the kids to a new playground. It was sort of a toddler playground but there were several older kids there, too. Lots of stylish moms. A nanny or two. Fancy strollers. Super cute kids. Tons of kids. And kids are loud, but there was my daughter. Even louder than they all are.

And she was shouting out “YOU! SILLY! GOOSE!” at her playmates and they were laughing and then she’d go into the gibberish of “stinky-tinky-loo-loo-rah-rah-macky-tacky-shoop-moop-poop!” HA HA HA HA HA! HA HA HA HA HA HA HA. Did I mention that my husband and I are unbelievably annoyed with this phase of things?

And then it happened. Her silly goose line became something else. I’m not even going to repeat it but instead of calling someone a silly goose, she called them a silly (insert ethnic slur for Asians). I tried to act cool — obviously she had no idea what she was saying — and subtly looked around to see if any of the other mothers or nannies heard it. No one yelled at me, grabbed their kid and fled or otherwise indicated that they’d heard but maybe they were being polite.

I firmly called her over and told her I didn’t like that word and she shouldn’t use it again. “Okay!” she responded and bounded away for more loud play.

So I think we’re good for now.