Talking to My 4 Year Old About Skin Color and Weight

A few months ago we took the kids to the park. There was a man there with a rather large belly. Before this day I would have thought nothing of it. However, our 4 year old decided to loudly point out, "Look Mom! That guy is fat!" Mortified, and almost positive the man heard my son I tried to calmly walk over to the other side of the park to have a quiet discussion. I asked my son to be quiet for a moment and follow me, to which he replied in the same loud voice, "But mom, he is fat! He's just fat. He has a really big belly." The man ended up leaving, and I felt horrible. My son wasn't trying to be vicious or mean, he was simply making an observation out loud. I sat down with him and let him know that yes the man did have a big belly but that sometimes we need to keep comments like that to ourselves. "Why?" he asked.  I went on to explain that saying things like that could hurt someone's feelings if they heard him. Going even further we talked about how everyone is different and that's ok. Some people have big bellies, some people have small bellies, some people are super tall and others are short. I told him that just because someone looks or sounds different doesn't mean that they aren't nice people.
Over the following months he has made similar observatory comments about people who look different then himself. "Mommy, that boy has black hair like Daddy." "I met a new friend. He was different, his skin was a different color. His skin was black." Instead of saying anything I decided to let him tell me more about what he was thinking and discovered that his comments and observations are just part of his development as a child. The differences didn't bother him, he was just letting me know. My job is to listen and make sure that he understands that we are all different and that's ok. He's simply coming to a point in his childhood where he is noticing differences, patterns and similarities. Instead of getting upset and shocked I realized I need to acknowledge what he is telling me and talk him through his discoveries so that differences like skin color and weight don't bother him. If I choose to make a big deal over everything he says then it could potientally become a problem in the future. As parents we need to be careful of how we talk about other peoples differences as well. Our children look up to us and our comments about others shape how their train of thoughts about others will be. If we speak negitively about others on a regular basis in front of our children, so will they.