Soleil asked "Mom, can we talk in private"

"Sure, what’s up?"

"Aaron made fun of me today. He laughed at J and I because we are Jews"

Sharp intake of breath on my part. Calm voice to address this carefully.

"What do you mean? Can you explain what he did?"

"Mrs. G read a book today where the kids all made fun of the new girl who was Jewish and came from the Soviet Union. The kids in Molly’s class made fun of her and said her eyes were small and her nose tall. When the other kids in the class made fun of Molly and teased her, Aaron laughed and said that it was funny."

Ok, this is probably her first experience with teasing based on religion, stop, think, relax.

"Do you think Aaron felt that the teasing was funny? Or did he think that teasing you and J was funny?"

"He kept telling the class that the teasing was funny. It made me feel bad for being a Jew."

"What did Mrs. G do?"

"She asked him not to interrupt the book and after the book, she took him to talk."

Whew, way to go Mrs G! Take the situation, address it privately with the child, move on without making a big deal.

"Okay- that sounds like the right thing to do."

"But it hurt my feelings"

"I know…there is good teasing and bad teasing. This was the bad teasing. Good teasing is from your friends and makes you laugh. Bad teasing hurts your feelings. This was bad teasing. But, I think Aaron was just trying to figure out the teasing. Don’t you sometimes have trouble knowing when to tell a friend they are cheating and when to just let it go? Maybe that is what Aaron was doing, trying on teasing. It doesn’t really look good on anyone."

Jay was kind enough to bring up some of his experiences as a kid. He talked about how Aaron (who is of Chinese decent) might have only heard teasing in regards to himself and didn’t think about others getting teased for what they look like or what they are as opposed to their actions.We explained that since Jews are a minority in this country, there are times people will tease her. People sometimes tease those who are different. She felt better and did say she was proud to be Jewish, but felt bad when Aaron was laughing at the teasing. I asked her what she would do if she saw a classmate getting teased. She immediately said "Stand up for them, because that isn’t right!"

I think the teacher addressed this well, but Soleil was still worried last night. Welcome to the harder parts of parenting, teaching your kids about the REAL world, not the perfect one.

The book they read was "Molly’s Pilgrim"

*not his real name