Q. On a recent outing to the park, we were shocked to hear two children being very unkind to an unknown child standing next to them as they fed the ducks. This little girl had a large birthmark on her face and our children said, 'Go away, you've got the lurgy!' The distressed child ran to her mother. One of us went to apologise to them. Then we talked with the two children and explained that they had really hurt the girl's feelings. Their reply made us think that these four-year-olds were genuinely concerned that the birthmark was contagious. Is this usual?
A. Your example highlights very well how much young children have to learn.
We should address their need for accurate information, as well as the importance of considering other people's feelings. My own daughter explained to me in mid-primary school that some children really believed they could 'catch' eczema.
It sounds as if you handled the incident well at the time. It would have been counter-productive to get the children to apologise when they were still concerned about 'catching' the girl's birthmark.
Look for opportunities to extend the children's knowledge about what you can catch as an illness and what is part of someone's body from birth. The Changing Faces organisation is a good source of information about disfigurement (tel: 020 7706 4232, www.changingfaces.co.uk).
Four-year-olds are learning about being fair, unfair, kind or cruel, and that words can hurt as much as being hit. But they won't be consistently kind all the time (nor will adults!). Don't doubt your approach to promoting empathy overall, just because these children were unkind - for a reason that made sense to them at the time.
