As you can read in the title, a little girl around LaLa’s age (4) told her that she could not play with her because she wasn’t of the same religion. WHAT?!
Okay so let me give you all a little synopsis of the kind of kid Lala is at the playground. Lala loves making new friends when she’s at the park. She’ll literally run up to a child a say “want to be my friend”?. I’m really not a fan of her approach, but hey kids are kids right?!
Yesterday was no different at the park, LaLa was on the prowl of making “friends”. She seen a group of 3 girls around the ages of 4-7, who all seemed to have shared the same religion and with her usual approach goes “ want to be my friend”? One of the girls said “sure, here you can use my scooter” before she could give LaLa the scooter the little girl who seemed to be about 4 yrs old said to LaLa verbatim “we can’t play with you because you’re not (her religion)”. Usually I’m the parent that kind of sits back to see how LaLa will handle, and diffuse certain situations (because, honestly i’m not going to be there all the time). This situation was NOT one of those situations, I climbed so fast on that play set, and asked the little girl “what happened”? And she said “I just told her that we can’t play with her because she’s doesn’t share the same religion as us, and plus she’s showing certain body parts that we’re not allowed to show”. I was really taken aback at what this 4 yr old had said, I was shocked. I’ve never experienced someone blatantly tell me something like that. I then asked her “well who told you this”? She replied “My parents” then I asked her to show me where her parents were and she pointed.
As I was walking towards the mother to address the situation that happened her daughter also ran towards her. I approached mom sitting amongst two other ladies who I assume were the parents of the 2 other girls, who all seemed to have shared the same religion. In a calm tone I told mom exactly what just happened with her child and mine. Mom did not seem surprised at all, and even tried to act as if she didn’t understand what I was saying, until I repeated myself and also added that “she said, YOU taught her that” she then had this startled/embarrassed face and i proceeded to say “If you don’t want you child to play with kids who don’t share the same religion then, maybe you shouldn’t come to this park where there are many “different” people maybe you should build a park in your backyard” (All of this was said in a calm tone) she then began screaming at her daughter, and told her to say sorry, which she did.
This post is not to discredit anyone religion or beliefs, but honestly if you can’t be inclusive in a place where there are “different” kinds of people then you need to exclude yourself, period!!
I can’t and won’t tell parents how to raise their children, but Sekou, I and the rest of Lala’s village raises her with nothing but LOVE, pure love, if you’re ever around Lala you’ll see that she’s happy, and she wants everyone around her to happy. As I told Lala while we were at the park, you don’t want to be around, or play with anyone who isn’t nice, and don’t treat people nicely, you want to be around people who are caring, and nice. My poor child was oblivious to this whole situation and said ” Okay mommy, I’m going to find new friends”.
Have any of you ever had an experience similar?
