So we finally get to bring SD7 to our state for 5 weeks this summer. Her mother has tried everything over the past 5 years to keep DH from his child, and succeeded for the most part. PAS is rampant in this poor little girl, she is constantly repeating horrible things that both her mother and grandmother tell her about her dad. That is to be expected when dealing with a psycho ex of this caliber, but BM’s hate and negativity is obviously way beyond her contempt for my DH. At 7, SD already expresses her entitlement issues, and has that prissy attitude like she might be better than others. She comes by it honest, and I can’t really hold against her because it is what she is being taught at home. Each instance is dealt with calmly and DH and I explain to her that she isn’t better than anyone, and that she shouldn’t make fun of others for being different than her. She usually corrects the behavior when we confront her about it, otherwise any additional instances would be dealt with by punishment.

Finally, this weekend I realized how bad it really is. We drove 600 miles to get her. She lives in a small beach town. There was an event going on in town so every hotel in every surrounding city was booked, and the one we had reservations gave our room away because we didn’t get there until 6 a.m... We drove to different hotels for 4 hours until we finally found one in a city about an hour away from where SD lives. I was so thankful to find one, and so exhausted. So, no sleep for us because by the time we finally found it, DH had to go pick up SD.

She gets to the hotel and tells me that it’s “Not a very nice hotel, why are we staying here?” I explained that the hotel was more than good enough, and cost more than we really had to spend, but if she wanted to get a job and pay then the next time we could stay at the Hilton! The whole day she kept making cracks about the hotel being “dirty”, when it really wasn’t at all. She refused to get into the huge pool that was there, or the hot tub, even though she loves to swim. Every time we see her we spend most of our time in the pool or at the beach, but this day she wanted no part of it. Later we went outside to walk my dog, and she began complaining about hot it was. Again I asked her why we couldn’t just go swimming. Then she said the most shocking and ignorant thing I have ever heard a child say. She says “I’m not going in that pool; there are black people in there!” I was shocked and so was DH. To make things even worse, as she was saying this, one of the hotel staff was standing behind her. He was a very nice man, and I would have been mortified regardless, but he also happened to be black. I don’t want people to assume that I am the mother that is teaching her child to be a racist! I tried to stay calm, because again, it’s not her fault that she is being taught these things. This is a big deal though and she needs to understand that we are all equal. I told her that I never wanted to hear her say anything like that again, no matter if she heard other people saying it or not, and she was just like “What? What did I say?” I turned around and marched all the way back up to our hotel room, with her trailing behind me.

Once we got into the room, I explained to her that God created us all, with many different ethnicities, and that we were all EQUAL. I asked her how she would feel if people assumed that she was dirty just because her skin was pale. She told me that she wouldn’t like it. I asked her if she thought she was better than people of different color and she told me no. DH and I talked to her about her biracial cousins and how hurt they would be if they knew that she said anything like that about them, or anyone else. So then the concept of biracial had to be explained to her, because she just couldn’t believe that two people of different races could love each other or make babies together. Once we got past that, she asks me “Are you mixed, or just white?” I explained that I am part Caucasian and part Native American, and that I wouldn’t rather be anyone else. I asked her if I wasn’t good enough because I didn’t come from just one race and she said “NO!”, so I explained that the only people out there that I didn’t think were as good as me were the ones that discriminate against others.

I don’t understand why adults are sitting around telling a child that people are only acceptable if they are just like them. This country is a melting pot! These children are our future, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let a little hate monger run around my house! It’s not her fault, and it’s sad to understand that I will not be able to erase all of the hate that BM is putting inside this child. We had a similar issue a few months ago, about sexuality. She made a gay joke/slur that I was really shocked about. I explained that I believed that people should be able to love whoever they want and that we do not have the power to pass judgment on any one. She was then told by her mother that because I said that, I didn’t believe in God, and that I had bad morals that she shouldn’t listen to. She told SD that I was a democrat, which made me a bad person because the democrats were responsible for the oil spill. WTF! I don’t talk religion or politics with ANYONE because we are all entitled to our own beliefs, so why the hell is she telling her 7 year old daughter this type of bullshit? Apparently since I believe in equality for all mankind, I’m a freaking Satan worshiping hippie!