This is the longest shortest time from WNYC. I'm Hillary Frank. This is a show where we

talk about your struggles with your kids, your struggles with your parents, your struggles

to even figure out whether you want kids and how you're going to have them. All that

family stuff that keeps you up at night. Our last episode was my live interview in Oakland

with Roman Mars, you know the host from the Fantastic Podcast, 99% invisible. After

the show, Roman and I stuck around to talk to the audience and at the very end, this

woman came up and introduced herself to me. Hi, I'm Sapna McCarthy. Sapna told me about

something that had happened recently with her four-year-old daughter. I grabbed her nose,

you know, he'd do with kids. I got your nose, I got your nose and then I told her, I'm

going to keep your nose, I'm going to put it on my face and you can have my nose. And

she was like, no, no, you can't do that. And I said, why not? She said, because then,

if I have your nose, then I have to be big like you. And then you have my nose, you have

to be small like me. And your nose is brown, so I'll have to be brown. And you'll have

to be white. Sapna is Indian. Her husband is a pale white dude from England. This whole

nose-swapping thing got me thinking about how my daughter is mixed too. I'm a Freckley

Red-headed Russian Jew. My husband's parents are from El Salvador and Mexico. I want my

daughter to identify as a Latina Jew and I want her to think of herself equally as both.

But do I even have a say in that? Today on the show, we've got two stories. They're both about

kids telling their moms they don't get what it means to be ethnically mixed. The first is from a

mom's perspective. That's Sapna. The second is from the kids' point of view. Stay with us.

Okay, so remember when we left off with Sapna, her daughter, Reina, was schooling her on why swapping

noses is dangerous. She was like, your nose is brown, so I'll have to be brown. And you'll have to

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