Dear Mariella

Dear Mariella

A father planning a visit to Australian in-laws worries about the grandparents' racist language influencing his toddler. Mariella Frostrup advises a robust but jokey strategy
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Family on beach in Australia
An extended trip to Australia to visit grandparents will be enjoyed better with a plan in place to combat racist language. Photograph: Alamy

THE DILEMMA I'm the father of a three-year-old, and my wife and I have another baby on the way. We live in the US, but plan a two-month break in Australia when our second child is born so my wife's parents get to see their grandchildren. There's one problem: my parents-in-law tend to use racist language. Like many people of their generation, they wouldn't consider themselves in any way racist and are the nicest people. But my mother-in-law will often describe someone who is mean as "Jewish", and they tend to characterise people by race: "the black", "the Mexican" (even if they're not Mexican). I don't want my son to learn to see people in terms of race, or to call someone a "Jew" if they won't share a toy.

It's certainly a conundrum. Recently I spent a week in Madagascar, where kids in villages would rush out to wave and shout "Salut, Vaza", which means "Hello, Whitey!" and seemed both charming and appropriate. We live in an increasingly fast-paced world, where attitudes and the figures of speech we use to illustrate them are often outmoded before we've even got our tongues around them. I have friends who have embraced text speak with such enthusiasm that I puzzle for hours over the meaning of "Nxt wk u sd dnt u?" Translations gratefully accepted.

It's in no way an excuse, but as I face the bewildering array of technologies available to improve my life, communication and shopping, my head spins. For those whose childhoods began in the 1950s or even early 1960s the pace of change nowadays is positively dizzying.

Your parents-in-law appear to be trapped in the Mad Men era, when men were men, women were grateful, everyone smoked and Shylock was the prototype for a whole race, who had only recently escaped complete annihilation. Few of us would choose to be complicit in wrongdoing and nothing changes without pioneers and provocateurs, so keeping silent for the sake of family harmony is not an option. That doesn't mean you need to arrive laden with political correctness. This has created histrionic heights of outrage in the US and even in Europe, leaving one in fear of describing a banana in case it's found to be offensive.

In your situation the fact that you live in the US could be a blessing. Instead of displaying personal outrage every time your in-laws commit a faux pas in the racist vein, engage with them conspiratorially. Dazzle them with some extreme examples of the PC-speak employed on liberal American campuses and they'll be able to have a good chuckle with you at how crazy the world has become. Then, you can gently point out their transgressions without appearing to have completely lost your mind.

Talking frequently about your own racially mixed contemporaries will help ease the big world into their living room, and telling hair-raising stories about the embarrassments children can face, or cause, by picking up the wrong vocabulary will help to bring home your point.

Ultimately this relatively short period is unlikely to dramatically affect your child's vocabulary. Stay alert to the foibles of your in-laws and engage in swift damage limitation. The arbitrary nature of the titbits children pick up can be surprising and offensive, though thankfully our ability to laugh at such mistakes hasn't been totally overridden by moral outrage. A friend's daughter told her nursery teacher the other day that her grandmother had a "terrible vagina". The word she was actually looking for was angina!

The black, the Mexican, the Help or even the redhead are descriptions designed to render an individual part of a faceless throng. Such nonsensical stereotyping is highlighted in our newspapers daily. In my time I've been counted among "burqa blondes" – celebrity women you can't tell apart; "TV blondes" – women you can't tell apart on television; and Ruthless Blondes – women with careers.

The best remedy and revenge is to laugh. My first step on arrival would be to turn your in-laws' retro stereotyping into a family joke. Reinvent them as "the Aussies" and mention Tinnies, convicts and Crocodile Dundee a lot. Before you know it your in-laws will be begging you not to carry on the practice, or the joke! ■

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Mariella Frostrup, the Observer's agony aunt, offers words of wisdom