The truth about Santa

[ste_noni]

[b.org x-post]

After [an online elsewhere] conversation, I had decided to let Ellie believe what she wanted to and not worry about it much. But in the last few weeks, she had asked me a lot about where certain people lived - the Wonder Pets, Dora, and a few other pretend characters - and I told her they were pretend. Then two weeks ago, she asked me point blank whether Santa was pretend. Well, I felt obligated to tell her the truth and it didn't seem to make any impression at all.

Then today her teacher pulled me aside at pick up and told me that when discussing Santa in class today, Ellie had responded that he was pretend. She asked me to ask Ellie to share that only with adults so that other kids could believe what they wanted. She wanted to know if we had any religious objections to Ellie hearing about Santa (no) and offered to let her sit somewhere else while Santa is discussed in class. It was sort of funny - while I support the teacher and get what she was saying, it was weird to me that i was being asked to ask my child to keep *the truth* to herself. But I get it.

Comments

[bicrim.livejournal.com]

We have always told Elliot that Santa was pretend, to the horror of my mother, and he has never seemed even a little bit upset about it. I haven't really thought about other kids, though. I'm not really cool with telling him to not share the truth, on principle, but I do get the teacher's point.

[ste-noni.livejournal.com]

Yeah, we have a history of childhood sexual abuse in our extended family, so "hide the truth" kind of freaks me out. But I'm going to try to emphasize with her that she should tell the truth to adults, but maybe not kids? But you know, even as I'm writing that, it makes me uncomfortable. I don't know...

[maidengurl.livejournal.com]

I remember going through this. We explained that Santa represented the spirit of Christmas (or something to that effect) and that some kids need to believe in Santa because they don't yet understand believing in something they can't see.

Obviously it has been a while since we actually have the talk with either of the kids about knowing the truth but preserving the belief of others. Somehow we were able to explain it well enough that neither kid had a problem and neither felt like they were hiding the truth.

[casperflea.livejournal.com]

I honestly don't think the vast majority of 4 year olds aren't going to have their belief destroyed by one kid telling them Santa isn't real. If they want to believe at that age, they will in the face of any opposition. And the ones prone to skepticism, like Ellie (and Casper) won't be wounded either. Let her say what she wants to say. I do like the "spirit of Christmas" workaround, though.

[msbelle.livejournal.com]

yeah, I decided to not introduce the idea of Santa as real since 1)mac had no tradition of Santa and 2)establishing trust is HUGE. Still he went through a bit of a phase of "I want to believe in Santa no matter what you say" (I blame the Polar Express). Fine by me. And I did much the same of others when introducing what Santa was, because ignoring it is not even a possibility, I said he is a person that was created to represent the spirit of giving and good feeling around Christmas time. But I also told him that if he talked at school about Santa not being real that he might upset some other kids and that some families tell kids that Santa is real until they are older.

Tooth Fairy has actually been the much harder imaginary persona to deal with.

[burrell.livejournal.com]

Franny told me herself that the tooth fairy is your parents, and she still chooses to believe in her. How do you counter that?