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...