h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I was fortunate to grow up with my dad around to answer questions. Dad's a physics teacher, so when I had a question about why the sky is blue and the grass green, he would tell me "Light has varying lengths, depending upon which color it is. The grass isn't actually green. It reflects green light, therefore it appears green. It absorbs all other light, which it needs for the process of creating sugar through chlorophyll. The sky looks blue because blue light travels the furthest. This is also why very deep water appears blue in all the scuba-diver photos."

Sometimes I didn't understand the answer, but I appreciated hearing the truth.

You shouldn't always tell them the truth though. I think the saddest thing I have ever read was some 'advice' in a magazine, saying that you shouldn't tell children about Santa Claus because it is always wrong to lie to children. Half of the magic of childhood comes from believing in things like Santa and the Tooth Fairy, and when you work out they're not real, it makes you proud for having worked it out yourself.

Also, like my Mum says, if parents always tell the truth to children, the children will think that adults never lie, so when the stranger says 'Your Mummy asked me to pick you up from school today' it will never cross their mind that it might be a lie.

One way to fulfill both is to simply 'recount' the stories of the Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy, Santa Claus, etc. Avoid all questions about whether they are or aren't realy true, until they're old enough that they already believe that they aren't true.

Also, make sure that they understand that, just because you always tell the truth, other people may not... And anyway, the train of thought: 'Hrmm... Other people might lie to the child, so I, as a good parent, have to lie to him too, to get him prepared for the world...' is not actually a very reasonable one.

Personally, I prefer the method of telling them the truth as well... My parents followed it when I was at around that age, and I have no complaints whatsoever.

I agree. Lying to your children just teaches them that they can't trust you. It won't make them any less likely to trust a stranger!

But the truth about Santa Claus isn't really necessary to a child. If a child asks you if Santa Claus is real, what do you say? My parents always told me that Santa was real if I believed in him. This meant that I would get a stocking full of candy at Xmas, so I 'believed' in Santa until I was about fifteen, and decided that weight loss was more my cup of tea. Same with the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy. Well, Mom and Dad are Christians, so the pagan ritual of the Easter bunny was deemphasized, but I still got to hunt Easter eggs and found a chocolate bunny in my basket every Easter.

I saw the subject 'tell them the truth' and thought I'd add my

Some adults seem to think it's embarassing not to be able to come up with an answer, so they 'invent' an explanation rather than admitting that they don't know

If you don't know the answer to a question, simply say so - it won't hurt the kid to find out that no one knows *everything* - and kids tend to see through fake explanations anyway, which will make them less trusting in their own parent

I used to bat the Santa question back at them, and say "Well, what do you think?"

I agree - children don't have to believe that the parent knows everything.

When I was young, I was irritated by the tendency of adults to treat me as a child. Now that I'm an adult, I try to remember that and treat kids as people - not a second-class citizen because of their age.

i found the baby question easy with my 4 year old. It's explaining why food/drinks that are advertised for children are mostly bad for you and why they are still advertised. We have come to the conclusion that like some programmes adverts are pretend and they don't tell the truth about the yucky ingredients!
I agree you just tell the truth, except when it comes to Father Christmas. If I can't answer then off to the library or on the internet we go to find out.
I personally feel people should walk more with their children. I don't drive so we walk miles and my son has learned so much from our chats and observations along the way, he knows many more things than the driven around children!

oh yeah, and he doesn't understand why most babies have bottles when mummies make milk for babies! I don't know why either!!

The bottle thing is about the fact that for some reason it was taboo to show the breasts until recently, and some mothers are still in that mindset. My parents were always pretty up front with me about sex, etc., and I'm not messed up, though this meant i was confused when I went to school and the other kids didn't know, and when I tried to explain, they siggered and laughed - they didn't even know the word 'penis', for crying ou loud! Anyway, if you really want to wait to tell your kids about sex, go with the classic: say it's something that only a Mommy and Daddy who love each other very much can do. If they press you, don't say "I'll tell you when you're older" - they'll just say, after a few seconds, "Well, I'm older now, so can you tell me?" Try saying 'magic' or something, or maybe "Everyone sooner or later finds out for themselves, and you will soon enough." Or just tell them the truth and get it over with. I do believe that kids should be told Santa exists, but be careful not to leave anything contradictory lying around.

I'm with the tell them the truth, and the Father Christmas / Tooth Fairy stuff as pretty much outlined above.

Also admitting when you don't know something is good for the kids. But you have to know your own kids to know how much of the truth to tell them.

We're now starting to see the Save the Ethiopian Starving Children on tv more and more, and the NSPCC ads have to be switched off due to me telling my 6 year old the truth that some mummies and daddies are less than nice to their children. I eeked it out as long as I could, but in the end she just ran off in tears. I won't make that mistake with #2, she'll get the truth about stuff like that when I know she's ready.

My father always told me the truth, in excruciating detail, until I got bored. I'm more in favor of the silly answer, i.e. "The sky is blue because if it were green we wouldn't know when to stop mowing," or (as an answer to "Where's Mom?") "I think she's hiding here somewhere." Teaches kids to be silly in all circumstances and/or really annoys them. Come to think of it, I do that with adults too.

Here's a way to tell your kids there's no Santa that will hopefully not leave them too scarred: Santa does exist, but not in the way you think. There's no toy factory at the North Pole, but Santa lives in the heart of every loving Mommoy and Daddy, and grandparent, and possibly older sibling, who loves their family and the world in general. So you see, your and I have been Santa all along, and when you have kids of your own, you can be Santa too.

I wish my parents had said that.

oh that's nice, I think I'll use that.

where do I send the royalty check?

Lovely Neo

I wish mine had too.

you mean santa doesn't exist??

seriously though, i think if the kid is old enough to ask abotu whether or not santa exists, they're old enough to accept that he doesn't...i have two older brothers who obviously found out santa didn't exist and then passed that knowledge on to me, but i went on "believing" all the same so i got a stocking...
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Good one. My parents still give me a stocking even though no one in my immediate family believes in the gid guy any more. Oh, and here's a general, all-purpose excuse for a question you don't know: "God/Yahweh/Jehovah/Allah/Ganesha/whatever you believe in made it that way."

My plan for dealing with the Santa thing (although my kids aren't old enough to doubt yet) is to tell them something along these lines... "You know you do a nativity play at school? Well the baby in the play isn't the real baby Jesus, he lived a long time ago, but its an important story to remember and to know. And the Santas in the stores, they're not the real Santa either. The real Santa was a man called St Nicholas and he lived long ago, but we remember him because what he taught us about giving to others is important". With more details about the "reality" of Jesus and/or St Nicholas as they need. Not sure how it will go, ask me in another 4 years!

One of my worst experiences working as a playscheme volunteer with 7 year olds was when we almost had a full scale riot because one of the kids told all the others that the tooth fairy was just your mum and dad. I thought it was up to the parents to decide what they want to tell their kids, so I deflected it by asking questions back, which I still think is a good tactic for helping kids to think for themselves.

First I asked the instigater "Why do you think the tooth fairy is your mum and dad?"

"Because I wasn't really asleep and I saw my dad come and take the tooth"

"Why would your dad want your old tooth?"

At which point the others started in with their own theories. Eventually, after much discussion, they decided that the tooth fairy does exist, becuase if your mum and dad want to give you money they just give you it, and they wouldn't need the tooth anyway. But if the tooth fairy thinks you're awake she uses camoflague to look like your mum and dad.

Maybe not the most accurate conclusion they could have reached, but they reached it by logical debate among themselves, which is a valuable skill for them to learn.

Simialrly my three year old recently decided that there are two tooth fairies, one which takes the teeth away from big children, and one which hammers them in to babies, and thats why her baby brother cries when his teeth are coming. She was so proud of having worked it out herself! I don't think it will do her a great deal of harm to believe that for a while, although I never said "yes thats right" or actually lied to her.

And by answering a question with another question, or even a "what do you think?" I find out an awful lot about the way my kids think. I explain to the best of my ability, and I encourage my little girl (the baby's only one, too young to ask) to help me look up the answers for things I don't know - recent classics have included "why is the sky so big I can't count it?" and "why is the rain in drops". I don't know enough science to answer that myself, let alone in terms a 3 year old would understand, so we investigate in books and online. Its never too soon to teach them that it can be fun to learn new things.

That's so cool - I hope I am patient enough to parent that way (when I eventually have them)!

I am a firm advocate of telling the truth. And making it magic whenever possible !

I have an example where not telling the truth to kids was actually very harmful. My dad re-married quite late, and had 2 kids from this second marriage, when he was in his mid-fifties. So his wife thought it wise not to tell the kids that they had older parents, because "it might bother them, and they might find it odd when they compare with schoolmates'". So she substracted a good 10 years.
Untill the kids were big enough to do the math (when you can read, your parent's birth date is everywhere, driver's licence and all), and that was quite a drama, my sister shouting and crying, not because she had an old Dad, she couldn't care less, but because here Mum had lied to her. She was hurt for a long time.
A few years before that, the Mum had had a serious health problem, that she kept secret from the kids. Somehow, the boy learn about it, and was quite traumatised, and the whole family was in therapy for a while...
You thought they'd learn...

Adults, in general, do not realise that kids are real persons, who deserve a full serving of respect in spite of their small size, and have very early an ability to reason and to understand, even when they do not have the experience and memories to back it up.
A 2 years old kid understands a lot about psychology and relationships, though (s)he can't verbalise it, and you can see how they lead their parents with it and make everybody obbey their rules sometimes.

It is one thing to tell fairy tales, and these stories are part of our education, it is a very different thing to give false explanations or to lie (unless these are plain silly, and given with the mutual agreement that they _are_ silly).