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

My littlun is 7 and believes totaly in Father Christmas.
I'm now worrying about what will happen when she finds out its me and as I'm also the Easter Bunny and the Tooth fairy shes gonna put 2 and 2 together and figure out that they're not real either.
I'm starting to feel guilty about lying to her.
Should I tell her myself or just let the playground rumors do their evil job? If I do tell her, when should I do it, at what age?
Oh wise h2g2ers, what do you think

I've just spent the last few weeks collecting bits and pieces for my kids' stockings. They're aged 24, 22 and 18.


I don't think they believe in any more

Tell her before someone else does. If someone else tells her first, she will be angry at you for lying to her. If you tell her that "she's a big girl now and old enough to know the truth," she will look at it as a mark of respect for her being a big girl. I hope.

Sorry - I don't agree with that. She won't be angry - she'll just accept it as yet another one of those daft things grown-ups do.

It's not lying - it's part of the magic of Christmas.

I agree with Teuchter. Cast your mind back to when you were a child. Did you suffer any trauma when you found out the truth. I know I didn't.

Madbeachcomber, are you *sure* your seven year old still believes in Father Christmas, or is she just playing along with you to keep you happy.

When my Mother told me the truth at around seven years old, I wasn't learning anything I didn't already know. Common sense and reason had brought me to the truth even at that tender age. Maybe it was because I had three younger siblings that I kept this little secret I had worked out to myself.

Donald

I was really upset about it. Not so much about Santa as about feeling that my mom had lied to me... maybe I was just an off-kid.

I'd wait until she asks, then tell her the truth.

I don't remember exactly what I told my son when he asked, I do remmber, he was 7, we were on the from seats of a double decker I told him something like, the actual person Father Christmas is not real, but the 'spirit' is, and it's a time of year that most people are happy, something along those lines.

I never told my son about tooth fairies, or easter bunnies, maybe I was mean.

He's 17 now, and has spent the last few weeks working in a Santa's Grotto, a couple of times when Santa didn't turn up, he's been Santa his job finishes on Friday, just as starts his one day a year job.

Emmily

I can't tell you how being lied to about santa when I was young affected me. Everyone I know was told the same lie and then when the adults were found out they defended the lie. I learned that my parents were willing to deceive me for no better reason than to get a chuckle. All around, society was backing them up.

I never told my kids that santa was real but I found myself in an awkward position when relatives insisted on playing the old trick on them. I was made out to be a villan for NOT lying to them.

I believe that it is basicly wrong to lie. I also believe that if I find that I have lied that I need to admit my wrongs to the ones I have lied to.

It's kind of a heavy response to your question but I think that when we lie to our kids, we teach them to lie. When we are honest with our kids, and everyone else for that matter, we teach them honesty.



YB

Really Yogabiker you might find life a little easier if you lightened up a bit.

Are there really no circumstances when a little white lie can be for the best?

I'm scrabbling round for some examples but I'm going to have to make sure I don't invite you to any suprise parties as you would obviously have to let the guest of honour know all about it to make sure that they weren't emotionally scarred by all their friends lying to them!

Lying to someone to manipulate and deceive is one thing but to try and add some magic and wonder to a small child's Christmas time is a completely different story.

I am a paediatric nurse and I think I know the imporance of not lying to a child when something bad like a needle is coming up. But to maintain a certain amount of wonder and enchantment about christmas is a completely different matter.

In my experience most children go along with the illusion long after they know the truth about where the gifts come from. I'm not sure if that is because they start to feel grown up about being part of the secret or because they just like to pretend they are still impressionable.

I think if you take away Father Christmas you lose a big part of the family celebration.

I'm sorry if you found the finding out part traumatic but you only have to look around you to see a huge number of adults who somehow managed to make the transition from naive child to aware adult without too much trauma, so much so that they want to carry on the magic with their own children.

I dont know who told him but my 7 year old has known for ages n scoffs at me for still wanting to believe it all

"I'm starting to feel guilty about lying to her."

Good.



"shes gonna put 2 and 2 together and figure out that they're not real either"

I should hope so. So what are you going to tell her when she asks about god and Jesus? Gonna try to defend that pernicious nonsense too?

I can't remember ever really, seriously believing in Santa Claus. Even when I was very young, there was a definite sense of "playing along", because it was fun. There was a certain uncomfortable feeling to it, also, certainly - I had the definite worry that perhaps it WAS true, but nothing about it made sense. It was quite disconcerting.

If I were you, I'd wait for her to bring it up, because probably sooner or later, she'll just turn around to you and say something like "Mommy, Santa Claus is just a story, really, isn't he?". And you can congratulate her on knowing that, on working it out, and explain to her the power of stories.

Stories make us feel good. They can simply entertain. They can add magic to what might otherwise be a more mundane experience. They can be a traditional link to a long-forgotten past. They can explain, in simplified form, concepts that would be too complex to handle in their full glory. But eventually one grows up enough to set aside the story, to see through it, closer to the truth. That doesn't make the story bad, or even "untrue". It's just a useful approximation. Your daughter is going to be "lied to" at school by her teachers for YEARS. Check out A685055 .

The important lesson to teach her is that the only bad thing you can do with these things is cling on to them in the teeth of the obvious fact they're not really true - to try to continue in a state of childish ignorance when you should set aside childish things and grow up.

Like I said... just wait until she asks you about Jesus...

H.

This is an important part of development...learning that the lieing b*****ds lie to you.

Like the yippie slogan says - 'Never trust anyone over thirty....no, forty....no,.....'

Technically Santa does exist... but he won't be coming down any chimneys in the forseeable future (I saw a bit of a programme the other day about a team of people who were trying to save St. Nick's bones from crumbling to dust)

Santa's not real?

<>

Ahh... so the Roman records, the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi codices are all fake then?

Yes, careless language. I'm sure he meant 'The divinity of Jesus'.

I know... I just wanted to be pedantic.

I don't think my son believes as strongly in Santa this year as he did last year (he's 10 now), and I've dropped the whole Santa routine thing, but he still insists that Santa brought him his favourite present last year so I think I'm more annoyed about the whole thing that he is, because he never bloody plays with anything I get him for more than two days unless it's attached to the playstation. So some other bugger gets the credit for the one thing he's been attached to for the entire year.

Most kids don't seem to mind being told the story of Santa bringing gifts and then finding out it's just a story. I think if the relationship between parent/s and child are strong enough they'll weather any storm it causes.

It's very hard not to lie to kids, in one way or another.

In our house, only the stockings came from - the big present came from Mum and Dad. I just didn't see why someone else should get the credit for that.

The time to come clean is when a child asks the question, as they invariably do. Our eldest was quite happy to be in on the secret - and still got her own stocking too. A win:win situation.

I took serious issue with the manager of our local supermarket one year. Above the satsumas etc were enormous signs saying "Stocking Fillers". Rather superfluous really; parents do not need to be reminded about these things.
They took the signs down after I pointed out that there were children who could read but still believed in . Threatening to 'shop' them to the local press as rotten spoilsports helped a bit

The person who best knows what to tell a child is that child's parent.
It's not up to me, the supermarket, the local vicar or headteacher what anyone else wants to tell their own child.

When any of you have to tell your children about Sex, drugs, mortgages or any of those big things in life do you want your children to see you as people they can trust and rely on for accurate and realistic information?

Or do you want them to have deep memories from their childhood that you are a person who tells them lies simply because it amuses you to keep them in the dark and mislead them?

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