I feel rather guilty

[iguana_tonante]

A good way to approach it. Unfortunately, I've never had the courage. People will get aggressive with you if you dare to reveal things they don't want revealed. In theory, however, I agree with you entirely.

Well, I may be in a better position to enforce my policy since I don't have to deal with kids too much, just a couple of relatives' children. And they are too busy running around screaming to ask me about Santa.

Not to worry, iguana, Santa Claus is real. Me!
Now, granted, I don't do many of those things in the stories, but then things get embellished quite a bit anyways.

So you don't visit all the world but just your neighbourhood, you don't use a sleet with reindeer but a bicycle, and you don't have milk and cookies but Jack Daniel's and a cigar. I can believe that.

 

[Jadzia]

Santa Claus [...] when I realized my parents made it up, I felt disappointed. Not because Santa wasn't real, but because my parents felt the need to lie to me to make the world "better" from what it really was.

I felt the same way about that.

I think I was 6 or 7, come January, one of my friends at infant school told me how she creeped down in the night and saw her parents placing all the parcels. When I got home I questioned my mum and she told me the truth. I was annoyed with her for these seven years of deception.

But at the same time, it is a lovely fantasy that I have lovely memories of, and I wouldn't like to not have those.

I think the ideal way of doing santa claus (which is how I'd do it if I ever have children) is to not present the fantasy so seriously. It can still be a mystery for the children where their presents come from.

I'd want the story to sound fictional to them, and lead them to ask me, "Is santa real?". And I would say, "Not really. But we like to pretend that he is "

 

[Miss Chicken]

I was walking through a shopping centre with my youngest son one Christmas. We passed by a Father Christmas. My son said to me 'That Santa is a fake". I said to him "why do you think that?". He said to me "Because there are Santas everywhere and not all of them can be real".

I think if you tell a child from the start that Santa is NOT real they don't get the benefit of working truth out for themselves. They think that their parents are the source of truth.

A couple of days later the same son said "I don't think Santa really uses reindeer to pull his sled, reindeers can't fly". I said to him "What about the Six White Boomers" (who Santa uses to pull his sled while in Australia). My son said "Kangaroos can't fly either".

The thing is my son was learning to rationalise the stories he had heard and work out what could be true. Shouldn't we be teaching children to do this rather them having them rely on us to tell them what is true and what isn't?

The following year my son said to me "Mum, I know that you are Santa but I still want to play the game". So that year he got presents from Santa. The next year he decided that he would prefer more expensive main presents (i.e the special presents under the tree from me, as oppose to small cheaper presents he woke up to find lying in the pillowslip on the end of his bed).

BTW I always called the character Father Christmas, but my children tended to call him Santa which means that the source of their belief was not just based on what I said.

 

[Alpha_Geek]

No worries, the child must learn sometime.

As for Steve Irvin, he died doing what he loved. I understand he always had a soft spot in his heart for marine life.

 

[Plecostomus]

At least my youngest cousin just found out Santa isn't real- so I can relax this Christmas .

You lie.

 

[Jadzia]

I think if you tell a child from the start that Santa is NOT real they don't get the benefit of working truth out for themselves. They think that their parents are the source of truth.

There's plenty of opportunities in life to get children to think for themselves and work out what is correct and incorrect. Christmas is only one month in the year, after all. I think that nurturing trust is also important. If a child has reason to believe she can't trust what her mum tells her, then in her mind, who can she trust?

 

[Mr Awe]

That's nothing to feel guilty about. The child has to learn to deal with death. And being upset (or shocked) is perfectly natural when it's a figure we care about. I think it would be worse for information like this to be deliberately withheld for so long.

I agree with your sentinment, but how to deal with this should be up to the parent.

But, this is in no way Miss Chicken's fault. It was an unintentional slip and there was no way for you to know. So, I hope you're not fretting over it too much. The kid will get over it soon.

Mr Awe

 

[Deranged Nasat]

No worries, the child must learn sometime.

As for Steve Irvin, he died doing what he loved. I understand he always had a soft spot in his heart for marine life.

Ouch.

At least my youngest cousin just found out Santa isn't real- so I can relax this Christmas .

You lie.

About the relaxing, yes; I have dissertations to write.

 

[Miss Chicken]

I think if you tell a child from the start that Santa is NOT real they don't get the benefit of working truth out for themselves. They think that their parents are the source of truth.

There's plenty of opportunities in life to get children to think for themselves and work out what is correct and incorrect. Christmas is only one month in the year, after all. I think that nurturing trust is also important. If a child has reason to believe she can't trust what her mum tells her, then in her mind, who can she trust?

My kids trusted me, as I never told them lies about Santa, any more than I told them lies about the Wizard of Oz, or any other fictional character. My chidlren were always free to ask me if something was real and I would generally answer with "Do you think it is real?"

In fact, my youngest and I had a very large fantasy world we created together. He owned more than 200 troll dolls, each of whom had a name and a personality. We used to make up stories about them. We also did the same for the fantasy lives of our pets. Telling my son about Father Christmas was just another part of the fantasy world we shared.

My own father used to tell me both fictional and true stories about his childhood. It was up to me to determine which stories were real and which weren't. Some of his fictional stories were as far-fetched as Santa stories and I quickly worked out that they weren't true.

The character Edward Bloom from Big Fish reminds me of my father - I saw the movie for the first time soon after my father's death and it was a great confort for me.

 

[Amaris]

So you don't visit all the world but just your neighbourhood, you don't use a sleet with reindeer but a bicycle, and you don't have milk and cookies but Jack Daniel's and a cigar. I can believe that.

In these times of economic uncertainty, it's best to play it close to your vest.


J.

 

[RJDiogenes]

Steve... Irwin... is... dead?!

 

[Rii]

Nothing to feel guilty about. The parents, on the other hand, should be ashamed of making her child live in a fake world (strong wording, I know, but just to make my point). Children should never be shielded from reality: they need to learn, and learning with the help of a parent is the best way to deal with the worst aspect of reality: death, loss, pain, illness, etc.

There's nothing to suggest that the information had been deliberately withheld from the child, though, it merely hadn't been provided to them. It's entirely possible that the subject had never come up.