A five-year-old cannot possibly be expected to keep a secret like that. They have lots of empathy; they also have the self-control and attention span of a gnat. You surely could not have thought he’d successfully hold that back.
Same here, and this is causing…well, not friction in my marriage. But a case of head-scratching as neither my husband nor I can fully appreciate the other’s point of view.
I was not traumatized by the revelation that Santa was not real, and believe me, I was a pretty sensitive and easily-upset child. So, I never thought it was a huge thing. My husband, on the other hand, is all tied up in knots because we have been lying to our children and *what will we do *when they find out and maybe they’ll be mad and sad and devastated and it will set a precedent where it’s Ok to lie and then how are we going to get out of THAT mess and I’m completely 
Really? Santa? The jolly guy with the bag of toys is going to fuck up our lives that much?
So, it’s good to read some of these responses of how Truthers 
handle it.
Honestly, lorene, it sounds like you are relatively ambivalent about it, whereas your husband has strong feelings. When those situations crop up in my marriage, we usually go with the person who has strong feelings.
I don’t see the harm in it at all.
I don’t recall my exact age when I started figuring out that Santa wasn’t real. But the point is that I figured it out, and that made me feel very smart and grown-up. Like brad_d, I didn’t feel betrayed or traumatized in any way. My 8-year-old nephew is at this point now, and he’s having much fun with the wink-wink, I-know-the-truth-but-I’m-playing-along game. It’s a natural progression, I think.
The indignant “I won’t lie to my children” crowd should lighten up a little. They’re kids, not mini-adults. Let them enjoy the fleeting trappings of kid-dom while they can.
Seriously? This is pretty over-the-top for a Santa Claus thread.
Oh, absolutely. I just wish he’d have said something prior to mid-December when our kids are already 6 and 8 years old. I think it really didn’t occur to him until after we’d been doing it for a few years. The 8-year-old has pretty much figured it out, but my husband is concerned about her reaction.
I LOLed. Oh, yes, I did.
I myself dread the day when a child of mine asks about the slowly-tightening grip of death. “Sorry, kid. Completely inexorable, no matter what the other kids tell you. Their parents are lying to them.”
My question is: Do parents actually sit their kids down to tell them about Santa in the first place? We never did. The kids learned about Santa from cultural osmosis. When they have questions (like, “Wait - we don’t have a chimney! How does Santa get in?”) I answer them honestly, but with ambivalence, so if they’re ready to not believe, they can and I’ve never lied, and if they still need to believe for some emotional or social reason, they can.
The answer to that one, by the way, was, “Wow, that’s a really good observation! What do you think?” To which the 5 year old girl replied, “Hmm…maybe he has a magic key!” (Which is the same exact answer I gave my mother 31 years ago.) My son, at the same age, said, “I think you buy the presents and label them from Santa,” which was a great answer, too. To her, I said, “That’s a really interesting idea! Wouldn’t it be cool to have a magic key? You could sneak into school at night and leave presents for your teacher!” and to him, I said, “Yep, you’re exactly right. You’re a pretty smart kid, you know that?” Honest answers both, and what each needed to hear at the time.
When asked anything, I answer honestly, be it about Santa or sex or why Grandma can’t remember our names most of the time. But I answer only what’s asked; I don’t launch into a treatise on the Kama Sutra when the kid asks how a baby gets out of the mom, and I don’t jump ahead three steps to “Santa is a mythic construct meant to illustrate the sociocultural importance of interdependence and generosity,” when she notes that we don’t have a chimney. Will that talk come? Sure it will. But it will be directed by her at the point in her development when it’s a natural progression, so it’s not a devastating incident, but a gentle marker of maturity.
Ah, yes. I remember reading that passage. Her Ma really nailed that one.
It seems I’ve been whooshed.
Ah well, there’s a first time for everything.
Yeesh, I believed in Santa until I was nine and I have no lasting scars. I asked my mom if she and dad were the ones who REALLY put out presents, she said yes, I cried for about five minutes and then I was fine. I mean, I was disappointed that Santa wasn’t real, but yeesh, the next day I was back to normal. She made me french fries and chicken nuggets for dinner that night, and I was happy. I then realized she was the Tooth Fairy too, (so THAT’S how she knew I was going to use the money for a Barbie doll – teeheee!)
(I still pretended to believe in the Easter Bunny for a few more months, or so)
I was sworn to secrecy around my sister – she was two.
Gah. I can’t imagine feeling “betrayed”. shrugs Believing in Santa was fun. My grandparents’ neighbor used to call me and my cousins on the phone every year as “Santa” and ask us what we wanted for Christmas.
And now that my cousin has kids of her own, she comes and spends Christmas with her parents. Our other uncle comes to visit on Christmas morning as “Santa”. Hehehehe.
No offense, but some people get waaaaaay too uptight.
I can imagine feeling betrayed.
But then, I have a good imagination. I can imagine lots of things.
I think part of what has my husband worked up into a frenzy about how our kids will react when they eventually find out the truth is the story his work supervisor told him. She told her son when he was somewhere around 10 years old—he clung to the Santa belief and she felt she had to tell him. he was so mad/sad/upset that he went outside and hid in the dog’s house and would not come out.
Luckily, we don’t have a dog house. Or a dog.
Ha!
Yes, I agree that the time to make the decision about the Santa thing is before your kids are old enough to start asking about it.
For me, the potential trauma (or lack thereof) I would cause was kind of a non-issue, because frankly, I expect that I am going to do some things that traumatize my kids. You just never know what’s going to stick with a child and get brought up in therapy 30 years later. I mean, this Santa thing is a great example: Some kids found out their parents had been lying about Santa and reacted by shrugging and saying “Meh.” Others freaked out and then had to be forcibly removed from the dog house. So you really never can tell.
For me, I just didn’t see the point in violating my rule about never lying to my kids for the sake of a story that I don’t really care about and never really believed in as a kid myself anyway.
Kids are people, and I afford them the same respect I would anyone. I don’t see the value of being encouraged to believe silly fantasies when you’re young. But then, I’m obnoxiously practical and literal.
My kid is 5 and we’re still in the Santa stage of things. I don’t see any harm in it and he loves it. There are a few moments here and there where I can see he’s starting to think about this whole Santa thing and how it works, butt then the kid takes over again.
I’d agree with everyone above that weren’t traumatized or apparently felt betrayed by their folks when they found out. I think it’s a natural discovery for most kids that he isn’t real. I would say there’s a definite limit to how long it should go on though. I’ve had 7th graders in class that still thought he was a real dude.
I think expressing bewilderment or looking down on the 9 year old versions of people who were traumatized by finding out that Santa wasn’t real is like kicking a puppy. Really? Was that necessary? Do you possess so little empathy or imagination that you can’t imagine that some kids get fundamentally super upset by it?
I mentioned this in another Santa thread around here: I’m pretty sure that one of the reasons I was so rebellious as a teenager was because questioning authority and thinking for oneself was absolutely unthinkable in my house, as a child. My mom was the matriarch and her word was right, and it was law. Up until the Santa truthiness came out, she’d never lied to me before (that I knew of). I, who was extremely sheltered by my mother on purpose, learned too suddenly that adults lied. Someone who’d never questioned her parents on anything now began to question them on everything.
Seems logical enough to me. And a reason I plan to raise my children to be freethinkers sans Claus.
I do Santa with my kids (one’s 14 now - she knows), and I do it because it teaches the kids to believe in magic. And when they grow old enough to find out, I think that some of that magic feeling sticks around. I think it gives kids a chance to feel that magic and wonder, and some of that feeling sticks around and contributes to hope and optimism and wonder when they’re older.
I have no problem believing that some kids are deeply disappointed to find out the truth, but I have a hard time believing that disappointment lasts for very long, let alone become a life-long trauma. YMMV.
Oh, sure - my daughter may be upset by it when she gets older. Like MsWhatsit says, as a parent you’ll probably be surprised at the affect some things you do will have in later years.
So, bearing this in mind, my wife and I are left with a cost-benefit analysis. We did it somewhat implicitly, but if asked to make it more explicit I’d say something like this:[ul]
[li]We see with our own eyes that the Santa myth brings considerable enjoyment to our daughter now;[/li][li]We believe the risk of trauma and/or resentment upon its revelation/discovery as a myth is not zero but low;[/li][li]So we’re willing to take the risk, feeling that an overall beneficial outcome is far more likely.[/li][/ul]This estimation is, to be sure, strongly influenced by our own experiences as children. Not everybody comes to the same conclusions we have, clearly.
Nearly any damn thing we do (or don’t do) to/with/for our daughter could wind up backfiring and having negative consequences; all we can do is make our best guess as to how best to proceed and go. In the big picture, the Santa myth is just another, relatively minor, thing we’ve had to make a decision about. Big payoff now in terms of fun, and a risk of cost that we assess as low (but not zero) in the future. We found this decision easy.
Well, the thing is, I’ve never in real life met a single person was was “traumatized” by the Santa thing. So it IS bewildering. Some people are fragile or stupid or nuts or have evil parents, but I’m gonna play the heavy odds that my kid isn’t a nut.