With # 6, we’ve gotten slack about making sure the tooth fairy gets here on time. Seems the kid loses a tooth a week! On one of the forgotten occasions, we noticed her cat slept with her that night and told her the tooth fairy was allergic to cats. The next night her bedroom door was shut and the cat banished to her brothers room. She wanted her $1 !
i used to charge interest when the tooth fairy ‘forgot’ to come. a dollar a day. i made out well.
When we were about six or seven, my older brother (far too smart for his own good) had figured out the tooth-fairy thing. So he didn’t tell my parents one night when his tooth fell out, instead he waited until the morning to complain the tooth-fairy hadn’t been, and ambushed Dad putting 20 cents under the pillow.
Of course, he ruined a good thing for us since after that there was no tooth-fairy money.
Our tooth fairy was always late. Sometimes it took her a week to get to our place.
When I was about 5, I announced that I didn’t believe in the Tooth Fairy, but I wasn’t taking any chances, and putting my tooth under my pillow just in case. Well, my mother was (and is) an artist who had rapidograph pens laying around, they make a line about as wide as a fine hair. She took a piece of paper the size of a postage stamp, and wrote in teeeny, tiny letters, ‘I don’t believe in you, either.’
Sure, it’s funny NOW!
Five bucks? Wow.
I did almost that well, once, over a two-week period with a box of Tic Tacs, before Mom and Dad compared notes with each other, and then thought to count my teeth…
Yep, I’ve forgotten the Tooth Fairy on occasion. Depending on the circumstances and the age of the child involved in the fiasco, I either did the “Oh, here it is, the cat must have eaten it and hacked it up with a hairball after you got up. I’ll just wash it off now. Good as new” or it was the “That poor Tooth Fairy must have been insanely busy last night, maybe there was a dental convention in Ohio, I’m sure she’ll be round tonight” story. Do yourself a favor and save the extra money. Do this every time you’re tempted to pay your kids extra cause you’ve been a bad mommy. Then you can use all that money to help pay for the therapy bills the kids will be racking up in 20 years. 
We do our best, we try, we are human, we make mistakes. Lather, rinse and repeat until you believe it, although it may take awhile. I’m just getting there after 16 years of mommying. Good luck on your second round tonight!
Not to be a party-pooper here, but doesn’t anyone think it’s wrong to lie to a kid about the existance of a tooth fairy, as well as Santa and the Easter bunny? Looks like 3 guaranteed occasions when the time will come your kids will find out you lied to them – and probably at the hands of a schoolmate who knows better and is making fun of them.
I suppose that they may or may not be old enough at that point to make the distinction that the lie was good-hearted, but I know adults who still feel a combination of disappointment and a sense of at least minimal betrayal due to having experienced parental lies such as this.
And if you don’t lie to them about these things, you don’t have to worry about coming up with more lies to cover yourself when you forget something.
If you can’t tell the difference between “playing” and “lying”, Starving Artist, well, maybe the lack of food has finally gotten to you.
Lies hurt. Playing pretend is fun. You remember fun, don’t you? When my kids are older, I hope they will remember putting carrots out for Rudolph with the same fondness that they remember dressing up and playing “princess” or “aliens” or “Japanese tea ceremony”. It’s all the same thing. Do you think that when my daughter invites me into the living room for an impromptu ballet recital, I should point my finger at her and shout; “LIAR! You’ve never even taken ballet, and that’s not a real tutu, it’s just a pink satin slip from my underwear drawer!”
As for your “friends who felt betrayed”, IMO that is a cover for other, unrelated issues they have with their parents that they don’t feel like confronting.
No. But maybe that’s because when I asked my parents honestly, they answered me in kind. The logic of the situation (having to cover so many children all in one night) made me really wonder, so I asked them and I found out.
I took no small amount of pleasure from playing Santa in later years, albeit for my siblings.
Kids like to play pretend. They like to imagine fanciful things, they like to play at being other people, they like to dress up and they love love love free money! Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy all fall under the first bit there (fanciful things), as do fairy tales, wizards, unicorns and the Red Sox winning the World Series.
That’s even ignoring the special aspect of Santa Claus and their ilk to kids who aren’t born with silver spoons - kids like me. Having an entire year of waiting (and it’s bad enough in February. October is horrible, November is excruciating, and December 24 lasts approximately 5 years), followed by ALLLLL THOOOOOSE PRESENTS! WOOOOHOOOO!
Found out four or five years later that Santa was not as real as some people think. Hell, I still believe in him, just not in the same way I believed when I was 3.
I can tell the difference, can the kids? The kids who are being lied to additionally in order to perpetuate the original lie? The kids who are made fun of by their classmates for believing something their parents told them?
Precisely the point of my post.
Pretend? Is that what you call it? Do your kids know it’s only pretend? You’re the only one pretending; they’re not.
This is so silly, I’m tempted not even to answer it. But, hmm…let’s see. Scenario 1: Parent pretends, kid believes. Scenario 2: Kid pretends, grown-up plays along. Oh, yeah…I see your point! :rolleyes:
I can tell the difference, can the kids? The kids who are being lied to additionally in order to perpetuate the original lie? The kids who are made fun of by their classmates for believing something their parents told them?
Precisely the point of my post.
Pretend? Is that what you call it? Do your kids know it’s only pretend? You’re the only one pretending; they’re not.
This is so silly I’m tempted not even to answer it. But, hmm…let’s see. Scenario 1: Parent pretends, kid believes. Scenario 2: Kid pretends, grown-up plays along. Oh, yeah…I see your point!:rolleyes:
An understandably self-serving analysis.
Oh, for the love of Cecil. If kids are going to make fun of someone, they do not need a factual reason. When I was at summer camp one year, some kids made fun of me for having an artificial penis. Completely made up, but they didn’t care. There was a kid in my class for a few years who was new. When he came to us, he had zits. Within six months they were gone, but he got to hear “Hey pepperoni pizza face” for a good while after that. High school was much worse, because rumors spread faster than mono at a makeout party, and many students lived on-campus (this was a boarding school), thus further facilitating the spread of rumors, gossip and outright lies. The number of things I learned about myself from students who sincerely believed they were true would outstrip the OED’s section on “set”.
I understand. I expected that my post would probably ruffle some feathers and contrary to how I know it appears that wasn’t what I was trying to do. I’m sure everyone here tries as hard as they can to be a good parent to their children. I just thought it would be a good idea to throw in a few things as food for thought based on what I’ve heard at various times in my life about the effect it can have when a child ultimately learns that Santa isn’t real, etc.
Perhaps some of this concern is due to the fact that as a child, I figured out, after being up all night for the first time, that there wouldn’t have been enough time for Santa to hit all the houses in town, let alone the world. I asked my father about it and he told me that indeed Santa wasn’t real. Of course, I had to share this with my younger brother and sister – who weren’t old enough to understand, as it turned out – and my brother remembers it to this day, and he’s 52. (This is not to say he’s traumatized by it, just that he remembers it as a startling and unpleasant revelation.)
You really can’t tell the difference between a child finding out his parents have been deceiving him and a child being teased by another child for having an artificial penis?
I’m beginning to have second thoughts about some of the posters on this thread. It seems some of you are much more concerned with your own delight at playing the fun parent than they are with the possible negative consequences of it to your children.
I appreciate your last post, and my reaction to your original contribution was that you were taking life too seriously, SA.
To build on your last post, maybe growing up and realizing Santa isn’t real is “unpleasant”, but it’s also character-building. Maybe part of the “game” is having it end someday. “Loss of innocence” is a classic theme in literature and other kinds of art; it’s a universal experience. IMO it’s going to be a part of someone’s childhood whether or not they are ever told about the Tooth Fairy et al.
[sup]sorry about the hijack, carry on with your indubitably tip-top parenting (no matter how guilty you may feel at the mo), misstee.[/sup]
In my house it was not a Tooth Fairy, but a Tooth Mouse that carried away teeth and left you something. When I asked my mom what the Tooth Mouse needed the teeth for, she said it was for building its house.
That means she actually expected me to ask sooner or later, and came up with an acceptable answer. For a child, that is.
Folks, did you ever ask your parents what the Tooth Fairy needed teeth for?
How cool is your mom?! That’s a great way to start off my day.
I appreciate your post as well and agree that “loss of innocence” is an inevitable part of growing up. I just don’t think that the parent/child bond is the best place for it to occur. Just saying, is all… 
StarvingArtist, FWIW, I don’t think either of my two older children suffered any trauma as a result of the tooth fairy, easter bunny or Santa; in fact, about 3 years ago, my middle daughter came to me and told me she didn’t think there was a Santa Claus, but did I think it would be all right for her to still believe in him? I told her I thought it was fine for her to believe in him as long as he makes her feel good. But we all have different views of how to parent. I read a quote not long ago by (I think) Jill Churchill: There’s no way to be a perfect mother, but there are a million ways to be a good one. We’ve all got different beliefs and parenting styles, and a majority of them are not going to make our kids grow up screwed up or anything. If you feel so strongly about this, then don’t have these fantasies with your kids. You might take some flak for it (not from me, I believe in live and let live), but stand your ground. Your kids will be fine, and so will mine.
My mom was kind of warped. She told me the Tooth Fairy gave the teeth to little children in Cambodia who didn’t have any of their own :rolleyes:
Thank you, norinew. Like I said, I was just throwing out some food for thought. My child is grown now. I didn’t originally intend to post as much to this thread as I wound up doing. Sometimes you feel it’s necessary to clarify your position, and in doing so can off more strongly than intended.