I don’t know if that’s quite the reason! I was just afraid if I told my mom I knew he wasn’t real I’d stop getting presents from him. I was 25 when I lost my mom, but every year before that she still had Santa leave us presents. It’s a great memory. 
Kill her before she has a chance to tell the other children. Its for the greater good.
My kid (8) has found Christmas and Birthday presents in the past that I left out by accident. Not wrapped, still in a bag, I just wasn’t thinking and didn’t put them away. Normally it goes something like this:
“Daddy, what are these?”
“Oh, um, (dammit grumble grumble) I saw them at the store and thought you’d like them.”
And that’s the end of it. FTR, if I walked in the house and tossed it on the kitchen table, it was probably something small. Something big would have been ‘put away’ right away.
So, if that wasn’t clear, my vote is for you to just give it to her and get something new from the Easter Bunny. Of course, that involves doing it right away.
As far as breaking the news to her, I’d just let that happen ‘naturally’. By naturally, I mean, whenever it happens to the rest of the people in her class which will probably be over the next year or two.
Try not to be a jerk, Simplicio. It’s for the greater good.
Buy more. You will probably enjoy it more than she, so it’s really a double treat.
She won’t always believe, but by then she will be old enough where she won’t be searching. My 30+ daughter still gets Easter candy and Christmas stockings, and I think she knows the truth by now.
I agree with everything in this post. Not exactly the same but at Christmas, my 8 year old daughter drew a map of the house and marked off places she had checked for hidden presents until she finally found them in a tool cabinet in the garage. Her teacher took me aside and told me she heard she had found her presents. Those were the expensive gifts she had explicitly asked Santa for, while the gifts I was going to get were more generic.
I just made those Santa gifts mine and the generic gifts Santa’s and she never batted an eye. She still taped her iPod to the wall and started recording video before she went to bed, absolutely sure that she’d catch Santa in the act.
The Easter Bunny is meant to give gifts?
You have a 24 year old and a 9 year old? :eek:
When I was 9 my eldest sister was 27. We’re from the same set of parents (not adopted or step/half-siblings).
Wow.
I am 56 and made my own Easter basket this year. I’ll put in on the dining room table Saturday night and Sunday morning I’ll be surprised! There’s still a kid in all of us.
My mom had kids in the 1940s (1), 1950s (2) and 1960s (1, me!).
At the risk of a don’t-be-a-jerk warning, that is very destructive. Especially with that big an age gap between siblings. If you love her that much, let her grow up.
Yeah, my kids are 16 and 13. This year after Christmas my wife finally said “Uh, you do know that I write the letter from Santa every year, right?” and they both laughed and told us they’d been playing along for years because they thought it was fun. They both had done such a good job of acting like it was real they had us worried.
We haven’t done Easter baskets in a number of years, but at Christmas time, the rule in our house is that Santa brings the stockings, and often a single ‘big gift’…and that anyone who no longer believes in him will no longer receive those presents.
When I was born, my brother and sister were 17 and 19, respectively. I was a “20th anniversary surprise”