Tonight I Lied to My Daughter… Again
arun on Jul 05 2007 at 8:34 am | Filed under: 2 to 4 year old, 4 to 8 year old, parenting, stages & ages | Click here to go HOME | or find out about SUBSCRIBING TO THE PIT |
How ironic that if I told the truth I probably would be considered to be an irresponsible or mean spirited parent!
My lie? Well this time it was about the tooth fairy…
M, our 5 year old daughter lost her third tooth tonight. She was extremely excited! I dutifully did the tooth fairy note and switched the tooth for $5 (is that the going rate for teeth? I mean it was only a little one!).
Last year when M’s first tooth fell out it did not take me a long time to decide to go along with this deception. Actually my tangled web began way back at her first Christmas with the whole “Santa thing”.
Call me a boring old fart – but I think there is enough “magic” in this world through life, nature, science and the world (indeed universe) in general to be amazed in. Why can’t I tell my daughter that Santa is a distorted religious institution turned marketing ploy by Coke which has now taken on unprecedented consumerist overtones? Ok… you can call me an opinionated and boring old fart 
Anyway dont worry… I went along with the lie.
Dont get me wrong, I love fantasy – I tell stories to M every night about the adventures of “Annabel the Rainbow Fairy” who is a character and world that we made up together involving giants, witches, dragons and more. Yes I love fantasy… but I love that it is fantasy.
Meanwhile I can see M’s logic circuits trying to get around our fabrications – “do you think the Tooth Fairy has helpers that tell her when children loose teeth?”, “why can’t we go to the North Pole and see Santa?”, “Is there anyone older than Santa alive?” etc etc..
I know… I gotta take a chill pill and get a life. But I hate lies. Even when they are dressed up with wings, pink tutus and a weird tooth based economy.
I also know I will forget this rant tomorrow when I wake up and M is literally over the moon at her note and money. That is… I’ll forget it until December…
To the horror of our family, we decided not to lie about Santa. I grew up knowing that Santa wasn’t real, it just wasn’t something my family was interested in tell to me. So its no big deal to me. There is a lot of magic and make believe in the world, and it isn’t as if I’m mean about it. I jsut matter-of-factly told the truth about Santa. Or at elast as much truth as could be understood. You would have thought I strung my kids up by their toes and tortured their pets in front of them to hear our families tell it.
You are a brave woman Summer! I think my family would take a restraining order out on me if i blew the whole Santa thing… ironic because they are Sikh (not even Christian).
I have the same dilemna. I believe in being honest with children and can’t stand the whole Santa deception when it’s overdone. BUT, my dh disagrees so our compromise is that I won’t blow the whole gig by setting anyone straight but when asked directly I won’t lie either.
I say things like “well, Santa has a lot of help you know” and sidestep it until they ask direct questions. It usually happens around 6 or 7 years but they like to play along with it a while longer…even after they know.
I really believe this world is full of magic all on it’s own, just as you do Arun. It bothers me that we have some weird need to concoct magic when it’s all around us.
Sitting out with my kids tonight, jumping on the trampoline and watching the fireflies come out…that’s REAL magic.:)
I got some great stares from our preschool teacher for answering a question about whether or not there was a santa with the following “I really don’t know. I don’t have any real proof to say that there isn’t a santa but it does seem improbable that one person could make all those toys then fly around the world and deliver them all, all in one night. But just because there isn’t proof he does exist also doesn’t mean he doesn’t.”
After my DD left she asked “does she understand that?” to which I responded, “I always tell the truth, sometimes it is couched like that but it is always the truth. I’m not comfortable lying but I also know that santa is very important to her this year so this is my compromise for today, if she asks again the answer may be slightly different.”
Kids are smart, they can also tell when you’re lying, especially if it’s half hearted.
Like you, Ren, we mostly decided to go down the avoidance route rather than make up anything directly. I try not to read books about Santa, etc, but it’s all so ubiquitous from about October that I thought I’d wait and see what ds1 thought about it all himself without input from us. At 20 months he asked what all the “dogs with branches” were (reindeer) and why was a man wearing a “false white beard” sitting on a throne. Apparently Santa goes to all the children in the world, even the ones that don’t believe in him, he drives a white Commodore and swims between countries. For houses that don’t have chimneys he just goes in through the front door (of course!). Now at nearly 5 he’s more inclined to believe in Santa (or wants to believe in the presents anyway), and was sad that no-one gave Santa any gifts, so at last year’s Xmas party he made a cardboard shark to give to Santa when it was his turn to sit on the fat man’s knee.
I have explained about the myth of Santa and the magic of believing in something to T and asked her if she would like me to help her believe by going along with the story. She believes no more in Santa than Blibo Baggins or Despareaux… (well I think Bilbo is actually real :))
When I was a child I remember being told that Santa, tooth fairy etc were made up and I felt completely and utterly ruined. I felt that I had been taken advantage of, lied to and decieved… I was a sensitive wee soul! still am
At the going rate of teeth we might have to give that one a miss altogther!!!!
My daughter is *almost* 3. she has had a long trail of dental surgeries and this year she had to have her front teeth removed. We follow a kind of earth magic type story telling with alot of fairies and elves so we introduced the tooth fairy with a small child appropriate book and asked her what she thought the tooth fairy would bring. she decided the tooth fairy brings shiny gold coins, chocolate ones AND real ones. I sent my mom off on a hunt and (she’s so smart) she was ablr to find gold choclate coins from See’s Candies and apparently the US printed some gold colored one dollar coins a few years back with Sacajawea carrying a baby on her back pictured on them. After a good bit of brasso all was well.
My daughter is a little annoyed that her new teeth haven’t grown back in, being only two she can’t quite comprehend waiting 5 years for anything
about Santa, well my husgand is the oldest of 6 and we celebrate Christmas at his parents house. They are a bit over the edge when it comes to Christmas. The mom in the Grinch movie who competitively decorated her house’ that’s my MIL to a T we have pushed the concept that anyone can be Santa by caring for others and giving of themselves. we make presents and then leave them on peoples doorsteps, ring the bell and go hide. So we can BE Santa too
It’s difficult navigating the culture we live in while being respectful and honest to our children.
Love and Laughter,
Amy
LOL I love the make believe stories. I feel that there is enough reality in the world and not nearly enough innocent make believe moments, why take them away from children before we have to? why not enjoy them as much as our kids? Reality will always be there when our children bounce into the other room and life goes on for us.
PS We also reveal the “truth” as a grown up secret that our children are now being entrusted to carry on and help other children enjoy the magic and innocence of Santa or Tooth Fairy or Easter Bunny. This way they don’t feel lied too, they have all been excited and awed and then inspired to make the magic even better for the younger ones…all 7 of my children.
Truthfully, I never felt decieved as a child being part of a wonderfully make believe tradition. Maybe it’s all in how it is handled **shrug**
Maybe it is how it is handled or perhaps more the nature of the believer. My sister was fine with the ‘truth’ and in fact everyone else I know was too! I am renoun for being a freak though.
We all just follow our hearts and do what feels right hey! We have an abundance of innocent make believe moments and delight in the real world too
When my ten year old was born, my husband and I had decided not to go the “Santa” route. We weren’t going to perpetuate the lie. Unfortunately, his family didn’t give us that option, and now, she and her two younger sisters are believers (the ten year old, not so much anymore, though). I’ve even caught myself saying, “If you don’t go to bed, Santa won’t come.” It’s horrible. Even worse is the sneaking around and trying to make believe that Santa actually delivered those gifts, and worse, trying to wiggle out of the lie when my ten year old has actually seen the gifts.
I don’t think it’s mean to be honest with one’s children, and I worry about them trusting me when I wasn’t even truthful about something as benign as Santa and the toothfairy.
We too decided to tell A the truth if she asked about Santa etc., believing there to be enough wonder and awe in the world anyway…and that it was important for her to believe she could ask us anything and our answer could always be trusted. Of course, grandma was horrified that I had told A the truth about Santa when she asked at age 5 (but grandma’s view of me in general is one of horror!).
Knowing the ‘truth’ has never held back A’s excitement as far as Xmas is concerned anyway. She’s just as happy to make believe with the whole thing as she is with all sorts of other things in her imaginary world (her ‘imaginary friend’, Shelly-belly, just got back from a trip to San Francisco where she’d gone because she was ill…who am I to judge if she is really an ‘imaginary friend’ or if that’s just a convenient label for me to put on something I don’t truly understand?)
And I’m similar to others who’ve posted here when asked about fairies etc…I don’t think I’ve ever seen them but that’s not proof that they don’t exist…I just don’t know and sometimes it just comes down to whether it feels right for you as an individual to believe in them or not.
We decided not to do the santa thing. It was more my husband and at first he had a hard time getting me to come to the party. He didn’t understand why he would be honest about everything and then lie about a man with a beard who comes into your house at night! I tried to convince him that we could do a ‘kind of’ santa that we could call ’spiritual saint Nick’. We tried this for a year….I made believe that he drove a combi and had strippy socks and bought gifts that were hand made and gave presents to charity that were environmentally friendly. Thankfully our son was only 6 mths at the time and I have now gotten over MY need to fill up our lives with a superficial ’special’ feeling. This Christmas we will have a 2.5 year old boy who will enjoy the wonder of Christmas like he enjoys the wonder of every day. We will make gifts and make food and laugh, like we do on many days in our beautiful year. Living in the now is so much more precious to us than the build up of one day that will come and go. I wouldn’t deliberately destroy the idea of Santa or the Easter bunny for him, I would like to give him the opportunity to believe whatever he desires…..I’m just not going to hype it up and make him believe anything.
I told Simon and Linnaea this year that there wasn’t a Santa Claus or a tooth fairy, or anything else of those ilk. I hated lying. It’s funny how much I hated the lying. I loved the special gifts and the stockings and the sneaking out in the middle of the night to set this wonderful toy trap of pleasure, but I hated the Santa Claus bit. They were completely nonplussed. Linnaea, particularly, was very invested in the idea of Santa Claus. It was really an important story to her, and I was quite torn about telling her. But after she heard she said “I think children whose parents aren’t as good to them as you and Dad are to us need Santa Claus more. I don’t need him, I’ve got you.” So, there you go. Or, there I go. Her life is so good it doesn’t need to be buffered by fantasy gift givers. Man, is she wonderfully romantic.
Oh, Crystal at Daikini Crossroads has a couple of posts about letting go of the fantasy magic and Santa Claus from their lives. http://daikinicrossroads.blogspot.com/2006/11/sorscha-santas-secret.html is the post about Santa.