Whatever your opinion on Santa Claus, I hope we can agree that the woman in the link handled the issue badly. The girl believed in Santa because her mother said he was real, then disbelieved because her mother said he wasn’t. Of course she cried—she was powerless from beginning to end.
My boy was eight years old when he started in with the classic interrogation: How does Santa get to all those houses in one night? How does he get in when we don’t have a chimney and all the windows are locked and the alarm system is on? Why does he use the same wrapping paper as Mom? All those cookies in one night – his LDL cholesterol must be through the roof!
This is the moment, at the threshold of the question, that the natural inquiry of a child can be primed or choked off. With questions of belief, you have three choices: feed the child a confirmation, feed the child a disconfirmation – or teach the child to fish.
The “Yes, Virginia” crowd will heap implausible nonsense on the poor child, dismissing her doubts with invocations of magic or mystery or the willful suspension of physical law. Only slightly less problematic is the second choice, the debunker who simply informs the child that, yes, Santa is a big fat fraud.
“Gee,” the child can say to either of them. “Thanks. I’ll let you know if I need any more authoritative pronouncements.”
Whatever your opinion on Santa Claus, I hope we can agree that the woman in the link handled the issue badly. The girl believed in Santa because her mother said he was real, then disbelieved because her mother said he wasn’t. Of course she cried—she was powerless from beginning to end.
Parenting Beyond Belief gives a much better Santa disillusionment tale: