I’ve done a lot of NaBloPoMo’s before, but I haven’t done one like 2023’s in a long while. And I don’t know if I’ve ever participated in one that was so well curated and organized. Hats off to San for showing us all how it’s done.
December starts tomorrow. I’ve already kind of been operating in December mode – I erased November’s calendar on the white board last week, since I could fit the final five days at the top of December’s calendar. I’ve even been using the December’s calendar for this week in my paper planner. And my school planner! So it kind of feels like, about time!
Having said that, tomorrow is very different from today in that Heart, our Elf on a Shelf comes tomorrow. My kids are 10 and 13 and they both might still believe in Heart. I say that not jokingly. My 13yo has given no indication that she understands someone else moves Heart around, or is getting her the little gifts Hearts has for them every day. Last year she marveled at how well Heart knew what she wanted! Where does she get her intel?! It didn’t sound like she was joking.
While we were at Great America, my son asked his friend if an Elf on the Shelf came to his house and his friend said, oh you mean one of those parent tricky things, and my son’s face suggested that he had never considered Heart might have anything to do with his parents. After a few awkward beats he responded with a fierce, “It’s not a parent tricky thing!” I quickly stepped in to say our family chooses to believe in Christmas things like our Elf on a Shelf and left it at that. But later talking to my husband, he admitted that he didn’t know what the end game was on Heart and Santa and all that stuff. When do we tell our kids that we have been deceiving them?
This really hurt me. I never considered that I’ve been deceiving my kids when I move Heart around the house and put little treasures in the mini stockings she brings for them. But I suppose I am. And I guess I just assumed that one day they would figure it out for themselves. I never considered that they might be mad at me for deceiving them all this time. And I never considered that they might end up believing for a lot longer than their friends do.
My daughter used to believe in dragons. Like really, truly believe in them. She had an imaginary friend/pet dragon named Aqua that she talked about all the time. Lately I’ve been learning that her friends gave her a ton of grief about Aqua at sailing camp when she was 11 until she finally stopped talking about her. She told me, around that same time, that Aqua had her own baby dragons and had moved on to live with them somewhere else. I didn’t realize that happened because her friends made her feel silly for believing so fiercely in something that wasn’t, to them, true. I talked to her about it recently, just like I talked to my son after the incident at Great America, reminding her that we all choose what we want to believe, especially about things like dragons and Christmas, and it’s fine as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone, and I think she understood.
But I remember last year I said something about forgetting to put the money under her brother’s pillow when he lost a tooth and she seemed shocked. She was probably 12 at the time? She is a smart kid who reads a ton and listens to hours and hours of podcasts. Can she really believe in things like Santa and the Tooth Fairy? Is it bad if she does?
I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to get into this on the last day of NaBloPoMo. I’ve just been thinking about it a lot since last weekend, and it’s weighing on my mind a lot tonight, as I prep the elf and her reindeer and the stockings with the little treasures for their debut tomorrow morning.
Am I deceiving my kids when I do these things? Should I be saying something to them, and if so when? I love how much fun they have with Heart and her little surprises; it absolutely takes the edge off waiting for Christmas, and makes the whole month special, not just the one day. But maybe, in the long run, I’m doing more harm than good. I really don’t know.
UPDATE: I just talked with her and she does know Heart isn’t real. But she still likes to pretend that she is. She likes to believe. She’s a good kid. Growing up can be tough stuff. I’m glad we talked. We should do more talking.
My 8 year old told me when she lost her last tooth that the tooth fairy was in fact me. I asked her what would be more fun, to just have me admit it’s me or to continue to “believe.” She chose the latter, and the “tooth fairy” left her a note saying “you may not really believe in me, but I believe in you” 😉
My mom continued being Santa (stockings, Santa presents, etc.) with my sisters and I until we were well in our 20s. There was a little wink wink when we were teens but other than that everyone was happy to go along with it!
Keep having fun with your kids; even if there’s some wink wink it can still be a lovely tradition!
You are not deceiving them. It’s just a bit of fun and they will soon realise. My daughter said at age 11 when we were visiting a reindeer herd ‘I don’t know how Santa gets them to fly’. She is also very smart but still believed up until about 12. She also told me Santa had the same wrapping paper as me on a Xmas morning! I thought we were going to have to tell her to save any embarrassment with her peers but her younger brother (by four years) was saying from about 8 years old ‘ Santa is not real!’ I think that made her finally realise. I just kept saying – ‘if you don’t believe in him you won’t get any presents!’ Can’t remember ever actually admitting Santa wasn’t real to either of them. They never felt deceived just used to laugh at me as the years went on. Zillions of children believe in Father Xmas it’s all good fun I think.
I take the approach of not being too careful to make sure I keep up the ruse perfectly, with the hope this will let them come to the realisation in their own time, without it having to be a shocking reveal or a situation where they end up feeling embarrassed about being gullible. This seems to have worked well with my nearly 12 year old as we are now in the wink wink stage with her but she still loves the magic of going along with it and keeping the joy for her younger sisters. I remember as a child gradually figuring it out as my parents slipped up from time to time but it wasn’t upsetting and, like your daughter, I loved the tradition and we kept doing stocking until I left home as an adult.
You are wise! I wish I had thought of this with my oldest child. Like, I always made sure Santa presents were wrapped in completely different paper. I think I will wrap this year’s Santa gifts in our own wrapping paper so her younger brother has a hint.
It felt wrong to me to do the whole “tooth fairy” thing. Although my kids did leave their teeth under the pillow – most of the time, I forgot to do the “right thing” – and that lead to one of my kids writing progressively angrier letters to the tooth fairy/mom. I think they always kind of knew that it was me. Sometimes, when I remembered to put a few coins under their pillow, I couldn’t find their tooth – and then they would be extra happy in the morning. Because they got to keep the tooth and they got money! They didn’t seem to care WHO put the money there 🙂 With our youngest, it was older siblings who ensured that she got something for her lost teeth.
My parents never did that sort of thing – and I don’t feel sad or deprived in any way. For lost teeth, the story was that the mouse would take it and then I would get a new tooth – but I’m pretty sure I always knew that mice wouldn’t be interested in my teeth 🙂 Still, it was fun to imagine it… I certainly never got money for my teeth – it’s kind of an odd thing, if you think about it… Maybe there is a tradition attached to it that I am not aware of.
We don’t do Christmas or Easter at our house, so we never had to do much with Santa, or Elf, or anything along those lines. It did annoy me when other people (when kids were in daycare) – would ask them “did Santa bring something for you?” My in-laws did do the “Presents from Santa” thing for our kids, and I told my kids that grandparents love them very much and get them all these wonderful presents, and please play along with the whole Santa thing. Kids were perfectly happy with that. Sprinkling rein-deer food outside the in-laws house was awesome, though – that’s the kind of make-belief thing I get excited about. I find Santa and Elf mildly disturbing (sorry!!!).
I think child-lead imaginary play and make-belief are wonderful (and important for survival!). I think sharing stories that you care about (whether imaginary or real) with your kids is a good way to connect. But I don’t want to do things that make me feel like I’m lying or deceiving people.
One thing that I absolutely love about my parents – they never lied to me. I could count that if I asked them a question, they would tell me the truth – to the best of their abilities, and in an age-appropriate way. When I was about 8, I asked my mom if I was ever going to die – she said yes, but people can live a long time. She didn’t make up some story, she didn’t say “YOU” will live for a long time, she didn’t talk about concepts that weren’t part of her belief system (ie, afterlife). That meant a lot to me. Did my parents tell me make-belief stories? A ton!!! But there was an understanding that it was “make-belief” (like Steph says above, a wink-wink understanding) – and it didn’t make the stories any less exciting.
I do not have kids, but I’m known as the aunt to come to for straight talk. When my nieces and nephews were born, I made a promise to myself that I wouldn’t lie to them. They have asked me all sorts of questions, including the infamous “why did the Jews kill Jesus?” (oh, man, that was hard) and “why don’t you go to church with us?” and I’ve always answered in kid-appropriate language and then immediately reported back to their parents in case there are follow-up questions.
But I can see that the magical nature of wanting kids to believe in Santa and the Tooth Fairy, etc. Fortunately, none of my niblings have asked me if Santa is real. That would be a real test of my tell no lies mantra.
I don’t know. I think it’s a tough question and I’m glad I don’t have kids so I don’t have to deal with it!
I equate learning my mom = Santa with the end of my childhood (I immediately connected tooth fairy, easter bunny, etc.). I’ll keep the magic alive for my kiddos as long as I can… but I won’t lie to them. My 8 y.o. is asking more pointed questions or stating outright “I think you’re the tooth fairy!” My responses neither confirm nor deny/are typically questions back (“why would I want to take your teeth?”) that she doesn’t push – I think she knows but doesn’t WANT to know/is happy to keep believing, at least a little bit.
Your daughter has a really strong imagination! It’s amazing she can keep up the fantasy going in her mind, while knowing it isn’t true. We don’t celebrate Christmas but my older son figured out the tooth fairy wasn’t real very quickly (by 6). To be honest, I think the idea of a tooth fairy freaked him out and he was looking for reassurance that it was just us. A few nights ago my five year old was asking about the tooth fairy and the older one just said, mom is the tooth fairy. The five year old wasn’t crushed. Both of my kids enjoy imaginative play with their friends but they don’t like to think that any of this is real, and I guess if parents tell them it is real, it unsettles them.
Wow, I don’t think I’ve ever commented but I find this so relatable, especially with kids who are a bit older but still believe. My husband is the one who wanted to do Santa and the Tooth Fairy, even though we are both children of immigrants and never had those traditions. So I went along with it, and I always thought my daughter would eventually figure it out, it would be a “wink wink” thing that we parents never admitted to, only smile and say, “if you don’t believe in Santa then you don’t get presents” which is how my sister handled it with her kids and they were fine. We never did “elf on the shelf” and in the midst of one stressful holiday season, I told her the reason we didn’t do it was because it’s a lot of work for parents to move the elf around every night. She was devastated about that, and that’s not even a tradition we participated in, only one she heard about from her friends!
Then with the tooth fairy…the trouble started when a neighbor friend had a “letter from the tooth fairy” and then my daughter insisted on writing letters to the tooth fairy as well, which my husband and I felt obligated to respond to. We kept that up for a while, but then in sixth grade they had a discussion at school where the teacher said the tooth fairy wasn’t real, and I decided I’d better admit to being the tooth fairy. My daughter was 11 and she cried. I really don’t ever lie to my kids and so they never even questioned it, and learning of my “deception” was really painful for her. With my son, who is five years younger, I am trying to take the approach like Steph says above, I want to purposely slip up a bit so it’s not so shocking to him and he’ll gradually realize it. I have a friend who told her kids, “I am Santa, I am the tooth fairy,” which at the time I thought was blunt but at least she was honest.
I am so glad you talked to your daughter and she knows Heart isn’t real but still likes to pretend. Best case scenario since it’s fun for all of you.
Let’s just say that I’ve never admitted that Santa isn’t real (even though a classmate filled me in when I was in Grade 3). And he’s never stopped filling my stocking, lol. 😉 (Although these days, my sister does mine and I do hers… both our partners being hopeless in the gifting department, lol.)
I see Santa as the magic of love. I still believe this. And we all know about magic shows and magic tricks.
First of all, thank you. I want to reiterate: I am so glad you joined NaBloPoMo and found a new blogging community in the process. Remember, it can be whatever you want it to be…. but it seems like your blog is still a valuable creative outlet to you and it’s nice to share and get feedback from (not-so-strange) strangers 😉
Re: the Elf on the Shelf. I don’t think you’re deceiving your kids. I have yet to meet someone who is mad at their parents for keeping the Christmas spirit alive… they’ll figure it out soon enough (and your daughter has apparently but likes to pretend)… and I am 100% sure they’ll always remember this fondly as a thing of their childhood.