Santa's Clause

Without gettin' into the commenting fray, I'll just add my agreement with Brent's take, and how I felt such deep sadness upon reading that the latter teacher had been dismissed for her eminently laudable curricular choice.

I can't tell the specifics of how she did it from the blurb, and "tact" in such matters does make a difference; whether with children or even adults. I loved this part of your child-raising method, Brent:

They ask me, "Is Santa Claus real?" I respond, "Do you think that Santa Clause is real?" If they answer "Yes", then I'll ask them why they think he's real.

Dude! You so do Rock!

Happy Holidays!!!

a personally evolving organism

No, not really. I just think that it's perfectly okay to let your children know that make-belief beings are make-believe. I don't think that it blunts their enjoyment of the fantasy one iota - any more than you or me would have trouble enjoying a novel that we know without a doubt is fictional.

(laughs) Considdering I just saw yet another newspaper article about some mother who wants Harry Potter taken out of schools because it's a guidebook to how to practice witchcraft I think knowing that something is fantasy might actually improve the enjoyment of it.

With Santa, I can remember a few things from my santa years. One of the things is that I remember I could kind of tell the Santas were just sort of playing (not in a mean way) when they encouraged me to leave cookies and carrots out. I can remember feeling annoyed by the fact that my parents lied about there being a Santa Clause, but I was more annoyed later on as classmates continued to believe (didn't interfere though). I'm on the fence when it comes to telling your kid about Santa. On the one hand you are lying to your kid, not to mention exposing them and yourself to unneccessarilly long lines for Santa during the dreaded holiday shopping season. On the other telling your kid about Santa and letting them figure out this relatively easy myth is a valuable lesson: you can't always trust what people tell you. Just imagine, if parents were always truthful to their kids than their kids would never develope any reason to question what their parents might be telling them, they don't have their Santa or Easter Bunny experience to show them that adults do lie.

My personal view of religion is that it's like an egg, you have to break the shell on your own, no one else can help you, because if you try to help a chick hatch when it would have died it may be too weak to face the outside world.

One of my Wise Old Sayings I Just Made Up:

“Never lie to a child or a dog for any reason.”

The dog part of it is just that you should play fair with them. Don't be faking the throwing of a ball and then laughing because they think you threw something. You're basically punishing them for their TRUST, which is ugly. And you’re doing it for your own amusement, which is uglier still.

The kid part is ... tell them the truth, always. Don't think it's “cute” that they believe in a lie you tell them, even if it's a traditional lie. Again, you're taking advantage of their trust.

These long years later, I remember next to nothing about whatever special glowing feeling I might have had as a child about the Santa story. But I DO remember the day I found out, and the unhappy feeling I had that my parents had lied to me about something real.

Your kids are not “your” kids, nor are they just “kids.” They are adults in their formative years, and they belong to themselves.

Imagine lying to another adult about something that was important to them. (Hey, I just got a call from the hospital, and your grandmother’s made a complete recovery. She’s DANCING in the halls of the hospital!”) Imagine expecting them to believe the lie. And then imagine thinking it was “cute” that they trusted you.

Yes, there are definitely times when you should withhold information from children for the reasons Brent states. But outright lying, or the supporting of a lie, is ... well, it’s an ugly sort of treachery, seems to me. Family is the one place in life, the one time in life, when these small adults-to-be should be able to feel complete trust – before moving out in a wider world with such untrustworthy factors as advertisers, politicians, religious parasites, and con-men.

To breach that trust, especially for your own brief amusement, is not a friendly act.

I can't say as I agree with this line of reasoning. Just as I would strongly disagree with my child being fed religious teachings by his school, I would equally strongly disagree with him being fed anti-religious teachings. It is not the place of a teacher to challenge the belief systems of a very young child. I agree 100% with the idea that children should learn critical thinking skills, but to me it sounds like this particular teacher had an agenda outside the intellectual development of the kids, and that is wrong.

Six years old is far too early to worry about challenging the beliefs held by these children. All this teacher was doing was removing some of the joy and excitement Christmas will hold for these children over the next several years. As far as I'm concerned, it's close to emotional abuse. We all know that these kids will not hold a belief in Santa into their adult years. Most children figure out the truth, or hear it from friends between the ages of nine and eleven, or so. Why rush them. Rather, plant the seeds of critical thinking now, without the agenda, that will allow them to use the example of Santa and the Easter Bunny later in life to examine other things they were told as children.