Oh, I think this is tricky. Mine worked it out at four (which was helpful, as he’s an anxious chap and we’d had an attempted break-in that year and he didn’t like the idea of FC being able to get in), and I’m a bit literal so the idea of lying too earnestly to my child didn’t sit at all right so I agreed with him and that was fine. And maybe the whole thing is less traumatic when children find out much younger and so that’s why many of us struggle to see this as anything other than inevitable by age 11?
I told him then that it’s a fun and kind game families play, and it was important not to spoil that for any other families by telling children it wasn’t real.
... and then we still go on to visit FC in a grotto each year, and write a letter, and leave out a mince pie, and definitely still get presents in a stocking, and we both play along and whilst I obviously know he knows, I still grin and insist it was FC who ate the mince pie and brought the presents. It’s still one of the magical bits of Christmas even though it’s just a game.
It’s difficult expecting other people to collude in a lie you are telling your children, I think. I’m religious but also quite frank with my DC about what I believe and that different people do/don’t believe different things and that my own belief wavers in terms of how literal it is and that it is a fairly crazy business to believe in the resurrection etc. I can’t imagine him getting to 11 and never hearing someone say categorically that god does not exist. And that’s ok IMO. The difference (and difficulty) with FC is that it isn’t so much about different beliefs in the unexplained and unknowable, it’s about parents tricking their children. Kindly, lovingly, and almost always without any trauma at all when that era is finished, but nonetheless it is tricky to expect other people to cooperate (especially if they don’t know it’s important to you).
Had you planned to tell him? When?