If you send your kid to secondary school still believing in Santa the resulting fallout is on your head

[Stripitout]

Try and weigh up how important your Christmas magic is against your kid being mercilessly teased when their peers find out they still believe

Well I’ll have you know that I believed until I was 11!! Absolutely genuinely! 😳

We’ve had a surprising amount of 12 year olds still believing when they first start high school.

Two that spring to mind: one was telling his class what his elf got up to the night before, and the other burst into tears when the teacher asked the class how old they were when they found out Santa wasn’t real.

Both were boys and were confident, popular and streetwise in other ways. hard to believe, but not uncommon. I do think as a parent you should make sure they definitely know the truth before starting high school.

A friend of mine told her twins before starting secondary school. Both have ASD their response was thank goodness for that we don't have to worry about a strange man coming in the house when we're asleep anymore.🤣🤣🤣

Talk about putting 2&2 together and coming up with 3947 🙄

Op has a good point. I've watched this happen when I was teaching and had a year 7 form - kids are BRUTAL about this,

It's ridiculous and of course anyone bullying over ANYTHING needs pulling up, but this really should be dealt with before secondary.

Have you not read many threads from the bullies’ parents? They all start the way the OP worded hers. I’ve read so many that are all, “Isn’t it really their fault for sending their kid to school wearing X or letting their kid do Y activity.”
It usually turns out that the OP’s kid is the one doing the bullying.

I think my 8 year old is just playing along now as she thinks I believe in FC 😅 I bought a Xmas eve plate the other day and she said 'why don't we leave santa a glass of red wine or baileys this year mum' when I asked why she said 'oh I just think santa might like that more than milk' .....FFS

I once had a Y8 tell me, in front of everyone in the middle of a French lesson about Christmas, that he was suspicious of his mother because she had come home with some wrapping paper in December and then at Christmas Santa used the same paper. This was a boy who wasn't very academically able and he wasn't being funny. To their credit, the rest of the class looked a little stunned but said nothing, and we changed the subject. In a less nice class he could have got eaten alive. I do think most kids work it out well before secondary, but I also think they need to be told around age 9/10 if they haven't worked it out! And if they haven't, I would be extra vigilant with them generally as I imagine they are quite vulnerable if they can be manipulated and deceived so easily.

😂

Firm believer in Father Christmas until I was about 13! I was (still am) stubborn as anything and so any child who tried to tease me about it was firmly told that they wouldn’t get any presents 🤣. All kids are different, for me my family are of a different Faith so have our own celebrations and now I have a child it’ll be interesting navigating it from the other side.

My biggest parenting failure was when DS1 was 5 and questioned the authenticity of Santa. I told him the truth and for sure he enjoyed being in on it with his younger brother but in hindsight I realised I could easily have kept it going for another few years.

Totally agree. I remember believing but I don't remember finding out. I certainly didn't think my parents lied to me. It is just a christmas tradition. Strange how times have changed

My daughter turns 11 in a few months but I’d humouring me as she has a 4 year old sister. And she really, really wants that over priced, stinking sol de janero crap, so there’s probably a part of her desperately hoping it is all real so she might get some.

my son is in his 20s and said he worked out santa was bollocks when he was 8 but Kept it going as it was a bit of fun.

i didn’t have to tell him santa was a load of shit, it just sort of stops around age 11 and Santa is never mentioned a again.

Did the parent actually know?

I asked as we never did father Christmas/Santa despite DGP pushing it - but by shear fluke found out DS in Y6 still believed in tooth fairy. We were still putting cash down - and they still had milk teeth into secondary but never occurred to me any though it real.

Possible our fault as few times we forgot got - they got IOU or had to write why they'd lost the tooth happened few times - I also reacted badly first tooth handed - was not expecting it or the blood it was place in my hand when attention elsewhere and I screamed and flung it across the room so possibly over compensated.

My 11 year old still does! He's in year six and I'm enjoying him having one last Christmas before I tell him.

I'm sure in his head he probably questions it but for now he's happy believing why would I put an end to a lovely part of his childhood!

I taught a y8 kid - therefore at least 12 - who did. She brought it up in a class discussion and it was excruciatingly embarrassing.

What I was trying to say was that we all have a need, and urge to have traditions and rituals.
people who keep on with the idea of santa, for longer than early childhood, are perhaps doing it because they have no other, more age appropriate rituals and traditions. Maybe introducing some other traditions would mean that the idea of Santa doesn’t persist into secondary school age

In my personal experience kids usually work it out for themselves so there's no need to make a big deal of telling them. It should just come up naturally in conversation. If I thought any child of mine still believed past year 5 at school I would be telling them the truth.
I don't think any of us can really say we were scarred for life because we were lied to about Santa. But I do have a friend who's family only half heartedly celebrated Christmas and was taught never to believe in Santa. And as a result she remembers her childhood Christmases as being joyless and boring. She's now passed that down to her own children. They don't get excited the way most kids do and I think that's a shame.

I think children keep it going to humour their parents. They would have to be incredibly sheltered and unobservant to not know by secondary age.

My friend's son believed until he was 13. His parents were pretty much spelling it out to him and he still didn't take the hint. They had to tell him outright.

Funnily enough DH has raised the point about telling DS before he goes to high school last week for this very reason.

I do worry about kids who haven't figured it by high school. They are either extremely naive, thick or have incredibly devious parents.

I really did know one!

He wasn't allowed on the internet. There are still kids who are parented properly...

I told dd2 when she was in y5 and I felt really bad as she genuinely had no clue but I thought she knew. Dd1 worked it out herself at that age. She still reminds me now and she's y8.

This is exactly what we plan to do. Frankly, I'm a bit surprised DD still believes, but she's ND.

My 11yo and friends all still believe bar one who was told by her parents ‘so she wouldn’t be bullied’. My 11yo also still plays with toys, doesn’t spend their life on a mobile phone etc etc. no bullying happening here.

Hate the way some parents think it cute to try to keep the kids ‘believing’
I don’t think my elder son ever really believed - he saw numerous santas around and about