Does your 9/10 year old still believe in Santa?

[pinkponie]

My DD1 is 9, will be 9.5 at Christmas. She currently still believes in Santa, at least she says she does. A lot could change between now and Christmas I guess but I really hope I get another Christmas with her believing. Does anyone else with dc that age still believe?

Quite possibly. Depends on the age, but at one point I know a lot of conversation revolved around cake.

you are right there. I make sure my boys (I have 3) know that women can feel threatened by men and to watch their behaviours. I remind them of a quote that men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.

I have a 10 and 11 year old and broached this last year as neither had said they didn't believe. After some soft questions it transpired neither had believed for years but didn't let on as they didn't know the impact of it. I.e less presents 🤣 Obviously that wasn't the case, but that was their fear to stay quiet.

It’s a Roald Dahl quote.

@LiviaDrusillaAugusta I think women have different conversations. My women friends do ask about holidays and recommendations.DH is more preoccupied with golf and football. I do think mums enable boys to not think about others and then this comes out as not bothering to think of a present or booking a meal out. I certainly don’t like any dc being “spoilt rotten” and stringing them along after a very young age infantilizes them. Most dc don’t think Father Christmas is real and they are playing along.

Sweeping generalisations there. Women yap about holidays and men about sport? Mums enable boys not to think about others? I absolutely do not do this… me and my husband hope our children hold a mirror to our life and can recognise how we respect each other, cherish each other and see that we make a huge fuss of the other including meals out, holidays, birthdays and Christmas. And yes, my children are spoilt rotten as am I and as is my husband by us. And I genuinely think my children have never said Santa isn’t real because we have glorious Christmas’s and it’s genuinely magical for them.

Nobody says it applies to ALL.

However you said your boys don’t ask about where people are going etc so you potentially are enabling them not to think of others.

And spoiling them is nothing to be proud of.

Spoilt boys become the useless partners of tomorrow

Spoilt boys become the useless partners of tomorrow? Really? Oh dear. My three are fucked then 🤣

I am always totally baffled by this attitude.

Critical thinking is a developmental skill and you'd expect the average 7/8 yo to be able to easily look at the Santa/ Tooth Fairy/ Easter Bunny story and be able to see that that doesn't make sense and must be fantasy.

There's no other area I can think of where parents gleefully hope that their children will not hit a developmental milestone at a usual time and are delighted by them failing to do so. Some will even blackmail their children into continuing to pretend not to have achieved it with the threat of no presents if they don't fervently swear that they, as a pre-teen child with a fairly good grasp by now on how life works, believe that a fat man circumnavigates the globe on a sleigh pulled by flying reindeer in one night dropping off gifts to all children (but better ones to the rich kids, ofc), despite the huge range of religions that they have, by now, learned about in school. But also, they've learned about how even in Christian nations, there are a range of traditions about who drops off gifts when and you expect them to pretend this also makes sense.

Depends. Spoilt generally means having everything done for them by mummy - not great for future partners. And you admit they show no real interest.

Your kids might be fine but how do you think these useless men are created? The ones where the wives have to do everything while their mothers smile indulgently and say ‘well it’s just men, isn’t it’

A glance at the relationship board is quite insightful on this point

And if they think presents are provided by a mythical being, then they aren’t going to be grateful for the effort and money spent by family on them.

Sitting them down to tell them and it making them cry is crazy

Okay… you know grown ass adults don’t believe in magic, right?

Not sure about Santa, but when I realised my 10 year old seemed to still believe in the tooth fairy, I thought ‘jeez, this kid is going to secondary school next year and will have the Mickey taken out of him unmercifully if I don’t tell him soon’ , so I did.

All I said was that they don’t know what their friends had for Christmas or where they went on holiday etc. But ask my kids what their friends favourite McDonald’s meal is or what Pokemon cards they have or which latest Lego set they have and they are all over it.
And I do do pretty much everything for them. I enjoy it. My eldest is 24 and managed uni and living with his partner just fine. Me doing everything for him until he went to uni didn’t render him inept lol. I do read the relationship threads and it’s genuinely disgraceful how some men treat their partners and how the partner accepts it and as I have said I hope our children look at us and see what being cherished means. My husband (to me) is perfect. He opens door, carries my bags, is currently decorating our downstairs bathroom at my request, but before that he asked the middle boy which curry he wanted for dinner and will get on with preparing that. My children are spoilt with love, kindness, our time and at Christmas and birthdays, presents 🎁.

I work with yr 6. Many of them will tell staff & each other they don’t believe but not their parents!
They worry the presents will stop if they fess up 😂

That's so sad. I can't imagine a parent refusing to take their child to Disneyland unless they declared their firm belief that Mickey Mouse was real, or never reading them a bedtime story unless they thought real Gruffalos wandered the forests of Britain. Why when it comes to Santa we're all so uncomfortable with recognising that we can have fun playing the game without forcing our children to pretend to be daft is beyond me.

What?!
The Gruffalo comparison is particularly bizarre 😳

Surely blaming women for a grown mans behavior is also part of the issue? Why aren't men expected to take responsibility for their behaviour?

These men also have fathers. If their mothers are to blame, why not also their fathers?

Year 5 was the last Christmas of believing in Santa. DS2 is 8 and does still believe but I expect next year will be his last.

Why?

In one case, parents can enjoy imaginative play and storytelling with their kids with everyone knowing it's imaginary and fun.

In the other, unless the children are pretending to believe an unbelievable story, the game is suddenly not fun, the magic is ruined, and no-one is getting any presents.

I was waiting for someone to pick up on that.

It is because it is the mothers who tend to be softer on them and run round after them. How many men do you know would lay their son’s clothes out the night before, make them breakfast and don’t give them any jobs to do? And how many times have we seen posts from women saying their son is, say, in prison but it’s not his fault.

yes the fathers have some influence but it seems to be a badge of honour for some mothers (note SOME - usually the ones who identify themselves as ‘boy mums’ as opposed to ‘mothers’) to protect their little prince from actual responsibility at any cost

What has Disneyland got to do with it? Although I can’t imagine why anyone would want to go there.

@ImImmortalNowBabyDoll Because silly people say “Do they still believe?”. It’s ridiculous. It’s not belief it’s just a game and that’s ok. They get presents anyway! Of course they do.

Because people that do go to Disneyland say it's "magical" but no-one over the age of 5 believes that all the characters are real. The magical part is that everyone plays along with the stories for fun. If your NT 9 yo genuinely believed that Cinderella was a real person, you'd be very worried about them.

But at Christmas, it's not "magical" unless kids genuinely believe in FC and people are delighted about their children believing in it- or at least pretending to.

My DC are adults now, but apparently they knew from a young age it was us as they caught us out one Christmas Eve but pretended to be asleep so as not to spoil it! Oldest DGC will be 9 this year and as far as I know she still believes but maybe not.