To ask for advice on telling my child the truth about Father Christmas

[JacquettaW]

I have an 11 year old DS. He will be going to high school in September. The thing is, he still believes in Father Christmas and I can't send him into year 7 not knowing.

Any advice for breaking the news gently.

So as not to drip feed, he is an only child and he has mild autism

This could be me! Exact same scenario down to autism, but I wasn't planning on telling him 😬 my daughter figured it out in Y7 too.

I would be tempted, even though this goes against all my beliefs that Christmas shouldn't be mentioned until November, to ask him what he would like for Christmas as you'll need to make sure you can get it...

My autistic child is now in early 20s and still belives. There's no need to break the magic.

@clairedelalune That sounds like a really good idea.

It's so hard, I don't want to have to tell him but I don't want him looking stupid in front of the other kids when he finds it hard to make friends in the first place

I would say the chances are he may already knows or has an inkling. I remember I knew way before my mum and dad told me but didnt let on as I thought I wouldn't get any presents!!

Can you paraphrase any of these?
www.diyncrafts.com/9189/lifehacks/4-heartwarming-letters-explain-santa-kids

Please don't term his autism mild, especially to other people, there's no such thing, you're only experiencing his presentation as mild because currently he's coping.

I'm in a same situation with my daughter. I told santa is real he just doesn't do the gift drop off at each housebit he lives in the North Pole with Mrs Claus.. . Which deep down she figured. She laughed and cringed at the fact I admitted ate the mince pie etc and she was like "this whooole time I believed it all"

If he isn’t going to take it well, could you just go down the people believe in different things route. Or perhaps say that Santa only comes to younger children and once you go to high school he passes the job back to parents. That way he wont talk about what Santa is bringing.

I had this worry OP but I think deep down DD already knew and was hedging her bets. We had no big dicussion but if she mentioned santa I just gave her a knowing look and made a joke, letting her know that I knew. As it got nearer to christmas 'honestly you are in High School now' sorted it! No massive fall out, I think she just needed to be reassured that xmas still happened and I was okay with her knowing that there is no Santa.

They pick up well enough without a big fuss. Ours were told the magic just changes as they got older. We’ve never considered he might not be real.

@BlankTimes I love that idea!

I haven't actually ever used that term before but I posted it that way to get the right level of advice if that makes sense. There might have been a different way to go about it if he was high functioning for example. Hope I've explained that properly?

I thought the same thing with my 11 year old. A few weeks ago I casually brought up Christmas and present possibilities, then said "while we're at it, I need to speak to you about something". He just said "I know what you're going to say". A little part of my heart broke, but we agreed that santa would still visit every Christmas because he still lives inside us.

You can talk to the school. We had a year 7 girl still believing in Santa. Her whole mixed age tutor group were great about it and didn't want to spoil it for her. Santa visited school and she was thrilled. It's one of the loveliest moments of acceptance and respect of difference I've ever seen in a school. Everyone learned from it.

Just an opposite view point, I’m old enough and my dad only broke it to me a few years ago (3 or 4) because he was worried I still believed. I do like to believe but have known since age 10 that mum supplied the presents. I was never bullied over it and was a fairly quiet child.

Thanks so much for all the replies. I feel better about the whole thing now. I think I will go for some of the words from the letters in the link above

My DD is almost 11 and autistic. She stopped believing in Santa when she was about 6. It just didn't seem logical to her, so she refused to believe it. She still avidly believes in the tooth fairy though, even though she's caught me taking her tooth and leaving the money 😂😂.

My 11 year old lost a baby tooth about a month ago and was going on about getting money so I said, ‘money? Who do you think is going to give you money?’ He said ‘the tooth fairy’ and I said ‘I think you’re old enough to know the truth about that game now.’ Then he asked, ‘what about Santa?’ So I asked him what he thought and he said he didn’t think he was real so I confirmed he wasn’t and it was a nice game grown ups play to make children happy - and now he’s old enough to join the game which meant not telling his brother or sister, bla bla bla. Except he has told his brother, who’s 10, so now his brother keeps asking me for confirmation but as he so adamantly believed I wanted him to have his last year of believing before he goes up to secondary! At the minute I’m just saying to him, ‘I’m not talking about Christmas in August!’

I know some people say ‘let them find out themselves’ but some children, like my 11 year old, are prime targets for bullying and I’d rather not give him something ‘extra’ to be bullied about.

Definitely helps to mention something out of season.

My DS asked me outright and I totally regret not telling him the complete truth. I said something like “ I can tell you but you can never go back” and let him work it out. But I wish I had just given him a hug and said we would do Christmas as always even though I buy the presents.
It’s a sad time though if you have a true believer.

There’s some lovely theory about becoming santa, when you do surprise good deeds for others. Might that appeal to him?

Tough one bitbdeffo time to tell!

I once read a post about this on PinInterest. The mum took her son out to a cafe and explained that Santa wasn’t one person, we were all Santa and now he was grown up it was time to become a Santa. She got him to choose someone in the neighbourhood to buy a present for on the condition that he never told that person who gave her the gift. The boy remembered an elderly neighbour who’s slippers were badly in need of replacement and took great pleasure in choosing a new pair to leave on her porch.

I tend to think that a child who 'believes' after 9 or 10 is humouring their parents, my two certainly did that apparently.

We told our High functioning ASD boy this time last year.
He cried and was very sad but now has been very excited to make the magic for our younger children.....plus we'd just booked him tickets to see Ed Sheeran...that was a great sweetener. If like myDS and high functioning, they need to know so they don't look like a knob in front of the other kids!
We told ds he'd meet his people at school and he has...lots of lovely HF ASD kids !! He finally has friends !
Good luck OP !