to be pissed at ASDA advertising that i can buy STOCKING FILLERS from them????

[muppetisacat]

....my 7 year old just saw their Julie Walters advert to promote stocking fillers... 2 for £8 or something like that...

... "mummy... why do you need to buy stocking fillers???"...

surely their advertising agency could be more subtle (dare i say "creative") in getting their message across?

Plus i am rubbish at thinking on my feet and too sleep deprived to come up with a convincing argument.

Dumbledore's Girl - our tooth fairy leaves £2 because MIL told the DDs that their cousins always got £2 from the tooth fairy

And our tooth fairy also does handwritten letters - actually DD2 gets letters oftener than she loses teeth because she is always leaving letters under her pillow for the tooth fairy to find in between times. They have quite a correspondence going.

Rosa, how sweet. But thank God dd isn't reading this otherwise she would be leaving letters every night! I suppose it is one way of getting your child to write.

HeyThereBert, I dont think my children believed in FC because I went on about it. It is not really something I care much about tbh. And I certainly have never done anything to perpetuate the myth along the lines of snowy footprints or leaving a mince pie out for him. In fact, I am notoriously bad at remembering gifts are supposed to have come from FC. One year, ds2 got slippers the wrong size and I blatantly went back to M&S with him and exchanged them for larger ones!

I think my older boys went a couple of years when they only pretended to believe, but dd is definitely not yet at that stage. And thank goodness she isnt. Why cant children be allowed a little innocence these days?

FMVixen - DH told DS something along the lines of " I sure you know that the presents come from Mum and Dad (he didn't) but it's nice for little children to believe so don't tell your sister". That way he got the message across without him feeling silly.
DS has ASD and takes thing very literally so may have believed for ever! Nice though it was it could have made him a target for teasing.

dingdong - you're totally right to say 2 for £8 is a lot... not a bum slapping price exactly is it?

Not all children are the same. Some may figure it out at 5, others go on believing long after that. Ds1 asked me straight out two years ago - he was 8, getting on for 9 - "is Father Christmas real or is it you and Dad?" I couldn't lie to him, not when he had asked me directly and I thought (like many of you) that he probably pretty much 'knew' already. I remember saying "you're sure you want to know?" and he said he did. So I told him and he broke his heart - sobbed and sobbed. I felt absolutely dreadful. I said "but you told me you wanted to know" and he replied "yes...but I didn't know that was going to be the answer..."

I still don't think I could have done anything else - I wouldn't have wanted to put him in a situation where he was defending the reality of FC in the playground "because my Mum says he's real"...but it's never quite the same when you no longer believe. He joins in with pretending now for his little brother - but it was so sad, and no, he really didn't know, not even at 8 (almost 9).

i dont see how a child who believes their presents come from a stranger is more innocent than one who thinks they come with love and hard work from their devoted adoring parents.

fwiw - ive been using the old 'FC wont bring you any presents if you dont behave' line on mine too, so im no innocent in the pulling the wool over their eyes stakes either, but under close cross examination i dont think i would swear blind its true... i dunno, the oldest of mine is only 4, dss is 7 tho - if he asks? will prob make unconvincing 'yes its true' noises as its not my place to disillusion another womans child.

i just dont get the hysteria about it all tbh. and im not saying anyone in particular is hysterical about it... just a general feeling.

like you say, they do see things like, the presents under the tree having the same paper on that was in the supermarket shopping bags, and returning stuff to the shop when it doesnt fit, and empty boxes in parents bedroom and they even quite often find the present hiding place...

its a nice enough fantasy to all go along with and collectively, as a family, pretend is true, i guess its part of the magic, but really, do they need to utterly believe it? is there any harm in everyone knowing deep down that its just a fantasy? can they not just pretend to believe? ime most kids do anyway. then again, maybe i grew up in a particularly un-innocent childhood? nah, dont buy it, i was naive as F as a kid. (and I knew he wasnt real)

half the fun for me and my siblings was trying to stay awake long enough to catch one of our parents sneaking in to put the stockings on the bed... never managed it!

i never mention fc tbh
we do it but half heartedly

But why do you stop having to do the snowy footprints because they don't believe in him any more? We still do the whole bit with he carrot and the beer and the mince pies and the glitter and the reindeer food......

AND the Advent Calendar Fairy and the Pjyama Fairy.......

i dunno seeker, of course, if you all as a family enjoy all that stuff and its part of you christmas magic and traditions theres absolutley no reason to stop it. no way. and its not at all incompatible that you all know, deep down, that it is you doing it... thats all im saying. i dont think that all knowing, that you all know, that its just a fun and happy and delightful and chocolate and present filled game is in any way going to detract from the fun or magic.

hence, i couldnt give a stuff about the ads coz we as a family still have our games and traditions our fun and magic and our chocolate and presents and blow me, but i think thats a pretty feckin lucky thing to have. its enough for me.

Muppet we do main presents in the afternoon but every one of us has a sock from santa on christmas morning. When asked is Santa real I truthfully say 'Yes Santa is someone who gives secretly'
I was annoyed by the asda ad too.

The innocence I was referring to was the ability to believe in magical things, amply demonsstrated by Marthaboo's sons's reaction when he heard the truth. He wanted to believe in the fairy tale, not the truth. And once the truth is known, however nice it may be to know that your parents love you enough to shower you with presents, the magic has gone away a bit. After all, children tend to be inherently selfish and tend to expect that their parents love them enough to give them presents.

I wasn't talking about any other sort of innocence

I agree with Cod - he's barely mentioned in our house and I've never really hidden the fact that I do the stockings yet my dds still want to put out the mince pie even though they absolutely know I eat it! But they also asked me outright years ago (they are 9 and 7) if he was real and I just felt it was wrong to look them in the eye and lie to them.

I have never gone along with the tooth fairy either. They don't seem too scarred by my crap parenting! 2 friends were telling me about writing notes in the middle of the night from the tooth fairy which is kind of cute but I'm just not that kind of mother! Much to based in reality - poor dds!!

i agree with smeeinnit, i never told my kids that santa paid for the presents. i wanted them to know that we had worked hard to get them all that plastic shit.

so santa made the plastic shit and the plastic shit doesn't work until tinkerbell ( santas magic fairy) makes it work

GET CREATIVE FGS!

I just wanted to add, I am not someone who was scarred for life for knowing that FC and the TF did not exist. I certainly believed in them at one point (I can remember that) and I obviously learnt the truth as some point but it was not a big disappointment in my life when I learnt the truth. I do not even remember that moment. Forme, it did not matter who was giving as long as the stocking fillers and tooth money still arrived !

So I am not perpetuating the myth because I think it is fundamentally important for children to believe in these things. If the truth be known, my 7 yo dd's belief in the tooth fairy in this day and age slightly surprises me, but it moves me too. I suppose that it why I want to hang on to it: because I know that one day very soon all this magical fantasy stuff will be gone.

fair enough