12 year old still believing the Christmas elves are real

[Diggingmyselfahole]

I feel really bad as I think I ruined one of my pupils Christmas experience the other day.
I tutor a 12 year old girl. As we were packing up for the end of the lesson, she asked me about Christmas and if my Dd was excited, just general Christmas chit chat. I told her yes and that I might start the elves this year but I don’t know if I’ll remember to change the silly thing they’re doing each morning etc. She looked a bit strange then said were they fake elves I was talking about as her mum didn’t move them etc, she looked a bit embarrassed then explained it away that there are some that are real and some that are fake and sort of asked me if that was true? It then dawned on me that she still believed in her parents doing the elves 😳and I felt really bad. I don’t know, by high school, I was getting up to all sorts of naughty things with my pals, I realise all kids are different and it’s great she’s more innocent
Felt really bad, but Aibu to have assumed by 12 she wouldn’t believe in all that still?

Google Icelandic elves. Be very careful OP.

I personally find it odd that a child of 12 (unless ND) still believes in FC, tooth fairy etc in this day and age. I and my peers were around 7 or 8 when we found out and that was in the 1960's. Surely kids these days have greater access to information? I have no idea what Elf on a Shelf is but it sounds as though it's been assimilated from a film and it is certainly nothing to do with the centuries old Christmas traditions. It is just another (American I'm guessing) commercialism. It seems that children these days believe far more in fantasy than we did as children. I assume parents have more disposal income, leisure time and possibly pressure to indulge their little darlings than my parents generation.

I stopped believing before I was 10 years old, however I was asked by my father to pretend I still believed whilst at home as I had two younger brothers.
At school though, no one believed before going up to secondary school. 😊

DB was a secondary school teacher for 35 years. He says it was no uncommon for children in his Y7 tutor groups to still believe - although only once did someone still believe in Y8.

DD rumbled it when she was 6 and told her (then) 9 year old brother. 6 years later they are still happy to our stockings out though!!

My child was in Y5, and it was me that buggered the ' magic' up by dropping presents and making an almighty racket whilst being ' Santa'.

There are many things that make it likely that Y4 or 5 is when kids start to realise that there isn't a Father Christmas that visits every house, and most of it is to do with them developing logic and developing their understanding of the world.

You are then left with ' magic' , and if a child wasn't to believe in magic.

I've told my now Y6 child ( and myself, to be honest ) , that believing in Santa is a matter of faith - the Miracle on 34th street explanation- and that in the beginning there was a St Nicholas who left presents for children, so he's ' real' in that sense.

As for the Elves - that is just performative parent/ social media nonsense. It can disappear along with Christmas Eve boxes.

As for the Elves - that is just performative parent/ social media nonsense.

I don't put anything kid related on social media. My children love the elf. So, no.

There are always comments on these threads of "assuming no ND..."

Do people think ND children are daft? My autistic 12yo has always been very observant and questioning...we had to be extremely careful to keep her believing in Father Christmas and she's known for a few years now. I don't think she ever would have been taken in by a magic elf. She's more astute than most NT kids of her age tbh.

Maybe be a use it's a huge spectrum and ND can also come with associated learning disabilities ?
Your ND daughter maybe very astute my ND son however has severe learning disabilities and very complex needs.

Exactly, learning difficulties, which are separate to the ND. So why do people always say assuming no ND rather than assuming no LD?

Because you can't separate the two
Not everybody who.is autistic is like your daughter
Even if someone doesn't have learning disabilities their autism can sometimes make them more vulnerable and naive compared to their peers I know loads of people with autism they are all.different ,just because your daughter presents in a certain way doesn't mean everyone will.

Tbf, if anyone on here ever dares make a fairly innocuous general statement - "12 year olds should have figured out Santa by now", "A 10 year old should be able to sit quietly in a restaurant " etc, there's usually quite a few very combative replies along the lines of
"Well my DC has ASD/ADHD/learning disabilities, and can't do x, and you'd probably just sit there judging us so you can fuck right off with that ableist rubbish." Or similar.

I've noticed it much less over the last year or so, and I think that's mostly because posters preempt it with "unless ND", even if it's not really relevant.

Hmm. I'd sit her down now and tell her, if I were you. I remember teaching a class of Y7s a few years ago and a girl mentioned Santa (showing she believed) - the rest of the class laughed out loud. I shut them up, but I know that she got a fair bit of ridicule for the rest of the week.

There's no "magic" in embarrassment.

YANBU at all OP and I think most people would assume a 12yo knew the truth.

I can't actually remember at what point my DC stopped 'officially' believing but they definitely all knew by Y4/5. Doesn't stop them still enjoying the magic of the rituals, though (although we never did the Elf thing. I LOVE the comment from the poster whose son said that mum just felt it would be another thing she'd have to do. I so identify with that ).

I do think there is a way of telling DC, whether neurotypical or neurodiverse (I have two of one and one of the other!), that is more gentle than just 'ta da, it was me all along, Santa doesn't exist!' There is a whole historical story around the original St Nicholas and how the origins of the modern-day Father Christmas were born. With all three of my DC, I used this as the basis for the conversation i.e. the tradition of a gift-giving Santa is based on the story of a patron saint from a long time ago and the tradition is now carried on in the modern world, by parents filling stockings or sacks for their DC on Christmas Eve, but that St Nicholas was a real saint who lived a long time ago and the traditions are all based on kindness and giving.

This link has a lot of detail and obviously there are myths and legends around the various stories, but it's a nice alternative to look at with DC, rather than just saying 'nah, he's not real'.

https://www.stnicholascenter.org/who-is-st-nicholas

At that age plenty of children have told her that Santa and elves are not real. She's probably had overheard adults taking about it as well. She's decided to hold on to the belief for whatever reason which is sweet.

YANBU especially as I'm going to assume you diaries it back when you realise she still believes.

My autistic daughter is smart but very literal. This can come across as gullible sometimes. She absolutely could see the impossibility of Father Christmas (she’d say things like how does he do it, does he really do it?) but because I came up with some light hearted answer like “Gosh I know, isn’t it a mystery? I guess he’s magic” she believed me. She had no reason to believe I would lie.

When she was 10 she brought up the subject again and I told her the truth. She was absolutely fine with it because she already knew it didn’t add up.

My DDs are 11 and 12 and in year 7 and 8, I think they still believe. They’ve been sceptical for a couple of years now but they still play along at least… I’m not going to smash this to pieces by explaining, I’ve always said you should wait for a child to realise by themselves.

We have had an elf since DC1 was 2 so this will be our 11th year and they still play along with that too, including 13 year old DS who knows it isn’t real but he plays along for the sake of younger DC (3 and 5).

Right so because SOME children with autism also have a learning difficulty, we should use ND as shorthand for "ND with a learning disability"? It's not accurate is it

Yeah that makes sense. It's just wound me up for a while now, I see it so much.

I didn't say that my son is autistic so therefore Neuro diverse he also has learning disabilities but he's still Neuro diverse
You the one assuming that everyone who is Neuro diverse must be exactly the same as your daughter ,I'm pointing out there are many complexities
And is some cases autism alone can make people very vulnerable compared to their peers .

DH said 'there isn't really a Santa, is there? to his mum aged 8 and she said 'No, but don't tell your sister' (aged 6) and he replied 'But she told me!'.

That’s not what @x2boys said though.

And as I explained in my post, even academically able autistic kids can be literal/gullible and socially naive. So your post decrying the concept that ND kids are “daft” is kind of short sighted.

My son questioned the logistics from around aged 8 but i evaded it a bit and he then asked me to tell him the truth last November aged 10 so I did.

his younger sister is 8 and has never once questioned the logistics. She’ll be one of these that would believe up until year 8/9 😂 I will be telling her before high school though- I don’t want her to be laughed at.

I have never done elf on the shelf. I cba. I love Christmas but I get v annoyed with my Facebook feed being full of random peoples elf scenes. Some people feel the need to post about their elf every single day - whyyyyyy. Anyway I’ve gone off track

yanbu op. I would have also assumed a 12 year old would know an elf isn’t moving itself around a house

'Because you can't separate the two
Not everybody who.is autistic is like your daughter
Even if someone doesn't have learning disabilities their autism can sometimes make them more vulnerable and naive compared to their peers I know loads of people with autism they are all.different ,just because your daughter presents in a certain way doesn't mean everyone will.'

You certainly can separate the two! Not everyone with a learning difficulty is neurodiverse!

Yes I'm fully aware of that I was talking about my own child ,you can't seperate his learning disabilities from his autism🙄

Wow. I knew from a young age courtesy of loose lipped older siblings, but 12… yikes. I’d worry about a poor kid who hadn’t naturally questioned it by that age. 😬