AIBU to be a little sad at the idea of dd not believing in Father Christmas anymore?

[Readyforslippers]

Dd is in Year 3 at school (all aged 7/8), she absolutely believes in Father Christmas at the moment. How many more years am I likely to have? I feel perhaps someone at school may spill the beans soon?

I understand some parents don't agree with it, but for me her belief is something quite magical and I feel a little sad at the idea of that ending. AIBU to feel this way and to try to make this year a little extra special just in case? I suppose the problem is that I could end up saying that for several years.

She's growing up too quickly, it's like I've blinked since she was tiny and she's now in key stage 2!

Christians.

We call them believers and allow them to hold their beliefs if it is important to them.

That was the first red flag for then 4yo DD1 the Christmas before she stopped believing entirely. She came to the conclusion that all the Santas we saw out and about were just people dressed up and the real Santa only came out on Christmas Eve. So whenever we saw a Santa she would play along and then whisper when we left how it definitely wasn’t the real Santa because X or Y!

You keep misunderstanding me. You think I'm saying you need to teach your son whether or not god is real. No, there's no urgency for that, his beliefs will keep developing his whole life, or maybe they have already settled as atheist, which is also grand.

What you need to teach your son, like yesterday, is not to talk about it like that.

Or, you know, don't... but he could upset and anger people, lose friends and job prospects, or worse (there are some violent religious men out there, sadly).

i don’t understand sorry . I’ll just continue in the way that makes sense to me and my child

Yes, I'm starting to get that feeling. I honestly don't see the need for them to grow up too quickly, they've plenty of adult life ahead of them.

I taught Year 1. I had to teach an 'elicitation' lesson in RE, about Christmas. It was meant to remind them of the story of the Nativity, which they'd taken part in. Unfortunately, they began to talk about F. Christmas. Which was fine until one child stuck their hand up and announced to the whole class that he wasn't real, and was actually your parents. Although I tried to head him off, it was patently obvious that the majority of the class knew, but didn't want to know.

The child was NOT horrible, btw. He simply wanted to share his knowledge.

The next child didn't help when he told the class that every time you open an advent calendar door an elf dies!

@BoredZeldahow do you explain this without going down the route of all silly nonsense stories. And what magic? Times have moved on, Santa now usually means presents. We have always taught our dc that Santa is part of Xmas, not the gift giver.
My child also asked me why does some kids get gifts and some don’t, why do some kids get very nice gifts and some don’t. We were not going to fill this very smart child’s head with stupid nonsense stories.

We teach them that parents give the gifts and Santa is just there as part of Xmas, just like how the reindeer, Xmas movies, etc is.

This same child questioned the naughty and nice list 🤣 So yes, we were not going to fill his head with all nonsense just for the ‘magic’. The magic is being generous to other, having family and a loving home. Kids are really not stupid.

My ds does the whole ‘pretend’ thing about Santa, and still gets excited about Christmas but it’s about the whole period.

My DS believed until he was about 12 as he knew I wouldn't lie.😳

Same. DS are 13 and 18 and we've never had any conversations around FC until last year when I suggested to my eldest that if he wanted a bigger main present there would be less budget for his stocking and was he okay with that.

He’s not he has additional needs (sorry for drip feed) and is very sweet and innocent. I’ll be sad to see it go though.

I really find it difficult to believe children who attend school, or read, or watch TV don't know by the time they are 7 or 8. A other child will tell them, they'll read it in a book, or see something on TV. And once you are told, however much you might want to believe, it's obvious who F. Christmas is.

I don't feel sad about it, and I don't even recall being sad at the time, or even whether I was told or whether I'd figured it out for myself. My niece had worked it out by the same age, but told me not to tell my sister in case her present haul was affected. 😁

My DDs are 25 and 28 and I expect to get a message at some point reminding me that they still believe in Santa. It’s a standing joke in our family. We never had a time when they traumatically stopped believing, they just transitioned smoothly into “believing”.

I did tell my four DC a couple of years ago. They all told me I was talking rubbish, and of course he is real. They were aged 16 through to 23 at the time.

This means I am still doing stockings for them.

DS was firmly convinced until about age 9, but definitely knew by 10. We did a day trip to Lapland when he was 5, which seemed to cement his belief for more years than we might have had otherwise; we never did visits to garden centre Father Christmas so as far as he was concerned he’d met the ‘real one’ and all the rest were helpers.

Having said that, we never made a big deal about FC bringing all the presents, he always had gifts labelled up from the people who gave them, then a random selection labelled from FC, so FC never got credit for big ticket items.

He continued to play along for the sake of much younger cousins, (he’s 16 now), and after a couple of years of eye rolling while humouring me, last year wanted to revive some traditions from when he was younger (eg NORAD Santa tracker).

Its lovely now we can do more ‘adult’ Christmas activities and develop new traditions - I was sad at the thought of him no longer believing (esp as we never intended him to be an only child), but actually, teen christmasses without the pressure to hide all the presents, use different wrapping paper, sneak about building toy kitchens at midnight and so on, have been some of my favourites.

OK, well, maybe you should.

Adults believe in all sorts of nonsense and it's an important part of parenting to get our kids to question why people believe in what they believe in.

All beliefs are not worthy of the same respect. Some crazy beliefs are just childish (fairies), some are nonsensical (Flat Earthers), some are hateful and dangerous (Holocaust denial). Labelling people based on their beliefs is good practice.

I’m 65 and still remember being told very sternly by our teacher that if anyone said anything about Father Christmas to any of the younger ones we would be IN TROUBLE! I can’t actually remember how that worked in practice, did the younger ones not wonder what she was talking about! Or what kind of trouble we would be in ! But it seemed to work. Feels like we were all much more innocent then, or is that rose tinted glasses.

I think parents forget the extent that children (or at least reasonably happy ones) can experience wonder in the world all around them. Don’t get me wrong, Christmas can be incredibly fun, exciting and magical for kids, but the sense of wonder or “magic” shouldn’t disappear with FC at 10 or 11 years old.

And to be honest I think it’s better for parents to “play along” with the Father Christmas stuff rather than making it into a huge/central part of the celebration. Otherwise they might feel a bit too deflated/cheated when they do realise they’ve been lied to/tricked the whole time.

“if you don’t believe you don’t receive”

I really disagree with this, it feels manipulative. "I'll only give you gifts if you pretend to agree with something you know isn't true"

Ugh, plenty enough of that kind of thing in the adult world, I won't be doing that to my children.

Oh I love this ! I’m the same , stockings for any adult offspring who might be staying! Although to be fair one of them is our adult daughter with learning difficulties, it’s hard to stop for her !

I remember one Xmas morning, I was about 7 or 8 and my brother is two years older.

We decided we did not believe but that we would pretend so as not to upset our parents.

DS announced at 5 it was nonsense and definitely us. I had to remind him for a few years not to tell other children. He's 9 now and apparently it's still a thing in his class which seems crazy to me but I'll remind him again. DD is 7 and has asked, I answered truthfully but since then she's decided to just keep believing I think.

It was never that big a deal to me and I didn't realise how big a deal some parents make if it till I had my own children.

I agree. I think that it will get him in trouble, DS is on the spectrum, we're Catholics, the little boy, that I mentioned above who's shouting that there is no God has been hit on a few occasions in school by other DC, my 99 centile DS would love to punch him but he is afraid to lose a point in school, other DC don't have the fear. It's a Catholic school.
I'd teach your DS pronto about respecting his peers beliefs or he will be hurt.

Quite. DS told a few children in year 1 before I realised he was doing so. He was excited about what he'd worked out and wanted to share it. I told him to keep a lid on it once I realised but I had no idea anyone thought it was that big a deal.

Obviously FC can’t be everywhere at once, so he has a lot of helpers. That’s what I was told as a child - it made perfect sense, to me, anyway!