FlynnieAroundTheChristmasTree on Mon 15-Dec-08 14:53:13
"Years ago there was a photograph of a little girl playing with some fairies that some time after was proved to be fake, well when the picture first came out Arthur Conan Doyle said that it proved what he had known all along, that fairies really do exist. J M Barrie also said that he recognised one of the fairies."
Well, whoever was being innocent about those fairies, it can't have been the two little girls involved. They must have known that they were cut out of a well known margarine advert. Which is why Barrie recognised them.
As for Conan Doyle, he believed in all sorts of occult crap.
I have nothing against Santa, personally, and my dcs can do what they like about believing (what they do like is actually knowing-but-pretending).
But I do think Stephanie has a point. Sometimes you hear parents on MN who don't seem to like the idea of their children growing up and becoming knowledgeable about the world. Whyever not? I've enjoyed it- why not my dd? It doesn't mean that you have to fill your world with sexy innuendo or provoking clothes. But innocent in the sense of naive doesn't seem such a very desirable thing to be either.
Dd reached puberty at age 10, both in terms of physical development and in terms of maturity. She had probably worked out the Santa thing 5 or 6 years earlier than that, but was tactful enough not to spoil anyone's pleasure. She is not at all into over-sexualised behaviour or over-materialistic. She can still enjoy the good parts of childhood, she still plays and is not at all afraid of being thought a child.
But if by innocent you mean ignorant, then she certainly isn't that either. By 10 she already had her own library card and she has never been the sort of person you can keep ignorant. But then I've never wanted to.