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Original poster

Do your children genuinely believe in the tooth fairy?

17 replies

HalfTermHalfTerm · 20/07/2020 15:50

Just that, really. My mum loves anything magical/mystical, so was very heavily invested in us believing in Father Christmas/The Tooth Fairy/The Easter bunny when we were children. I actually tried to talk to her and tell her I didn’t think I believed in FC anymore when I was about 8 or 9 and she refused to hear it and told me that he’d be upset if he heard me saying that

I did genuinely believe in Father Christmas as a child (until I was about 7 anyway) but I don’t think I ever believed in the tooth fairy. I found the idea of fairies wanting children’s teeth quite creepy and I found the idea that they switched them for human money strange. I think I would have found it more believable if they’d left a little gift instead of money...

I did put my teeth under my pillow to start with (there’s no way 6 year old me was turning down a nice shiny £2 coin), but I think I always knew it was my mum. I did ask her about it a couple of years later and she admitted that it was her. She obviously wasn’t as committed to being the tooth fairy as she was to being Father Christmas!

I was just wondering whether I was an especially grumpy and cynical child, or whether there are other children who might just be in it for the pocket money!

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Fatted · 20/07/2020 15:54

I don't know if my kids believe in it so much as they think it's a fun thing to do. They get money at the end of the day, they're happy.

It is quite an interesting point to raise. I always find it funny whenever my youngest talks about things like religion (we're not a religious family, he learns about it in school) he talks about baby Jesus in the same way he would about Santa or the Easter bunny. Which I guess is probably where it does belong.

lukasiak · 20/07/2020 15:55

I'm a lot like your mum, and my little ones (3 and 5) wholeheartedly believe, and my older ones (13 and 16) pretend to because they believe I will take away the presents and lollies if they don't. Not that they lose teeth anymore, but I did promise Ds that the tooth fairy will still visit him if he brings his wisdom teeth home as an incentive to encourage him to get a move on and book in to get them out

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HalfTermHalfTerm · 20/07/2020 15:57

That’s true, it was quite exciting looking under the pillow in the morning regardless of who put the money there!

I was just thinking about it yesterday and finding it funny. I did believe in fairies as a child and I nearly cried when I didn’t get a Hogwarts letter, but for some reason I obviously decided The Tooth Fairy was a step too far!

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LightUpLetters · 20/07/2020 16:01

My dd is 7, nearly 8 and she believes in the tooth fairy and father christmas.

However i have a feeling she is going to be very upset when she finds out that its a lie as she doesn't understand or agree with adults lying to children.

She knows that if a child says something thats shes unsure of then she can ask me and i will tell her the truth, but we have disagreed in our house about the truth about the tooth fairy and father christmas.

Dh wants the kids to believe in these things, but i do feel she isnt going to be happy when she finds out that its not true.

At school, one of the teachers did a tinsel thing round some rope with a bell on with dd and told her that if she hangs it in the garden then the fairies will come when they hear the bell. I played along with this at first but then dd wouldnt go to bed at night as she wanted to see the fairies come (dd had night terrors if she doesnt get enough sleep) and she was getting very upset that she couldnt see the fairies. I ended up telling her that it was just a magical made up thing and its nice to think that but its not real.

She was really annoyed that a teacher had spun her this “rubbish story”

JustCallMeGriffin · 20/07/2020 16:21

My eldest really did, it was a teacher in school that burst her tooth fairy bubble...which subsequently broke the father Christmas one a couple of months later.

She's beautifully naive so this magical excitement of hers lasted until last year of primary! Thankfully she loved the magic side of it so much she wasn't cross that we lied to her, in fact she was impressed that her incredibly boring and straight laced mother made such an effort on something that was clearly only a 'fun' thing.

My youngest (7) I'm convinced is playing me for the money but as long as she's a willing participant we'll carry on with the charade

TreestumpsAndTrampolines · 20/07/2020 16:44

Eldest does - and is careful not to think about it too hard I think, so he doesn't burst his own belief.

6 year old doesn't, and doesn't like the idea at all anyway - when I suggested it, even the thought of a quid under his pillow wasn't enough to shake the horror of some stranger creeping in on him when he was asleep and fiddling around under his pillow. And normally he'd be all over cash.

Persipan · 20/07/2020 20:19

As a child, I secretly stockpiled my teeth, my logic being that I could cash them in at some point by putting them all under my pillow at once; and that if I did so without telling anyone, I could test the existence of the tooth fairy, about whom I had my suspicions. So either I'd get cash, or I'd be right, and I regarded either as a win!

SoMuchToBits · 20/07/2020 20:25

My ds is now 19, but when he was little he sussed out the tooth fairy before he had even lost a tooth! It didn't stop him going along with it though, as he knew he's get money...

Similarly although he believed in Father Christmas when he was very young (3 or 4) I'm sure he stopped believing way before he let on that he had twigged. It doesn't stop him still getting a stocking as an adult though!

OneEpisode · 20/07/2020 20:28

We segued out of it, the coin was in an envelope which over time more obviously had our writing on it...

Picklypickles · 20/07/2020 20:33

My children are 8 and 6 and they certainly seem to believe the tooth fairy is real, the 8yr old has been getting quite jealous of how much her little brother has been getting from her recently now that all his front teeth have fallen out, she hasn't lost a tooth in about 2 years now!

TigerQuoll · 21/07/2020 11:48

I think I believed until quite late - I lost a tooth while we were all visiting my grandparents and I got a huge jar full of coins. It was so incredible and made such an impression on me that I still remember what the room looked like that we were sleeping in and waking up to see it. I just have been reasonably old because I was old enough to cross a busy road on my own with my 18 month younger twin sisters to go to the shop and buy all the chocolate bars we could hold.

feesh · 21/07/2020 11:52

I told my 7 year old yesterday that the tooth fairy isn’t real, because he kept going on about it being mum and not the tooth fairy, and spoiling it for the younger two. I felt awful telling him, but I had to nip it in the bud quickly!

wanderings · 22/07/2020 08:35

I didn't believe in Santa at all - early on I grasped the idea that lots of things were made up. I had this childhood idea that if something appeared in children's stories a lot, it was likely to be pretend. I thought wolves and rainbows were fictional for this reason. (I was right about most other things, but that's another thread.) I'd never heard of the tooth fairy until my mum mentioned it, so I did believe it for a while.

I believed in the Easter Bunny, perhaps until my parents did a lovely thing of pretending that we were "meeting" the Bunny in our garden. We children couldn't see the Bunny because we were blindfolded, but we could talk to him, and he replied in a squeaky voice, and hid our eggs in front of us. My parents also talked in their normal voices, so we wouldn't think it was them being the Bunny. I loved that game, but after that, I did realise the Bunny was pretend.

ErrolTheDragon · 22/07/2020 09:33

Mine did, which was surprising as she didn't believe in anything else - sussed Santa when she was 5/6, didn't believe in god or anything supernatural. The difference with the tooth fairy was that she thought she'd actually seen her - whether it was a dream or a glimpse of me in a nightie I don't know. So, it wasn't really 'belief', it was based on 'evidence'. (until of course at some point she re-evaluated that 'evidence')

Original poster

HalfTermHalfTerm · 22/07/2020 22:27

I am loving hearing everyone’s tooth fairy anecdotes!

I had something a little bit similar @wanderings, in that I thought dragons were real but had died out in the same way that dinosaurs had. If I’m honest I’m still hopeful that’s the case and they haven’t actually died out...

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ErrolTheDragon · 22/07/2020 22:34

There must be dragons somewhere in the multiverse.

Angliski · 22/07/2020 22:54

I don’t agree with lying to kids and have no idea what I will do about the pressure to conform to lies about Santa etc. He is only six months so I have a while but how can they trust you if you lie to them about stuff?

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