Fact or Fiction

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The Easter Bunny. Santa. The Tooth Fairy. No, you aren’t in the toddler stages section. You are right here in Pre-teens. Those aren’t names you were expecting to read here, are they? They are certainly names I never thought I’d be discussing this far into the game.

My boys are entirely too old to believe in any of those “People“, andyet they both do. Adamantly. Fiercely. Try to talk them out of it, Idare you.

Am I shocked at this? Most certainly. Am I concerned? Not even a little bit. In fact, I strongly encourage it.

When our children are small, they are open to every possibility. They accept every word from us as Solid Gold Fact. As they grow older and they begin to form their own world-view, they lose a bit of that wide-eyed wonder.

Even though they are growing and learning all the time, they still want to believe. They are capable of absolute faith, given the opportunity to experience it. All too often, we allow our children to believe in concepts and ideas simply because we believe and we pass them on. It is easy for us to forget that our children need and deserve to come to their own beliefs in their own way.

Our children will believe in God or Dinosaurs or Aliens if we teach those concepts to them at a young enough age. Once they reach this phase, right before the teen years start, they are still as willing to believe, but they want to form their own conclusions. They seek facts. They want to deduce. They want to learn and believe in their own way.

I have never once told my children that God exists, yet they fully believe that He does, because I have given them ample information on both sides of that arguement and let them come to an opinion on their own.

This is exactly what has happened in our home around the subject of holidays. Since they were school-aged, I have never asserted that Santa, or the Bunny, or the Tooth Fairy exist. I have only ever responded to the questions with (a bit of a gasp and) “What do YOU think?”

If you ask my children if there is a Santa, they will tell you undoubtedly Yes. If you ask them how they know, they will explain to you that their mother would NEVER spend that much money on them, and therefore Santa MUST be responsible.

Yes, my freakish level of cheap-stake-ness is my children’s concrete proof that Santa exists. Their mother would never in a million years allow them as much candy as the Easter Bunny brings, and the Tooth Fairy? Well, they’ve seen her. That’s what they tell me, at least. The point is that they have facts (mom is cheap; grand presents arrive under the tree anyway) and they put those facts together to come to one logical conclusion.

They will argue these undeniable facts to anyone who dare question them. They will carefully lay out their arguments, and are not at all afraid to write someone of as “Crazy” who disagrees with them, because so far, no one has PROVEN their side of the argument. Santa is real, and there is no changing that. Until, of course, the Christmas list includes something Apple, something Nintendo AND something Tony Hawk. Mom may have to burst a bubble or two in order to keep her budget, but she’ll cross that bridge when she comes to it.

Shannon happily encourages well thought out, rational beliefs in blatant lies at Type A Mom and her personal Webpage => Whiskey in my Sippy Cup.

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