Tooth fairy spin off...

[kayabrink]

Does anyone just not invent santa/easter bunny/tooth fairy?
Do you think never having these imaginary people aroud would lead to missing out on a major part of childhood?
What about the fact that you one day have to admit to the kids you've been telling them elaborate lies for the past 5 + years?
Dh wants to NEVER tell ds about santa etc, because he thinks you shold never, for any reason, lie to them...
Thoughts anyone?
TIA

[LavenderMae]

We do santa and the tooth fairy but my kids know it's us. We are their santa and tooth fairy. We don't do the easter bunny at all but we do celebrate spring. We didn't want to lie either and I think my kids are fairing pretty well. Although I can't say we have or will NEVER lie to our kids but imaginary people who leave gifts was just one of those pointless lies we don't feel would benifit our kids in any way. They still get santa gift and treats from the tooth fairy but with out the lie.

[Messac888]

We do an Easter basket, and an Easter egg hunt, but not the Easter Bunny. We do Santa, but only at my In-Laws house. We give the kids one gift from Santa but don't stress 'who' Santa is. We plan on doing the Tooth Fairy thing, but, once again, the kids will know it's us from the get go. My dh isn't too fond of the while fairy-tale ideas of these characters, and I'd against them for personal reasons. Here's why...

When I was little (and even now) my mom was a HUGE fanatic of anything make-believe. The woman still collects Disney movies, saying they're 'for the grandkids' and they can have the movies when she dies. WTF??? She's only 48! At any rate, when I was little she totally built up the Santa thing, Tooth fairy, easter bunny, etc. She was so into it that when I asked her at about 5 or 6 if they were real, she said yes, and went through an elaborate story as to why they were real. I finally figured it out, in the school lunch line, at the age of, get this, TEN, when everyone started making fun of me for still believing in Santa. I was devastated, not only that they didn't exist, but that my mom lied to me- and went through such elaborate measures to ensure that I believed. Talk about humiliation at it's finest.

Needless to say, my kids will not be believing that these characters exist, though we will teach where they came from, since every story has it's beginnings somewhere. But, to treat my kids as I'd wished I'd have been treated, they will not be lied to.

[flyingspaghettimama]

No tooth fairy, santa, easter bunny for us. We told her the stories behind it and told her that some kids believe it's true and she could believe it's true if she wanted to, but she didn't. We put out "reindeer" food (sparkly glitter and raisins), and she would look at us and say "but there aren't really reindeer coming to our house" and we said no, there wasn't. The next morning we put out brown chocolate pebbles, which she thought was hilarious. I think you don't have to chuck the "magic" and imagination out the window.

I don't think she seems to be missing out. She's not very interested in Santa. She's mostly fascinated by the story of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer (I made her a suit out of carboard, and some brown PJs) and the social exclusion theme. I'm not really into Easter in any case, the sugary stuff and all that. Most of her holiday stuff she gets at grandma's house.

She wanted to keep her teeth and emphatically did not want us to pretend any sort of tooth fairy. It's so funny, people always ask her if the tooth fairy came and she just matter of factly says, "no, I keep my teeth in a jar." Sort of icky, but she likes it, whatever.

We're sort of the same about religion - some people think x, some people think y, you can make up your own mind, but sometimes we'll go to a religious ceremony and she's very interested and respectful.

[noodle4u]

Id be very interested in hearing how you bring these up with your child, what you say, and what your answers to any questions are : :LOL

[snuggly mama]

Dh and I decided to "do" the Tooth Fairy and Santa for a couple of reasons. First, I have wonderful memories of Christmas with the whole anticipation of Santa and everything. Second, dh had a terrible childhood in which holidays were routinely ignored and no child was made to feel special in any way. We really believed that the magic and imagination of these fairy tales were one way to build memories with our children.

Fast forward ten years, and I think we were wrong. Santa is no longer the jolly Christmas figure he was when I was a child. He's now the "gimme" guy, the one that gets lists a mile long of toys the parents could never afford or that the parents don't want in the house. The tooth fairy isn't cute, either. She's sort of like an ATM machine -- deposit a tooth, take out cash. There's lots of competition among the kids' friends about how much each tooth was worth. As I said on my other post, my son had a pretty bitter pill to swallow when confronted with our lies (and we haven't even gotten to Santa yet).

When I was in high school, I wrote an essay for my school paper on why Santa was real -- not a real man, but a real spirit. It was a story passed on to me from my mother about the gifts left for her and her siblings the year her father died and there was no money. Gifts appeared on the porch, a tree was decorated for them. I learned about this myself the year my dd lay critically ill in ICU during her first Christmas -- strangers came to bring presents to all my children, they brought us food when we had no time or money to shop. THIS is what I should have told to my children when they were younger, not the whole reindeer-on-the-rooftop story. There really is magic for us at Christmas, but it's not because of some guy in a red suit. It's because we take the time to care, to create traditions and to build memories. Oh, that I would have known this a decade ago . . .

[Dolphin]

Originally Posted by noodle4u

Id be very interested in hearing how you bring these up with your child, what you say, and what your answers to any questions are : :LOL

: I would love to know this too. I've decided not to lie to ds about any of these, and I'm not sure how to approach the subject when it comes up exactly. What age were they when you started discussing it? How did you explain it?