Magical Thinking

My kids believe in Santa Clause.

I'm putting that out there because I know there is a time in every child's life when they stop believing, and I know that this may happen before I am ready.

One of my Facebook friends, someone I knew in high school, posted a query. Why do so many people lie to their children about Santa instead of simply promoting the giving of gifts as a good thing? I asked if we could do both, but what he wanted to know was, why lie at all? Why perpetuate the myth? (He grew up jewish, so he had no experience of it himself.)

My children are extremely sheltered. For all the garbage they pick up on their DS things, for all the chatter they hear on the bus, there is a major source on input they do not receive. TV.  Oh, they watch the TV. They watch DVD's and stream movies and watch episodes of all sorts of shows, not all given the MOM seal of approval.

But we do not watch network TV with our children.

This Christmas, the boys did not come to me with lists and lists of items because they didn't see the commercials so carefully crafted to make every child want, no NEED, every item on the face of the earth.

Last week, when a crazy person barged into a school and shot twenty children Nathan's age, my kids were not subjected to hours upon hours of the news. They were blissfully unaware that anything had happened at all. In fact, it occurred to me that I should probably bring it up, as they would pick up details from other kids, from overhearing the adults, and from the well meaning folk who keep walking in to various classrooms in order to "help the kids sort out their feelings."

I told Nick and Nate that a bad person came into a school and hurt lots of kids and teachers. "But not our school," Nick said. I agreed. And then I told him it was scaring a lot of people, but that to make the school safer, they were going to change a few things. (They are now locking the doors and added the security measure of placing an adult at the front door at all times. I've also been sent the link so that I can volunteer to be one of these adults, a measure which made me roll my eyes in exasperation, but that's a different issue.)

So my children are children. They are young, and they think young. This is something I am so, so grateful for. I have a sneaking suspicion that Nick suspects something about the Santa issue, but goes along with it because he is not yet ready to be "old enough" to not believe. He wants to stay a kid, and I'm going to let him for as long as he wants to be.

I told my friend that, yes, I did lie to my kids, although I don't really consider it lying. I did it not as a behavioral technique, to threaten them with coal when they don't behave, but so that my children can have those moments of magical thinking, those moments of wonder. We balance it out with gifts for each other, for our family. We give to the giving tree at the library and to food pantries and soup kitchens. And when they are old enough to want to stop believing, they'll stop. But I hope they will still remember the feeling of magic. I hope they will still find joy in the act of giving.

And finally, for the record, I want you to know that I misspelled the word "Believe" every single time I typed it in this post. That i-e thing gets me every single time.