Why Letting Kids Believe In Santa Is A GOOD Thing (Despite The Santa Haters)

Tu mereces fruitartos favoritos por menos. Ja sel na Big Mac, McNuggets, oh un sausage, egg and cheese, McCriddles, pidetuan to hocomo un meo ya hora.
Oof, nava comodarto un gustaso por tam poco.

Los extra value meals están del regreso. Gana por la mañana con el extra value meal, sausage, mc, muffin with egg, hash browns, yun cafe alien pequeño por solos seizolares.
Bara ba ba ba.

Preses y participación pueden varía. Los prees de la promosión pueden en sermenores que los de las comidas.
You know, it's about that

time of year again

for the Santa discourse to start. And every year, I'm seeing this on social media, you know, the great Santa debate.
And it started again. I don't know who started it.

Probably not any one person started it, but I'm seeing it pop up on my feet again. All the debating about Santa.
Who the heck are you? What are you talking about? I'm Santa Claus. No, you're not.

Now, by the way, if you have little children in earshot, you should turn this off. So they should be listening anyway.
But if they are,

you should turn it it off because i do want to chime in on this because it does annoy me a lot of posts on x that have been popping up this here's just one for example from an account i follow it says if you tell your kids there's a santa you're lying to them they're going to later find out that you lied to them and realize that you may again lie to them in the future i don't know why parents do this although mine didn't but it's a good indicator of bad parenting in my book so it's a lot of stuff like that You're lying to your kids about Santa.

You're a bad parent. You're traumatizing them.
They'll never trust you again.

All this kind of stuff. And let me just just say this.
We are a Santa household. We are Santa believers.
We are Santa maxing, as the kids might say. Every Christmas, are we lying to our kids?

Are we engaged in a deceptive conspiracy?

No.

Because here's what you have to understand about young kids. They don't understand what not real even means.

So these parents that feel so proud of themselves because they go to like their four-year-old and say, well, Santa isn't real.

Do you understand your four-year-old doesn't know what you're talking about? Do you understand to your four-year-old, not real doesn't mean anything?

For your four-year-old, when you say Santa isn't real, well, he's like, well, what do you mean? I see Santa on TV. I see him at the mall.
What do you mean he's not real?

Clearly real.

And that's it. Like, that's all that a young kid understands.
Young children think that Superman is real. Okay, they think fairies and leprechauns and dragons and mermaids are real.

They think monsters are real. They're worried about, they're like, they're actually worried about a monster in their closet.

That's like a real thing that a five-year-old is concerned about in his life.

And when you say, we've we've all had, maybe you had this conversation with your five-year-old and said, well, monsters aren't real, number one, and there's like, there's not, I've tried to reason this way with my own kids.

I open the closet, say, look, look, there's not, there's, it's a wall, there's nothing in here. And the thing you're worried about doesn't even exist.

And even if it did exist, like it's not in your closet. Look at the closet.
There's nothing in here. I promise you.
But

doesn't matter. They don't, it doesn't, they don't understand that because they have it in their imagination.
They have it in their mind. And so if they have it in their mind, then it's real.

And that's all they know. They think every character they see on TV is real.
Paw Patrol is a documentary for your four-year-old. Your four-year-old is not watching a cartoon show.

Your four-year-old is watching like

the real life adventures live.

You know,

for a four-year-old, Paul Patrol is cops. Bad boys, bad boys.
What you gonna do? It's like watching live footage of actual police officers at work.

It's just that they happen to be, uh, they happen to be, uh, they happen to be dogs. So that's what it is.
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And so here's my question.

With your kids, they have this fantastical view of the world.

Do you go out of your way?

I know their parents are proud of themselves.

We don't do Santa in our house. We're too honest.
We're far too honest for that. Well, do you extend that to everything else fantastical that they believe?

Do you go out out of your way to make sure they don't believe in anything else? If your five-year-old daughter came up to you and said, hey, daddy, I saw a fairy in the garden.

I was out in the garden. I saw a fairy.
Would you like bend down and look her in the eyes and say, fairies aren't real?

I know you're lying. You didn't see a fairy.
Okay, debunked. Actually, fact check.
Fairies aren't real. I could show you on Snopes.
Come here, let's look it up. I'll show you the Snopes.

It's been debunked. Do you do that with your five-year-old? Or are you like a normal person? And when your five-year-old says, I saw a fairy in the garden, do you say, oh, you did? Awesome.

Where was it? What did it look like? Oh, wow. That's amazing.
I would hope it's the latter. I would hope that that's how you respond.
Is that lying?

I mean, if telling your kids about Santa is lying, that would be lying too. Is it lying? But you know, it's not.
It's playing a game. That's what it is.
You're playing a game.

This is a point that I think Jordan Peterson has made. I think it's a good way of putting it.
We tell your kids about Santa, are you lying to me? You're not lying. You're playing a game.

It's a game is what it is. And now your kids don't really know that it's a game, but they don't know that any game is a game, right? Everything is real.

Children live in a fantasy world where magic is real.

And going out of your way to kill this kind of magical thinking in a five-year-old is ridiculous to me. Let them live in that world.
They're children. Why take it from them?

Like your kids get to live in a world for a short amount of time. Where there's actually a magical fat guy who flies through the air on reindeer and comes down a chimney and gives them presents.

That, I mean, it's a little, as you get older and you think about it more cynically, it's a little bit creepy, but for a kid, it's like amazing.

And they get to actually live in that world, as far as they know.

And why not let them, when do you tell your kids that Santa isn't real? Well, that's not difficult to figure out. You tell them at precisely the moment when they grow out of it anyway.

Kids grow out of it eventually. They kind of figure it out.
And when that happens, you tell them that Santa was just a game. game.

I don't even, like, I hear from these adults sometimes who talk about, well, when I found out Santa wasn't real, I was traumatized. I never trusted my parents again.
Okay, well, then get a grip.

Okay, that's a you problem. Really? You're an adult still, still dealing with the trauma of finding out Santa wasn't real? Really?

Because what should have happened, what happened with me is like, I think my parents told me officially. I don't even think my parents ever officially told me.

I just kind of got to an age and I'm like, well, this is obviously isn't, this obviously isn't real.

You just kind of, it's just, you just see it because you, you lose some of the innocence of childhood and you start to realize like, okay, well, there's no fairies and leprechauns and stuff like that.

And, and then you realize that Santa isn't real. And, uh, and, and, you know, maybe as parents, you sit down.
I, we did this with our older, oldest kids, our oldest twins, a few years ago.

Did the talk the first time about Santa?

And that was their reaction. I told them, uh, you know, the Santa isn't real.
And they didn't collapse in tears. They didn't start screaming.
They didn't, they weren't traumatized.

You know what they said? Both of my kids? They said, yeah, dad, we know.

And that was it. That was, that was the whole conversation.
And they were excited because now they get to play the game on the other side with their younger siblings.

And now they get to sort of be Santa around Christmas time and they get to help with some of that stuff. And they have a lot of fun with that.
Not because they're malicious.

and they want they're excited to lie to their siblings, but it's just a fun game that now they get to play and they get to help their younger siblings, you know, kind of

have this kind of magical reality. So I would hope that that would just be the final statement on Santa.
And I have decreed it as so. And hopefully we can all leave it there.

You heard it here and that's the end of the conversation.

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