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[quote=Anonymous]Our almost 5 year old asked if Santa is real over the weekend and we told the truth. We’d agreed to follow her lead about Santa in the first place and not lie to her. We never made a big deal about Santa, but played along when she talked about it. She often asks if things are real: unicorns, fairies, magic, elves, etc. and we’ve told the truth about those. She connected that fairies aren’t real to the tooth fairy not being real. She has never seemed bothered by it. So we told the truth about Santa when she asked if he was real.

I told her we can still pretend about Santa just like we pretend about other stuff, and we can love Santa just as much as we love unicorns. We read a story about St Nicholas and the origins of Santa and she seemed to love it.

This morning we were listening to Christmas music, and “Santa Claus is coming to town” came on, and she said, really darkly, “no he isn’t because he isn’t real and it’s just mom and dad.” I said, “oh sweetheart, you sound really disappointed about that. Do you want to talk about it?” She didn’t answer. I just reiterated about having fun pretending and loving the idea of Santa even if he isn’t real.

Clearly we misjudged how she’d react to this, and she is still excited about Christmas, but I’m wondering if there are any ideas for other things we can say/do to make her feel better or ease the disappointment.

We did tell her not to tell anyone else, because kids learn about Santa at different times, and it’s not our job to tell people outside of our family about it. People believe different things and that’s okay. [/quote]

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