Honestly though, its all stories.[...] when kids begin to sort out the difference between fiction and reality, then they'll get it.
This. I don't think it's really meaningful to talk about "lying" to someone whose conceptual toolkit doesn't yet include a fact/fiction distinction - and the Santa story usually gets told to children much earlier in their development than that. If they hear it for the first time significantly after that concept has turned up in their mental inventory, they spot it for a tall tale straight away, which is why the Easter Bunny never visited my childhood family, but Santa did. Before that, there are only stories told with good intent and stories told with ill intent.
A few years after my eldest son stopped "believing" in Santa Claus, when his younger siblings were getting close to that point themselves, I asked him if he thought I'd been wrong to go along with the Santa tradition or felt that I'd lied to them. He looked quite surprised and said that as far back as he could remember, he'd always thought of it as a gigantic "let's pretend" game anyway; when he told me that he didn't believe in Santa any more, he basically meant "I've outgrown this game now". He couldn't ever remember a time when he thought of Santa as fact, because by the time he even had "fact" as a concept, he'd already put Santa in the "game" category, and he knew that games aren't usually about facts.
I guess that's what happens if you're raised by a Wittgensteinian - it's turtles language games all the way down ;-)
This sounds roughly true to my own experience. My kids, aged almost-six and three-and-a-half, are still "believers", but my daughter (the older) has taken control of the myth and insists she's met Santa, and will tell me how things are with the elves etc., so I presume she has it all in the realm of make-believe to some extent. Same with the tooth fairy.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
andrewducker) wrote2010-12-20 01:51 pm
no subject
This. I don't think it's really meaningful to talk about "lying" to someone whose conceptual toolkit doesn't yet include a fact/fiction distinction - and the Santa story usually gets told to children much earlier in their development than that. If they hear it for the first time significantly after that concept has turned up in their mental inventory, they spot it for a tall tale straight away, which is why the Easter Bunny never visited my childhood family, but Santa did. Before that, there are only stories told with good intent and stories told with ill intent.
A few years after my eldest son stopped "believing" in Santa Claus, when his younger siblings were getting close to that point themselves, I asked him if he thought I'd been wrong to go along with the Santa tradition or felt that I'd lied to them. He looked quite surprised and said that as far back as he could remember, he'd always thought of it as a gigantic "let's pretend" game anyway; when he told me that he didn't believe in Santa any more, he basically meant "I've outgrown this game now". He couldn't ever remember a time when he thought of Santa as fact, because by the time he even had "fact" as a concept, he'd already put Santa in the "game" category, and he knew that games aren't usually about facts.
I guess that's what happens if you're raised by a Wittgensteinian - it's
turtleslanguage games all the way down ;-)no subject