I don't agree about Santa Claus fwiw. This is culture-specific, but here (Ireland) he's an integral part of Christmas, and of the excitement about Christmas that kids experience. Santa Claus is the only lie I've ever consciously told my kids. By doing so I've given them access to a great deal of joy and fun, both individual and communal. Should I have deprived them of that because I wanted be absolutely consistent, or to feel virtuous?
This will end up being a personal decision that each parent makes. Much like the previous commenter, my wife and I made a conscious decision to separate myth from fact.
Everything fictional is in "stories."
I never want to be in the position where I consciously lie to my son, so Santa Claus is very clearly a story. That said, we can do all sorts of fun imaginative things with story characters because we know they are not real.
This allows us to have the magic of Santa, without eventually having a large breach of trust.
> I never want to be in the position where I consciously lie to my son, so Santa Claus is very clearly a story.
I find this interesting: do you believe there is something intrinsically bad in the lies?
Normally, I would think they lead to lack of trust, but I don't seem to remember children losing trust in their parents when they discovered _they_ are really Santa Claus.
I mean, it seems to me that not all un-truths are created equal.
I'm not the person you asked, but I could see there being harm in lying to children about how reality works. When children are first growing up, they have no clue about the nature of reality, of what is and is not possible, but their brains are constantly gobbling up data on what the world is like. From this, one forms concepts of how things relate to each other. Ideally as they do this, there are no contradictions between their concepts, or they're worked out over time, but in lying to a child and feeding them this false information, you are introducing contradictions into their concepts and distorting their view of reality. And one's view of reality directly relates to their ability to interact with it in a self-beneficial way.
Now I can't say that this will actually have much of an effect, like I said, we can naturally work out these contradictions over time, but I think this is why one should not lie to children in general.
Like you say, not all untruths are created equal. It could be quite easy for them to fix their concepts once they realize it is a lie, but perhaps it could have some lingering effects. I can't say. I'm not a psychologist and each individual, and their mind, is different.
> This will end up being a personal decision that each parent makes.
And because of that I want to add how my parents did it, which was kind of along the lines of "teaching children to think": They kept up the myth until we started questioning it, turning it into a sort of rite of passage.
I figured it out in 2nd grade, age 7 or 8, right at the point OP is asking about.
You and your son can do fun imaginative things, but I suspect he will not be able to fully share in the fantasy world that other kids who believe in Santa inhabit. But that's fine, it's your decision - parenthood (like everything) is all about tradeoffs like this
haha - we have st. patrick's day obvs, with various traditions associated with it, but the snake myth is not something anyone really subscribes to or cares about
