ILX Parenting 6: "Put Some Goddamn Pants On Before You Go Outside!" is a thing I say now

As of today my child knows Father Christmas doesn't exist. It's been emotional!

How did that happen? It was really emotional when my son found out. He was very upset and accused us of lying. I haven't probed my daughter's thoughts on the matter, but we have sorta phased out the tooth fairy with her and have never been good about changing our handwriting for the xmas gifts. She has a cooler head, anyway.

XXP sounds like a dog whistle to these ears 😕

so... you are a dog

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5OY_H2_rQ8

XPs it was a fucking children's book from the 50s that casually mentioned a nice mother who puts presents in stockings. FFS. But he has definitely suspected for the last Christmas or two (he's only 6!) Anyway he's questioned us before and we've brushed it off with vague chats about the story of Santa etc, but he is very scientifically minded and doesn't really do nuance, he knows magic isn't real even though we have discussed how some amazing real things seem like magic if we can't explain them. In the end he asked repeatedly who puts the presents in, and I asked if he wanted to know the real story or the nice magic story. So I confirmed what he probably knew (when I asked what he believed, he said he half believed it was us and half believed it was Santa) and he cried! Felt awful. But he was fine again a few minutes later. I think he was partly crying because the presents aren't 'free' and we have to buy them! In our house it's just small (unlabelled) stocking-fillers from Santa anyway and main presents from family etc.

He brought it up a few days ago and we attempted to put it off until after this Christmas... he's under strict instruction not to mention it around his little sibling, or any other children. We've always tried not to overdo it or overtly lie too much but I don't think that makes much difference if they buy into the belief.

I suspect he believes/d far less in the Tooth Fairy too and would've started putting two and two together, especially as his best friend's mum warned us he doesn't believe in fairies...

my strategy so far has been "wow, if he isn't real, then who's been buying all those presents?" but I think they both (6&10) have known for ages

The north pole tracker thing kept our kids believing for a couple more years when they were starting to question. They were done by age 8 or so, though.

Santa is always tricky with Jewish kids in a school with a lot of Christian kids, bc you're torn btw not ruining it for other kids and not wanting to sell your own kids on a myth that isn't really part of your thing. Was never really sure what to do with it.

I will say that with the tooth fairy I sort of eased my kids out of it. It was too much fun keeping it going, so what I did was just sort of got more elaborate and outlandish with the explanations and stories and winked at my kids about it so that they could stay in on the fun and enjoy belief while gradually having the difference between fantasy and reality come into sharper relief. Our tooth fairy has left them some pretty detailed notes and drawings, and we had all kinds of stories about what she does with the teeth, how she manages to cover all the ground, etc.

We never figured out when my son (who is 13 now) stopped believing in Santa Claus. I am pretty sure he at some point must have thought that if he admitted to not believing in him, he wouldn't get an extra Christmas present from Santa anymore (our kids generally got one present from us and one from Santa). Basically, continuing to believe kept the presents coming, so he chose to continue to believe. A kids version of Pascal's wager.

I started telling my kid that none of these existed from as early age as possible. Disappoint them from the beginning rather than years later.

I like the tooth fairy idea!

I go the other way from Jeff and invent lots of other lies to tell them too, who knows, maybe they do exist?

F gets incredibly angry if people even mention the tooth fairy to him, he sees it all as a monstrous lie perpetuated on children. He also expects the tooth fairy's duties to be carried out to the letter, so he dutifully leaves his tooth under his pillow and expects to wake up to cash.

yeah I've worked with people like that

lol stet

I don’t know what to do about Santa when the baby’s old enough to care. Was raised Muslim, didn’t celebrate Christmas; was coached by my parents not to ruin the whole Santa’s not real thing for my classmates. Am still kind of militant about the experience of being a religious minority in a Christian imperialist culture. Husband’s fam is evangelical Christian and Christmas is a big deal to them, but he’s no longer personally religious. I think it will likely mean a lot to his parents that our kid buy into the Santa thing. Part of me is like, who cares? and part of me feels a weird sense of loss at the dilution of my father’s insistence that one could be American and not celebrate Christmas.

to be fair, Santa Claus is about the most innocuous thing my evangelical in-laws will likely try to indoctrinate the baby about.

some kids seem to enjoy there being a fantasy world which could be or could not be real, some are dead set against this and want everything clearly delineated, I seem to have one of each of these

He was very upset and accused us of lying

he was correct! you were lying!

Yeah, he wasn't wrong. It was a sad scene. He held on to the belief until 5th grade I think, which was a few years longer than I did when I was a kid. His mother and I had discussed early on whether we should let him believe in Santa. She was slightly against, but I was very in favor. Something about "kids need to believe in magic" that I'm now not sure is true. Also the awkwardness of being a kid hiding a secret from his other friends. He has always been a terrible keeper of secrets - like, known to blab about things we tell him to keep private. If we had been upfront with him at a younger age, I'm sure a significant portion of his daycare would have been questioning their belief in Santa. Again, at the time I didn't want that on my head, but at this point I couldn't care less.

when I was young my dad was a dedicated atheist and my mum was a practicing Catholic, so I had the odd experience of going from the hippy commune we lived in to Sunday school at the local church, cannot conceive how she thought I would keep it up.

anyway, point is that for quite a while I was dead set against any/all lying to kids, but since having my own I've done a bit of a 180 on this, feel like teaching kids to trust entirely in established facts and logic holds them back from (eventually!) making peace with our fundamental irrationality as a species, so many of the best things in life are just not interesting when viewed through a binary true/false perspective, I think my younger son at least kind of gets this. I'm still against religious schooling but have mellowed a great deal on it now. I don't want them to grow up to be atheist edgelords, though my oldest seems to be heading in that direction already, so maybe my approach doesn't work for him, or maybe he needs it most.

some kids seem to enjoy there being a fantasy world which could be or could not be real, some are dead set against this and want everything clearly delineated, I seem to have one of each of these

So otm.

anyway, point is that for quite a while I was dead set against any/all lying to kids, but since having my own I've done a bit of a 180 on this, feel like teaching kids to trust entirely in established facts and logic holds them back from (eventually!) making peace with our fundamental irrationality as a species, so many of the best things in life are just not interesting when viewed through a binary true/false perspective, I think my younger son at least kind of gets this. I'm still against religious schooling but have mellowed a great deal on it now. I don't want them to grow up to be atheist edgelords, though my oldest seems to be heading in that direction already, so maybe my approach doesn't work for him, or maybe he needs it most.

― fc_TEFH28mo (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Thursday, September 2, 2021 9:06 AM (eight hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

This is well put. I think it's life-enriching to push at the borders of imagination and reality sometimes, as long as you know what you're doing. To a certain extent our lives are all governed in part by narratives that have at least some element of unreality to them, or at least have a dimension that lacks grounding in provable reality.

I’ve swore I’d never be anything but totally honest with my kid about Santa but it was so easy to just maintain the ruse when he was a toddler and excited about things. I’ve been cagey and non-commital though, with lots of “that’s what people say” and “what do you think?” when he asked questions. It didn’t come up much last year but being quarantined meant he didn’t have any contact with other kids to exchange information. Now that he’s started school 528 days leaving preschool I’m sure there will be more questions and some other kid will hopefully spoil it.

Sometimes I just run out of gas and stop talking and interacting. I’m not going to feel bad about this

My girls fight too much, and my latest discovery is that I can defuse any conflict by merely putting Send Me On My Way on the speaker and doing an embarrassing dance/singalong to it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGMabBGydC0

Amabadysey Amabadyoo!

i have a KIDS DANCE PARTY playlist on Spotify, will have to add that. It'll fit in nicely between Surfin' Bird and Balloon in the ilx inspired section of the list

The other day we stayed a night at a friend's for the first time in forever, a two or three hour drive away. Our five year old had a great time but then at bedtime started saying "I want to go home". I spent about ten minutes saying "were not going home, it's too late, it's too far, think of the great time you'll have tomorrow, playing on the trampoline", etc etc. She starts calling for mum who luckily has managed to get our two year old to sleep in record time, mum comes in and the first thing she says is "if you don't stop messing around we're driving straight home"!

Did it work?

The good cop bad cop routine did the trick regardless!

OMMAWAY

Rusted Root Neologisms

OOMBASEEYOU

SEBADEEYON

Can't workout if my two-year-old keeps shouting "fuck!" (word daddy uses) or "cluck!" (been reading chicken books) or "uck!" (her own invention). Very joyous expression either way

"Cuck," however, if less joyous.

if=is

hi everyone, i'm not a parent, but i do have a 12-year-old niece who rules. i'm having a very bad year, so in the spirit of self-affirmations, i want everyone to know is that i just had a full house moment with her. she was telling me about how she couldn't find any robux online:

Actually no, I just getting some gifts for the cousins! 🙃 I like to give them stuff every once in a while, idk why XD

and i was like "i know why! it's because you love them! i mean, that's why i give you and max gifts. i don't give everyone gifts you know, i'm not made of money."

i could almost hear the full house sax coming in as i texted it to her, then i hugged my dog

i feel like if i have a kid i would accidentally fuck them up for life by the age of 4

but i am very good in the uncle role, because it allows me to sometimes just vanish without explanation for days at a time, and to never have to directly discipline them in any way

i guess i do some hardmanning when we're playing videogames, when max is just blatantly cheating. but even then i can do it from the uncle perspective, where we are basically all just goofing off constantly

i feel like if i have a kid i would accidentally fuck them up for life by the age of 4

oh it’s ok everyone does this

Spent thirty minutes talking down/consoling the younger one tonight who was insisting we don’t love her and only care about her amazing sister. Then I spent the next thirty minutes doing the mirror image with the older one.

We are probably just shitty parents.

don't be so hard on yourself, if you're spending 30 min a piece w/both of them listening to them talk about their feelings and emotions. . . you're doing pretty great dude

thx

waterface otm. my sister and i had a similar dynamic, growing up. i was the younger one, but i got all the good grades and said the funny things. my sister started to feel neglected, i think. difference was, my parents never spoke to either one of us about that (or anything else that was difficult to talk about). and that was bad!

also, in a way i think it's a good sign that they're open about it (insisting we don't love her) rather than hiding those feelings. and then, you can see them being open about it and spend 30 minutes talking about it with them. i feel like that's how it's supposed to work, in a better world!

so anyway, must have been some hard conversations but i think you're all much better off for it. :)

Thanks for the kind words. We had a pretty rocky couple of years of parenting with all the COVID stuff plus a move, and I've been doing some pretty deep examination of myself and my angers and anxieties, the way I communicate with my kids, with my wife, etc. Without stereotyping too much, I think girls learn to express their emotions in much more outward and dramatic ways sometimes than boys, so I was not prepared for some of the kinds of expressions I've seen coming only from a household of boys and having only girls. Hearing stuff like "you hate me" or having your kid stubbornly sit in the closet can be really hard sometimes, no matter how many times you go through the calming down process and realize that they're just a well-placed dadjoke, a hug, and a couple of pages of a book from back to 100% normal.

Personally I just go sit in the closet myself. I bring snax and weed and it works out great

the power of a well timed joke is wild. it can break the spell and restore the good vibes

part of me wants a voice from the heavens to tell me it’s okay to stop trying with breastfeeding, but I’m going to see how it goes up until she hits six weeks and reevaluate.

― horseshoe, Monday, July 12, 2021 4:10 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

lol i lasted till five weeks; babby started being extremely fussy at the boob; i freaked out that she was going to totally starve. for a while i pumped and supplemented with formula, but i hated pumping and quit around eleven weeks, i think? she's almost 6 months old now and formula seems to be treating her fine. also, we just started sleep training on Saturday and though it has been harrowing, it seems like it's working.

she is pretty awesome. in a very cute stage right now, smiling and laughing a lot. i already get choked up about how much bigger she is than she used to be. i had a bout of PPD/PPA during the first three months, but i am loving things right now.

we just started sleep training on Saturday and though it has been harrowing, it seems like it's working.

this is huge!

i remember the harrowment.