Aaaah… Turn green!
Posted by: chansonWednesday, October 1st, 2008
Here’s a little magic trick I taught my kids:
While we were standing at an intersection waiting for the little red standing person turn into a little green walking person, I showed my kids that — just by pointing at the traffic signal and saying “Aaaah… Turn green!” — I can make the light switch from red to green!
At first the kids believed me that I was actually causing the traffic signal to change using my finger and my little incantation. It’s not all that far-fetched: their DVD player works via remote control, so why not the traffic light?
But, as hilarious as it is that kids will believe anything, I don’t like lying to them. Many people disagree with me on whether you should tell your kids things that are just made up, though. For example, a friend of mine wrote the following:
“I have encouraged my daughter to believe in Santa and the Tooth Fairy. Some would say that I shouldn’t do this because it would encourage her to not trust things authority figures say. Interestingly, this is exactly why I do it.”
I can see the logic in that, but somehow I can’t bring myself to do it. Of course the kids have their own ideas, and mine have decided to believe Santa Claus is real despite all of my ridiculous attempts to convince them to think critically about it. (This crazy drama covers a whole series of posts, see here, here, here, and here.)
So I explained how the traffic light trick works:
What you do is you watch the traffic signal for the cars going the other direction. Once it turns red, you know that your signal will turn green very soon. So you wait until that moment to try to turn it green, and it works!
My kids loved this game even more once they figured out that they could do it themselves. They even came up with a variant in their excitement about it: They found that if you just keep saying “Aaaah… Turn green!” over and over every few seconds, eventually it works.
So I think they’ve learned a valuable lesson about predictions. 
October 7th, 2008 at 4:52 pm
IMO, in regards to the dilemma about whether to fool kids about santa, etc. I think it depends on the individual child’s personality. I was pissed at my mom for years for lying to me about Santa. I asked her many times if Santa was real and she kept telling me that yes he was and would go to great lengths to try and convince me. When she finally admitted that yes, Santa was just pretend when I was either 8 or 9 I felt extremely betrayed. Even to this day I can still remember those moments with clarity. And honestly, I not only was really pissed at her (literally for years) I could never respect her as much again because she lied to me - repeatedly.
I didn’t want to pretend that Santa was real with my kids because of that. My 1 st husband, however, thought it would be horribly cruel to not let the kids believe in Santa. I let him and my mom do all the talking up of Santa. My oldest has a really high IQ and she actually figured it all out when she was 3 1/2. We were doing sub for Santa and she asked me “Mom, if Santa’s real then why do we have to buy toys for the poor kids? Why don’t the elves make toys for the poor kids too?” I saw this as my opportunity to encourage some thinking so I said “that’s a good question. What do you think about it?” She paused for a few seconds and then said “I think Santa is just pretend.” I told her “yeah, you’re right. Santa stories are just pretend stories to make Xmas more fun for kids. ” Then I told her that even though she had figured it out, her little sister hadn’t figured it out yet and we should let her figure it out for herself when she’s ready. And my eldest was really good, she never said a word to her little sister until she started asking questions on her own.
With my younger 2 kids, my current husband likes the magic of Santa as well so I’ve been doing the same thing - I let him and the other relatives push all the Santa is real stuff. My 5 yr old asks me questions every so often like “how can Santa get to every kid in one night?” Instead of giving him some bogus magical answer or being really blunt I try to get him to think and we talk about whether it would be possible or not for reindeer to fly, one person to travel the world in one night and visit every kid, etc. Instead of just telling him things, I try to get him to ask questions and think about the answers. He told me recently that “well maybe Santa could be pretend, but I don’t want to think he’s pretend right now. I want to think he’s real.” I just told him that was his choice.
October 7th, 2008 at 10:19 pm
Already I think it’s a little odd to lie to one’s kids about the Santa story at all, but to keep insisting after the kids is old enough to ask and wonder about it? Now that’s just plain weird.
That’s cool that your kids are asking questions and that you’re encouraging them to ask questions. I think that’s the best approach.
October 10th, 2008 at 2:28 am
I agree with you Chanson about lying and Santa.
Strangely, my kids also agree with yours in their reluctance to believe that Santa Claus *isn’t* real despite my downplaying the whole thing…
October 10th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
Yes, it’s plain weird alright. However, in regards to the whole lying and insisting Santa is real thing I think it possibly stems from the fact that she was youngest of 10 in an extremely poor family. There was never any “magic” of Christmas for her and her siblings. I know she thinks she was robbed of lots of childhood “magic” etc. and I think she just ended up going way overboard in the other direction.