Strangely, my kids also agree with yours in their reluctance to believe that Santa Claus *isn’t* real despite my downplaying the whole thing…

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.

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.

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.