Lies and Santa Claus

I'm nearly finished with the book "Lies My Teacher Told Me."  It's an excellent book about how badly American History is taught and why students everywhere hate it.  Basically, American history textbooks and biased at best and untruthful at worst.  I highly recommend this book, it makes history fun because it simply tells the truth. 

It really got me thinking about lies children are told.  The first one I thought of is that parents often tell their children that they grew inside their tummy before they were born.  I personally hate this.  Fetuses grow in uteruses (uteri?)!  It confused me as a child, I thought this meant that babies grew in stomachs.  There is no reason for this illusion, if a child is asking where it came from, it's old enough to know about the uterus and the basics of sexual reproduction.  "Tummy" is more confusing than "uterus."  There are several books out there about "where I came from."

Then this got me thinking more and you know what, I can't think of anything worth lying to a child about.  For one, children often remember the lies they are told, and figure out they were lied to.  I can remember a few and my friends have told me stories about things teachers or parents said that were total lies that they actually took to heart.  Then when we figure out later that we were lied to, it either makes us angry or confused, and certainly doesn't make us trust our parents very well. 

Children aren't so good with humor or sarcasm, or filtering out real threats from fake ones.  But eventually they figure it out; it might be years later, but they do. 

What about normal childhood things like Santa Claus? 

Well, I never bought into Santa.  I was about 4 years old when I told my mom that I knew she was Santa Claus, and the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy.  Actually I never quite bought any crap about fairies, angels, dragons, ghosts, or any other super-natural thing.  But Santa and the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy all continued to visit me for years, actually Santa still comes to visit me.  So what will we do? 

For one thing, we are atheists; I'm not sure how much Christmas celebration there will be outside of our own family stuff.  Even Brent and I, this year, nearly didn't get each other presents.  I told Brent exactly what to buy me, and then I got him a couple sweaters.  Then everyone else got him sweaters... I think next year we might skip our gift exchange.  This year I spent the big bucks on the kids in our family and gave all the adults little things.  I figured its the kids who really want something, us adults have too much stuff already. 

And I'm definitely not going to say that Santa sees all you are doing and judges whether you've been bad or good.  Makes Santa look like an asshole peeping-Tom.  No, my children will learn that there are no super-natural beings that watch them and judge them, which includes any sort of spirit or god.  Brent and I don't buy it, I never bought any of it, Brent remembers believing in Santa, but never in God, so why would our children? 

When unexplained things happen I remember that science still has not fully explored the universe or the human mind and probably won't in my lifetime.  My children will learn to be skeptical of those who seem to know all the answers. "Santa" may be something we talk about, but I won't push them into believing that he really exists. 

And I hope that when my children ask a question, even if it is a hard one, I will try to help them find the answer.  I also refuse to spoon feed knowledge into them.  Most inquiries like "what is the moon made out of?" are best answered with, "what do you think?"  I use this line at work a lot.  The people I work with (adults with developmental disabilities) are very used to people just telling them the answers and used to people repeating stuff over and over again, even if they already know it.  "You tell me," is a favorite line of mine, and 9 times out of 10 they can tell me.   I hate to say it, but there are stupid questions, stupid questions that come out of smart people.  And I wonder how it got that way, and I think it's because the people I work with aren't taught to trust their own knowledge.  They think they need support for every little thing, and they really don't.  People actually shine the most when you do nothing and just step back and let them figure it out.