In the article, the author wrote
> As a parent, though, I’ve discovered that there’s a fine line between omission and deception.
I found that, discovering and maintaining the fine line requires significant amount of knowledge and life experience. Often, only the wise ones knows how to respond to those challenging questions appropriately.
Sadly, many parents I know of struggles when facing difficult inquiries from their kids, so they end up telling lies upon lies just to send their kids away (in another words, to escape from the question).
Take my parents for example, back when I was still a child, when I asked them how I was born, the two typical answers they offered were: 1) "We picked you up near the trash can", or 2) "You'll figure it out yourself when you're older". They also used this escape strategy when ever I ask them something they don't or unable to provide answer to. As result, I realized it fairly quickly in a young age that my parents might not be a reliable source of information.
If I'm a parent, I would probably never escape the questions like that. Some kids are smart and curious, parents need to help them to navigate in this sea of knowledge, instead of play funny games with them when the kid is actually seeking for help.
By the way, I think "how I was born?" is actually a good test question for parents. You can figure out many things by simply observe how the parents react to this question. Smart parents can often quickly figure out a fitting metaphor that satisfies the curious kid, and at the same time without bring up the awkward (and hard to understand) concept of sex. On the other hand, I literally saw some parents doing weird hand gestures in front their kid trying to explain the detail, please don't do this, it's embarrassing and the kids probably will not understand.
The best laid plans
I don't remember ever believing in Santa when I was a kid, but I also didn't grow up in anglo sphere where that question seems quite important the growing up process.
Christmas season is so much easier when you don't have to compete with a fictional, fat, jolly, magic man. The spirit behind it has value, and we celebrate that, along with other traditions.
My recovery is just to own it, and say that I may not believe anymore, but "I'm proud of you sweety for believing". Kids won't take that as condescending cause the notion of Santa disbelievers is built-in.
I think my kid flat out told their friends at pre-school that Santa Clause died. Which lead to some very interesting conversations. We watched the cartoon film Klaus on Netflix (would recommend) and that's how they internalized it. =)
My eldest actually did that in kindergarten (barnehage) except that he apparently didn't justify it as being my opinion but a simple fact. When my wife went to pick him up one day she was very politely asked to explain to him that this caused some distress to some of the other children. She did that, he understood and kept his opinions on the subject to himself.
> I don't remember ever believing in Santa when I was a kid, but I also didn't grow up in anglo sphere where that question seems quite important the growing up process.
Not Anglosphere, more specifically US I think. I'm 66 and from England, I don't recall any of my childhood friends ever behaving as though they believed in Father Christmas and I'm even more confident that they would not have later claimed to their children that he existed. As far as I can remember I always knew that Christmas presents came from parents and relatives; after all most of the packages had cards on them saying things like 'Love to .. from auntie ..'.
Kids are incredible at pretending!
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