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Is It Ok To Lie To Our Children?



What if it’s ā€œwhite lies?ā€ Like telling them there is someone called Santa Claus who lives in the north pole and who somehow gets into their house while they’re asleep and brings a load of gifts just for them. At first glance, this seems harmless, and I’m sure just about everyone would scoff at any notion to the contrary. But hear me out. I was six years old and playing on a warm summer’s day with Sukie, the girl one year older than I who lived across the street from us. Out of the blue she said to me, ā€œdo you believe in Santa Claus?ā€ Such an odd question, I thought. Why would anyone imply a negative response to it? ā€œOf course,ā€ I said, ā€œdon’t you?ā€ ā€œNot any more,ā€ she said. ā€œMy grampa told me it’s all make-believe.ā€ I was appalled! And I was horrified at her grandfather for saying such a thing. I went to my mother and told her what Sukie had said, and asked wasn’t it awful that her grandfather would say such a terrible thing? But there was silence. My mother didn’t say anything at all. I felt the tension in my abdomen and asked her, ā€œthere IS a Santa Claus, isn’t there?ā€ ā€œIt’s make-believe,ā€ my mother said. I remember this as though it were yesterday. Of course at the age of six, I would not have been able to put into words what was going on inside me. To a child, at least to this child, Christmas was the most wonderful event in life. The first thing I did every year on December 26 was to count the months till Christmas comes again. I felt the tension in my body mount. ā€œSanta Claus is only make-believe???ā€ ā€œThat’s right, it’s a fun thing we all do at Christmas time. We try to make it as delightful for children as we can.ā€ If I could have verbalized what I was thinking, if I could even have brought up those feelings out of the shock in my soul, I would have had to say what to me was unthinkable: ā€œMy father and my mother lied to me.ā€ But we’re forbidden to lie. Parents don’t lie, so there has to be some other explanation. Maybe I’ll wake up and discover that this was only a bad dream, because it isn’t possible for parents to lie, especially parents as religious as mine. Our religion tells us that lying is a sin, and my parents do not sin, that I knew for sure, because they always told me I must never lie, so I know that of course they don’t. But these thoughts weren’t being played out in words with adult understanding. They were, at the moment, a wordless confusion rooting itself in the innermost core of my being. Beyond understanding what was happening inside, I couldn’t have explained that I was being traumatized by the contradiction of being taught that to lie is to sin, but that my parents lied to me – and not only that, but lied to me about what was the most treasured thing in the life of this young child. With my voice not more than a rasp I asked, ā€œwhat about the Easter Bunny?ā€ ā€œWell, that’s make-believe too.ā€ ā€œAnd the tooth fairy?ā€ ā€œYes.ā€ ā€œAnd …God?ā€ ā€œNo, God is real.ā€ Really? Needless to say, there now was a huge doubt about that in my heart. How old do I have to be before they tell me God is only make-believe too? Are they allowing me to continue to believe in him in order to ensure that I be ā€œgood?ā€ This happened many, many years ago, but the feelings of it as I bring it now to mind, are as vivid as the day I experienced them. This was a real trauma in my life. To the adult listener it may seem ludicrous to consider this a true trauma, but in the soul of a very young child who knew only to revere her parents and teachers, it left an indelible cynicism that had a permanent influence over my development. Should we lie to our children because we want them to have fun? All I can say is that when I grew up and had children, they never, ever heard that Santa Claus was a real person who loved them and brought them gifts. They were told it was make-believe from even before they could understand that word. They had just as much ā€œfunā€ as other children at the holidays, but they grew up knowing what was true and what was not true, a gift I decided to give to them when I was only six years old.


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