Is It Ok To Lie To Our Children?

What if itās āwhite 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 theyāre asleep and brings a load of gifts just for them. At first glance, this seems harmless, and Iām 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 summerās 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, ādo you believe in Santa Claus?ā Such an odd question, I thought. Why would anyone imply a negative response to it? āOf course,ā I said, ādonāt you?ā āNot any more,ā she said. āMy grampa told me itās 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 wasnāt it awful that her grandfather would say such a terrible thing? But there was silence. My mother didnāt say anything at all. I felt the tension in my abdomen and asked her, āthere IS a Santa Claus, isnāt there?ā āItās 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. āSanta Claus is only make-believe???ā āThatās right, itās 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: āMy father and my mother lied to me.ā But weāre forbidden to lie. Parents donāt lie, so there has to be some other explanation. Maybe Iāll wake up and discover that this was only a bad dream, because it isnāt 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 donāt. But these thoughts werenāt 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 couldnāt 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 ā 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, āwhat about the Easter Bunny?ā āWell, thatās make-believe too.ā āAnd the tooth fairy?ā āYes.ā āAnd ā¦God?ā āNo, 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 āgood?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 āfunā 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.