I don't know, maybe it's just me....

[conuly]

But is it that unreasonable to expect that the target audience of a book about a sixth grader would already KNOW Santa doesn't exist? And also that babies do not, in fact, come from the stork?

(Also, when people start pulling out words like "reprehensible" to describe Superfudge, is it wrong of me to give up and point out that you surely KNEW this would be the eventual outcome of telling your kids about Santa and its hardly Judy Blume's fault that this is the bed you made? I mean, honestly, how do people think it's going to work that year when their kids find out?)

Comments

[kyrielle]

The target audience, or the actual readers? I was reading books about older kids by the time I was in second or third grade. Including some by that author, though I don't recall if I read Superfudge then.

That said, I figure as a parent that it's my job to moderate my kids' access to books based on their knowledge levels and, if I misjudge, help them and me deal with the outcome.

(I do wish I had been older when I first read Are You There God, It's Me, Margaret. Horrifyingly eye-opening, lol.)

Sadly, we don't always have a choice in what our kids learn about Santa. I had been trying to teach mine that "Santa" is a face to put on the goodness we all do for each other at that time. Then the grandparents spoke of Santa firmly as a person and my husband let our four-year-old watch a Christmas movie that had him as a character. He's now VERY into Santa as someone who actually exists. So now what? Break the heart of the four-year-old, or wait and let it break a little when he's older and can deal better? Of course, there's also his younger brother. Sigh....

[conuly]

That said, I figure as a parent that it's my job to moderate my kids' access to books based on their knowledge levels and, if I misjudge, help them and me deal with the outcome.

That's probably what pisses me off about the reviews. A simple "just FYI, this book reveals the truth about Santa" would've informed parents of younger kids without being stupid. But no, it's all "she hates kids!!!!" and "telling kids the truth is eeeeeeeevil!" and oh, how I wish I were making that stuff up.

[conuly]

As far as Santa goes, what do you intend to tell him if he decides ghosts or dragons or spacefaring aliens are real? The same answer would probably suffice for Santa, if you refrain from getting into petty fights with him over it. The nieces got a firm "it's fun to pretend Santa is real, isn't it, but we know he's not REALLY real", same as they did when Eva was being a dog. (Except that Santa doesn't eat off the floor, and Eva isn't allowed to either, even if she IS being a dog.)

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

No, it's not unreasonable. Even the most-credible children, or those whose parents are most heavily invested in the Santa thing, generally figure out by third grade that most of the world doesn't share their faith. As for where babies come from, in this culture it'd be a pretty isolated, culturally-insulated child who didn't know that by third grade too.

*shrugs* There are five-year-olds who read chapter books, and seven-year-olds who read on a high-school level, so 'target audience' is just the swell of the bell curve; there are always older and younger readers on either side. One's elder siblings' books always look so much more fascinating than one's own, right? But if one's elder siblings know the truth about Santa and reproduction, one is probably going to be informed pretty soon anyway

What if we drag out that word reprehensible and apply it to the practice of deliberately lying to children, tricking and misleading them to get them to believe something fundamentally bizarre and disturbing? "Yes, darling, in the middle of the night a huge, strange man who's been secretly watching you all year will get into your locked house without waking either your parents or the dogs, and leave you presents if you've been good and your parents are prosperous." How many alarming questions does THAT beg?

The Santa thing isn't all sugar-plums and happy little elves, however fervently parents may want to deny its shadow side. It is, first and foremost, a lie - a whopper, in fact - and what it means is "my parents can't be trusted; their words about lying being wrong are all hypocrisy, because they lie to maniplulate my feelings.". But by then the damage has been done, because the child has internalized the idea of the supernatural.

It's a very pernicious little piece of social programming under all its quaint cinnamon-frosted charm. Of course, in ECE one is forced to pay lip service to it at least - it's very hard to get through the holidays in a mainstream-culture classroom without featuring either Santa or Baby Jesus - and in December no one wants to hear that the Christmas cake is a lie. But it's May now, so perhaps saying so is not quite as heretical.

Are there ANY children who still believe in the stork? Americans have mostly never even seen a stork and don't know anything about them; the only context any of us have for that whole schtick is cartoons from the post-WWII era - which modern children have mostly never seen. What could it possibly mean to them? Very bizarre.

[conuly]

In the context here, the grandma in the book is concerned that modern, up-to-date parents don't do what she did and "talk about the stork". The book was written in 1980, and in 2013 I guess a lot of people STILL don't let their six and seven year olds a. know about it or b. know that there is an it to know about.

And yes, I definitely fall into the "it's lying to your kid that is reprehensible" camp, though I usually don't phrase it quite so vehemently. (Well, until the Santa pushers start insisting that those of us who don't hate childhood and imagination. What the hell is so imaginative about believing what your parents tell you is true?) I just don't see the point. Why revolve your holiday around something everybody knows isn't true? If your holiday was all about making and hiding presents, and drinking cider, and playing games together, then the big reveal wouldn't "ruin" anything.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Well sheesh, maybe a lot of six and seven year olds these days have never seen a breeding animal, even a mouse or a guppy, but surely they still will have heard that babies come out of the mother, so why would the logical, immemorial question "How does the baby get inside the mother?" not still be asked?

I really don't see what the point is, of all this mystification about the facts of reproduction. It seems dirty-minded to me - like the adult doing it is trying to both frighten and tantalize the child under the saccharine pretext of "protecting innocence". Which begs the question of precisely why 'innocence' has to be protected from learning how his or her own body works. The whole thing is just creepy.

I grew up with the Santa thing, but I came to doubt early, and then the most disturbing thing was being lied to when I asked for the truth. Then after I was finally told the truth, I was told not to tell my little brother. - basically coerced into lying myself! And for what? This cheap cultural icon, this advertising gimmick in a fake beard?

It was the Christmas I was 5 that I realized that Santa Claus didn't bring 'the poor children' (whom I'd never seen) the same things he brought us - else why did they need our old dolls and trucks and warm jackets? By the next year I'd learned there was a big iron damper in the chimney flue, and also when my grandfather came home from six years in Denmark my beagle went into yelping, baying paroxysms of joy... which put the lie to the tale that dogs don't bark when Santa comes in because the animals all love him so. Ja sure, the more MY dog loved him, the louder he'd have barked.

The main thing about Christmas for me was always the music. The Christmas I was 6 was also my first-ever performance in the Children's Choir, singing "What Child Is This?". Then there was also the baking and candle-making and decorating and card-sending - my mother did it up every year, Christmas with all the trimmings, till the very end of her life. Santa Claus was never important enough in all that to be worth all the lying, but... apparently it was expected, so it was done. Probably that's why most people do it: it's simply the done thing.

[conuly]

Well sheesh, maybe a lot of six and seven year olds these days have never seen a breeding animal, even a mouse or a guppy, but surely they still will have heard that babies come out of the mother, so why would the logical, immemorial question "How does the baby get inside the mother?" not still be asked?

I really don't see what the point is, of all this mystification about the facts of reproduction. It seems dirty-minded to me - like the adult doing it is trying to both frighten and tantalize the child under the saccharine pretext of "protecting innocence". Which begs the question of precisely why 'innocence' has to be protected from learning how his or her own body works. The whole thing is just creepy.

Can I save that and quote it as needed?