Forum Discussion: Childhood Traditions, Like the Toothfairy
At 46, I'm going to be a daddy for the first time sometime at the end of August/beginning of September! Yay my wife and me! BUT...I kind of want to have my child experience some of the wonder of growing up, via traditons like the "tooth fairy."
I want, as a father, to experience the wonder as my child places a tooth under the pillow, and wakes to find a silver dollar. I think the proper way to approach it is to ask my child, "how did that get there?" 'Where do you think that came from?" But I'm also worried about perpetrating a lie. I want to raise a skeptical, questioning child, but I also want my child to encounter situations where he or she asks, "WTF??" while experiencing the odd/unusual/unknown AND being able to critically process the information presented.
Any ideas on how to reconcile these contradictory positions?
It's legitimate and appropriate to want a child to be able to experience mystery, magic, wonder, etc. Even if we assume, for the sake of argument, that our nostalgia for our own childhood experiences is perhaps a bit rosier than those experiences actually were, it would still be the case that such experiences are generally good and positive.
Should we, though, rely on characters like Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy to provide such experiences? It's easy to do so because they come pre-made in our culture — we are presented not just with the characters and backstory, but with and entire society which will help reinforce the stories for us. We don't have to do any work in order for kid to experience them. That is, after all, what allows some atheist parents to think they have found a middle ground between encouraging false beliefs and encouraging magic or wonder: they don't directly promote the beliefs, they just let kids absorb the beliefs from the surrounding culture.
Simply relying on what comes pre-packaged from American culture isn't the only way to achieve the goals stated above — they are probably just the easiest way and the way most familiar to most parents who were raised in American culture themselves. Achieving the same goals via other means is possible, but it would take work — both the work necessary to encourage certain behaviors and ideas as well as work to counter the influences of the surrounding culture.
It's arguably worth the extra work, though, and not just because it means avoiding the problem of teaching your kids to believe things you know are false. Going your own path in these matters means necessarily encouraging an independent, skeptical, critical perspective on the surrounding culture. It means teaching the attitude that just because everyone believes something doesn't make it any more likely to be true; on the contrary, it's common for false beliefs to be widely popular. These are lessons and attitudes which can't be taught very well in the abstract and must instead be learned by experience.
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My parents, being very religious Catholics, wanted to do nothing to dilute the mysteries of their religion for us. So we had no Santa Claus that wasn’t obviously a midnight game (keep your eyes closed now!) that included no admission on their part. It was the same with the Tooth Fairy and others myths. Mind you, there were plenty of stories told by others (UFOs, Bigfoot, ghosts, dowsing, rhadiestesie, etc.), plenty of hucksters afoot (von Daniken, Church, van Vogt, politicians of various stripes, mobsters, terrorists such as the FLQ, etc.), and plenty of science and technology (biotechnology, computers, plastics, flying cars, networking, etc.). (Boy, weren’t the 1960s and 1970s busy!) So mysteries to be engaged abounded, and still abound.
I encourage my kids to ask questions, seek evidence, and be skeptical, by doing those things myself. Somehow, they haven’t had a problem developing a sense of wonder at the mystery of it all.
Aren’t there already enough wonderful and amazing mysteries in the universe? Do you really need the Tooth Fairy to excite the mind? Ask your child,
“How do you think everything in the universe came from nothing without any cause at all.”
“If it takes intelligence to produce information, how do you think the equivolent information of 1,000 sets of encyclopedias got into the first living cell?”
“If chaos doesn’t lead to organisation, how do you think 100 exquisitely finely tuned constants and quantities got “put in” to the singularity prior to Planck time?”
I am 28 weeks pregnant and my husband and I have been trying to decide whether to include Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, Easter Bunny, etc… in our family traditions. Our biggest worry has been exactly that. We want to encourage our child to be a skeptical and freethinking individual but also encourage to a sense of wonderment at life. Our biggest concern was at what price comes at the investment of these magical creatures? We definitely feel they pave the way religious beliefs later on. Also, how can a child trust a parent that lies to them even if it is cultural acceptable lie? I think we may allow our child to absorb the belief from the surrounding culture and family to some degree. It will be difficult to avoid since both families are religious. But if we were ever questioned we would provide truthful answers. I think our true solution is that we have decided to focus more on the celebration of the change in seasons. This will give our family new and old new traditions to create and focus on.
Regarding Santa and the tooth fairy, I remember much of my childhood, and I think we should give the children credit for being perceptive enough to recognize the game and play along with it.
“How do you think everything in the universe came from nothing without any cause at all.”
According to today’s cosmology, time is a by-product of our universe. If it is so, then time started with the universe and so, logically, the universe cannot have a cause since causality requires time. Also, if you believe that God is causeless, then you have no grounds for requiring that the universe have a cause.
“If it takes intelligence to produce information, how do you think the equivolent information of 1,000 sets of encyclopedias got into the first living cell?”
The information in an encyclopedia is meaningful. The information in a cell isn’t. So you’re comparing apples and oranges. Plus, if God exists, then it has information. Where does it come from?
“If chaos doesn’t lead to organisation, how do you think 100 exquisitely finely tuned constants and quantities got “put in” to the singularity prior to Planck time?”
If God does not exist, then the constants are NOT fine-tuned, since the act of fine-tuning requires an intelligence. So before you can make the claim that the constants are fine-tuned, you must prove that God exists and that it gave those constants their current values. In other words: no god = no fine-tuning.
@ron. very true. My estimation of the ability of small children has gone way up now that I have my own. Our daughter, nearly 4, having bee read stories of tooth fairies, asked her Mother and I one day to “check under our pillows”, she had put a coin under each. No teeth were actually involved, but it is clear that role-playing and pretend is learnt very early in life – and is a constant source of amusement for adults
. I wouldn’t worry about “lying”; to a child it is simply pretending, and they do it all the time in play.
My experience is of many children being completely fooled and thinking the easter bunny really IS real. If enough adults act along convincingly….
seriously. Take your child to a butterfly enclosure at the zoo. Go to an aquarium and watch the manta-rays and cuttlefish. They are amazing and wonderful. No pretend egg-bringing rabbits required.
Make your own rituals up to replace the readymade ones. Tell the kids the storyies and tell them how we like to re-enact them each year. Maybe family members get to take turns being the easter bunny and tooth fairy.
I think we make the kids ‘believe’ because it really is preparation for the christian belief and as Joseph Cambell says, you have to immerse yourself into the reality of a myth for it to transport you. You have to convince yourself that the re-enactment is true….
“How do you think everything in the universe came from nothing without any cause at all?” Look up and click on Alan Guth and/or Inflationary Universe, and Alex Vilenkin; then follow the leads. Same for the “finely-tuned constants”. If this site were about cosmology, I would enjoy discussing the details.
The first living cell was far more complicated than the first cluster of organic molecules capable of reproducing (alive).
Sorry; I sent accidentally. Continuing. “How do you think the equivalent information of 1,000 sets of encyclopedias got into the first living cell?” There was no first living cell; evolution of cells from the first cluster of living molecules was a gradual process encompassing a vast period of geological time. Evolution is the answer to your question.
Chaos commonly leads to organization; particularly symmetry. Example: In geophysics, we see symmetry generated by chaos in paleomagnetic data (reversals of the earth’s magnetic field) associated with seafloor spreading, which provides one of the strongest confirmations of plate tectonics theory. These reversals are “unpredictable”, which means chaotic. This suggests the possibility that the earth’s magnetic field should be described by coupled ordinary differential equations that generate chaotic behavior. Fascinating, but too complex to go into detail, since this is not a geophysical site. You can find the relevant data and discussion in the “Journal of Geophysical Research”; V 100.
I don’t think parents should tell these stories to their kids. It introduces some really bizarre, counterfactual, notions. Why burden kids with stupidities. Also, kids will always want more info (how does TF or Santa get into the house, where does he/she live, etc.), which can push the parents to invent further lies to tell their kids. Some parents can perhaps maintain a tongue-in-cheek attitude, so their kids don’t really believe, but I wonder. Then there is the eventual discovery that your parents have been lying to you. Is that good or bad? Maybe it starts a skeptical attitude in the kids? But is it good for kids to think their parents have been lying to them (while trying to inculcate the virtues of not lying to these same kids)?
I’m a lifelong atheist and mother of two (ages 9 & 13). We promoted Santa Claus, Easter Bunny, & Tooth Fairy in our family. I do not think it was a mistake. Another poster mentioned “pretending” as an essential element of childhood play. I am not a psychologist, but I think this sort of imaginative play and magical thinking probably plays some critical role in child development. Children grow out of this, and by about third grade, all children know that there is no Santa. My children have become excellent critical thinkers and Santa was no hindrance to this aspect of their development. In biology, “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny”: the development of an individual reenacts evolutionary development. The principle can perhaps help us to understand our psychological development as well. Higher order thinking stamps out Santa and should stamp out all magical thinking, including religion, in the absence of indoctrination. But perhaps we must first reenact the psychological dark ages, so that we don’t grow up like Michael Jackson. To prospective parents who are considering withholding Santa, I offer the observations of an experienced atheist parent: being a control freak is worse than compromising your philosophical principles. I’ll go further. Religious parents tend to be control freaks and this attitude harms children. Instead, trust those instincts that flow from your natural, biological parental love; trust and respect your children’s innate intelligence. Allow your kids to play along with and share these childish cultural traditions and when they are ready for the truth, they will see it clearly for themselves.
One more tidbit. When I was growing up I heard no mention of “God” or “Jesus”. My parents, if pressed, would probably have professed a traditional belief in a god of sorts, but they didn’t make that a part of my childhood. We did have Santa/Easter Bunny/Tooth Fairy, though. We also had a magical creature unique to my family: “The Water Fairy”. The Water Fairy brought presents to children only in a particular island vacation spot during our summer vacation. I fondly recall these fantasies as a very positive part of my childhood and I left them behind at age 7. They did not lead me to religion (marijuana leads to harder drugs myth?).
I concur with Robin’s comments above. While both my parents were raised in Catholic families, they left religion behind them when they married. I will always be grateful to my parents for not introducing religion into our household and allowing myself and my siblings to develop our own beliefs in that regard. We celebrated Christmas and Easter in a secular fashion, and as a kid I wouldn’t have had it any other way. I think I was about 8 years old when I started figuring out there was no Santa Claus but that never detracted from the enjoyment of the holiday seasons.
As a happy adult atheist, I am not (yet) a parent, but if and when I do decide to have children, I would want them brought up similar to my upbringing, i.e. no whacky religious myths, but nothing wrong with a few harmless childhood myths that can be easily outgrown. One of the problems I see with the Jesus myth is that it seems to be much much harder for people to outgrow that one, especially if its ingrained into them from an early age. You don’t see too many grown adults out there who still believe in Santa or the Easter Bunny, but there’s a ton of grown intelligent adults out there that believe wholeheartedly that a cosmic Jewish zombie can make you live forever if you telepathically tell him that you accept him as your master. Go figure.
My wife and I raised the kids with Santa, the Easter bunny, the tooth fairy, and all the rest, mainly out of a belief that these were harmless fictions that make up part of the charm of childhood.
If I had it all to do over again, though, I would make clear from the git-go that Santa and his cohorts are “pretend.” In hindsight, I don’t think they added enough fun to the ride to be worth the toll in lies.
One night at bedtime, when my oldest child was about 7 or 8, he looked my right in the eye and asked, “Dad, is the tooth fairy real?”
I had always said to myself that when he was old enough to ask the question, he deserved the straight dope. So I looked him right in the eye and said, as gently as I knew how, “Well, son, the tooth fairy is just fun make-believe…”
That’s as far as I got before he erupted into tears and body-shaking sobs. I spent about an hour trying to calm him down, crawfishing as fast as I humanly could on the entire “tooth fairy” question: “Well, uh, son, uh, I don’t know, um, maybe the tooth fairy is real! How would I know! That dollar gets under your pillow somehow!”
I’ve been thinking about this subject some more. When children are small, we read them all sorts of books and fairy tales that have talking animals in them, and Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz. TV cartoons are full of talking animals and children are fascinated by these. It’s so universal that I think it plays some important psychological role unrelated to religion.
I think you’re all nuts. If you have to spend this much time think about Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny you’re going to commit suicide when it comes to real issues.
IT’S FREAKING SANTA CLAUSE AND THE EASTER BUNNY! PUT THE TOOTH UNDER THE PILLOW, AND DON’T BE CHEAP, THROW THE KIDS A FEW BUCKS. SH*T, I GOT A COIN AND I’M 50.
If you and you’re kids can’t handle the “conflicting” stories of the easter bunny, etc., we’re all doomed.
Oh, and by the way, they get FIVE BUCKS for a front tooth, got it?
With all this talk…especially, about the tooth fairy “magic”; I’m reminded of how the dental issue is completely ignored in the current American Health Care debate. I guess it’s subconsciously assumed that somehow “magic” will take care of people’s teeth…? Is that, possibly, an unnoticed outgrowth from setting in motion irrational “believing” in early childhood?
That’s my gripe with childhood fantasies…the teaching of belief without evidence…a kind of practice for the later god stuff.
Actually, the tooth subject is also another argument against the notion of any real “Intelligent Design”…like…how come we don’t grow more than ONE entire teeth replacement?
And, at that, it occurs early in life when not too much damage has occurred; other than, lousy, genetically inherited…often already crooked…teeth, in dire need of braces?
[And, of course..."Wisdom" teeth? What "Wisdom"?...Oh yeah...even MORE trouble; IF you survive to old age...
"Thank you very much, Lawd Jeebus!"
A better "design" might be a new set of teeth coming in every...
oh-I-dunno...ten years...?
[10 year old delusional]:
“Look mom!…just like you said…whilst firmly holding on to your stolen from the hotel, Gideon bible…
Jeebus’ and his wonderful tooth fairy gave me a whole new set of perfectly aligned choppers!”
“Oh, and, Mom?…is the tooth fairy…you know…being so fairy-like, and all that…
Gay?”
[Mom]:
“Shut up and drink your gin!”
Something occurred to me, in retrospect…no big deal, of course…but, henceforth, considering the total official lack of concern regarding any dental help being considered for inclusion in whatever happens in the projected Heathcare scheme, I’ll change my reference regarding the above silliness to the…
“toothless fairy”.
Somehow…waxing prophetic(?)… that delusional referencing nomenclature seems a bit more appropriate…?
What’s that?…
“toothless in fairyland”?
We’ve used these three fairy tales with our kids.
Yes, I’ve thought about the down side of that.
But I also look forward to using it to compare to religion when they are old enough to figure it out. My kids are well adjusted and loved enough to see it for what we make of it – a bit of imaginary fun.
Think of how many current atheists became that way when they found out Santa wasn’t real . . .