All the bratiness and moodiness aside, four-five is one of the sweetest stages in a kid’s (and a parent’s) life.
My (almost) five year old wants Santa’s number. She says she wants to make sure she’s on the “good-list”. Her innocence and gullibility actually makes me sad, because, she believes most things she hears, takes the world at face value and thinks Santa is for real. It’s sad because one day her perception of the world around her will change, and though that change will be gradual, it’ll be heartbreaking nevertheless. That’s growing up I guess. But, I don’t want to shatter it for her. I don’t know what the right thing (what ever that is) to do is. And I don’t care. All I know is that this is a wonderful stage in a kid’s life and I am not about to ruin it.
What do parents do? Do they let thier children live in fantasies and let them find out eventually by themselves, or do they start to prepare them to handle truths about life?
She’ll find out one day I know and she’ll ask me point blank, as she does most things, no matter how much I try and gloss over them. She used to ask me about my father-in-law, who passed away before she was born. I used to tell her what I could in a way that I thought she’d be able to stomach. Then one day, when she was all of three, she came to me and said, “mama, I know grandpa is dead”. I had never used that word around her, but she figured it out. And she’ll figure this out too one day.
Till then, I’ll let her believe that there is a Santa, that the world is a good place, that babies are made in heaven and that her parents will live forever.
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