Believing in Santa

You know, I can't honestly say if my 6 yr old still believes or he's just going along with the story because one year I told him that if he didn't believe in Santa he'd only get underwear! LOL...and he's TOLD his friends the same thing!

Honestly, it's getting harder each year to keep up the pretense but he knows that we adopt a family every year and although we don't have a lot we give as much as we can to others. He knows that we've played "Santa" to other families so it's only a matter of time now. When I was growing up, even after I stopped believing in Santa my parents would still mark gifts to me or eachother from "Santa"...I think they were more of the guilty pleasure gifts that they felt they went a little overboard on so it made it easier for them to tell themselves they came from "Santa"...LOL...honestly, I think you've gotten some great advice here and I think it's really all in how you approach the season of giving in how your child will react to the news.

My oldest, I think knows but just goes a long with for our sake. They know the true reason for Christmas but Santa is fun and I do not want to take that away from them. When my oldest was 6 he asked and I simply stated if you do not believe in Santa then he will no longer bring you gifts. We give our children gifts from both us and him so not that big of a deal. Anyway it has not been brought up since. My mom never told us as kids and we had no probably pretending we believed in Santa until we were out of the house. I have 6 younger siblings so it was nice to keep it going for them.

To this day, if we tell my mother we don't believe in Santa, we'll get socks and underwear for Christmas. :)
Not sure when we figured anything out, but it's always been the rule if Mom hears it, socks and underwear it is. It became more of something we did for mom than anything else.

My mom always told us that if we don't believe he won't bring gifts! Worked for us even though in the back of our heads we knew, we still played along for fear we would not get our gifts

That is a very good question. I have a 5 month old and it hasn't yet crossed my mind about the santa subject. I do think it will be a tough subjtct but I think Suzanne L. has really good advice of not telling them he's real. But what if they ever come up to you and say they heard of hima nd ask if he is real... maybe that wiill be my next question!! :)