"There's really no one right time to tell kids that there's no Santa Claus," says Glen Elliott, Ph.D. Elliott is an associate professor and the Director of the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychology at the University of California, San Francisco. "The important thing is to take your cues from the child, and not try to prolong the fantasy for your own enjoyment when they may be ready to give it up."
Like Elliott, many experts agree that parents should wait for their children to give them signs that they're ready to give up believing in St. Nick. "When children start putting together in their minds that Santa Claus may not be real, they'll ask questions -- and that's an opening for parents to get them talking about what's logical or not to them," says Helen Egger, Ph.D., a Child Psychologist at the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychology at Duke University.
For instance, your daughter might start getting suspicious about the three different Santas she sees during the course of a day of shopping. Or your son might ask questions about how Santa can get to every house in the world in one night, or how he gets into houses with no chimneys.
"A friend of my son's spilled the beans about Santa last year," recalls Caroline Jennings of Bellevue, Wash., mother of a seven-year-old. "Ian came home asking if we are really the ones who buy his Christmas presents. We made a joke of it and said, 'You know we're too cheap to buy you presents!' But we also asked him about what he thinks. What it came down to is that Ian knows there's no Santa, but he really doesn't want us to come out and say it and ruin his holiday fantasy."
Just as kids give you signals when they're ready to give up Santa, they also let you know when they're not. "If your child isn't ready to hear the truth, they simply won't accept it -- or if they're very young, they may truly not even comprehend what you are saying," says Egger.
