<p>…Easter Bunny, etc. And how did they find out? </p>
<p>After reading the thread about the Tooth Fairy bringing money to a grown son after Wisdom Teeth extraction, I was just curious.</p>
<p>P.S. I still believe.</p>
<p>;)</p>
<p>I honestly cannot remember a time when I believed in the TF, Easter Bunny, etc. Santa was the only one that made sense to me. I was a skeptical child. </p>
<p>My sister told me Santa wasn’t real when I was 5 and she was angry at me for something. It’s been almost 20 years and I still haven’t forgiven her ;)</p>
<p>My D was in 4th grade and it was waaaayyy too late. She was furious.</p>
<p>S1 believed in Santa, who in our family just brought your stocking, until about third grade, when he asked point-blank. S2 clearly never believed, and we abandoned any attempt around age 3. He was very good about keeping quiet for his friends’ sake. My family never “did” the Santa myth at all, but we too were told to not be spoilsports.</p>
<p>My MIL was destitute as a child, and Christmas was miraculous. My FIL still puts up a tree after she’s asleep, so Christmas morning BAM! there it is. she said she didn’t realize until she was a teen that her parents were waiting until Christmas Eve, late, to buy the cheapest tree possible.
So my husband and i came from very different Santa traditions.</p>
<p>Never did Easter bunny, tooth fairy but with a wink.</p>
<p>There’s a picture of me and my brother in 2nd or 3rd grade with our eye’s agog at the presence of Santa at an embassy Christmas party. We clearly totally believed it was him. So funny since the grown up me can tell the beard isn’t even close to realistic. My kids went along with things till second or third grade, but they were both pretty skeptical starting about kindergarten.</p>
<p>WHAT are you talking about???</p>
<p>We all still believe in Santa around here. Sheesh.</p>
<p>My youngest was 5.
When she was four, Santa gave us all holiday mugs & the next year they sold them at Costco.
She saw them down an aisle and gave me the look and said she knew Santa wasn’t real, but she believed in Mother Nature.
I believe she then told her sister who is 8 yrs older.</p>
<p>We did those secular Christmas and Easter things, plus the tooth fairy because it was a part of my childhood experience but H is from India and had none of those. Never did try to make son believe so not sure. He is an only child as well. I still remember how we always went for a Christmas Eve ride to see the lights when I was a kid. My mother was always late in getting out to the car- one year my older sister was sent in to see what was taking her so long… Santa had always arrived while we were gone on that ride. Made it a lot easier on my parents Christmas morning when everyone had to get ready for church (and only one bathroom for five people). Santa brought an awful lot of needed clothes- including underwear, sigh. I held on to the belief as long as I could as I recall- and I was top of the class smart so it was psychological needs, not being smart enough to figure it out.</p>
<p>We no longer bother with any Christmas stuff- too much work and don’t do the mythology.</p>
<p>Whaaaaattttt??? No Santa??? He comes to my house.</p>
<p>My mother told my son, when he was about 4, that there was no Santa! Made me so mad I yelled at her! She then said, “What? You want him to grow up stupid?” Then she said the names of other characters that weren’t real. There was no warning that she was going to do that! Luckily, he was so little he didn’t even remember that later.</p>
<p>I remember sitting in the back of a big station wagon being car-pooled to school. I was in the first grade and an older boy was in the 4th grade. He let the cat out of the bag about Santa and I was truly devastated. :(</p>
<p>My older son figured out the Tooth Fairy first when I forgot to put money under his pillow and then had to sneak some in later on. Then, with big eyes he asked me about Santa and the Easter Bunny.</p>
<p>However, to this very day, each of my kids gets a present marked “Love, Santa” under the tree. They laugh at me, but Santa Lives!</p>
<p>My kids were whispering amongst themselves driving to school in kindergarten…“you ask her”, “no, you ask her”…right as we pulled up to drop off one said “so, there’s no Santa Claus right?” Sunce they were NOT willing to wait until after school to discuss, I did a pretty poor summary of no/spirit of Xmas/how we don’t tell other kids etc…as they got out and headed to school, one dau doubled back to the car and as I rolled down the window said (very sadly) “so, no tooth fairy either, huh?”
I cried all the way to work :(</p>
<p>My D was probably 10 or older. I finally had to hint around on a Tooth Fairy occasion, so she’d ask then and not at Christmas. younger bro was probably 8/9, but don’t remember the circumstances.</p>
<p>Joke at our house was that they’d each grow up, have kids, and get up on Christmas morning and be horrified that Santa hadn’t brought their kids any presents.</p>
<p>So hinting became necessary. (My fault–too much planning into making it real on my part.)</p>
<p>Also, everyone in my immediate and extended families gets Santa presents. That’s the way my mom does it, and we continue it.</p>
<p>One of the saddest moments I have had as a mom was when my now 23 year old daughter found out that Santa wasn’t real. It came before she was ready to let it go, which I think is a normal and natural realization for all children who celebrate Christmas.
It happened because we spent Christmas in Sweden with my husband’s family. The way they celebrate is very different than what we do here in the USA. Their Christmas is celebrated the night of the 24th only, and only in the evening. Their version of Santa Claus ( Tomten ) Comes to the house while the children are awake, and it usually a family friend or neighbor who dresses up and give the gifts to the children in person. We had it all arranged. She was right at the age where the older kids on the bus were telling the younger ones that Santa wasn’t real, and was searching for reasons to believe still.
Her friend at the time had convinced her that YES, he was real because she had a letter from him and had visited the North Pole ( not sure where that was 
)
Well, she bragged to her class that because she was going to Sweden and it was Christmas there earlier , she would get to meet him.
We had it all arranged. A family friend was supposed to come over to the house and he spoke English so he could pull it off. Well , for reasons unknown, he backed out and the last minute substitution was a petite woman who was in her 60’s and didn’t speak English…the beard was like the old roll of cotton that was common in houses when I was a kid.
I saw her face drop , and my heart broke. It took her awhile to admit that she " knew " but her sister who had very serious doubts told me that was confirmed it, though she knew in her heart.
I always regretted her finding out that way instead of when she was ready to let it go</p>
<p>I sat my youngest down a while after Christmas when she was in 3rd grade and explained it. So she was 8. I’m sure she had suspicions, but she wasn’t happy with me for telling her. I was tired of the pretense. It was too much work for me wrapping Santa gifts in separate paper, maintaining the whole thing, and it bothered me lying to the kids. Why can’t Santa afford to get them whatever they want? Why do some kids not get anything? I don’t think the kids ever really believed in tooth fairy or Easter bunny, although we hid baskets every year for them.</p>
<p>Ours wasn’t pretty for D (3rd kid). Every year I’d think someone at school would let it out. Every year another year came and went. Finally, about 6th grade I decided it had to be done. As I was trying to do the “spirit of the season blahblah”, H screams, “There is no Santa!” Sigh.</p>
<p>We had Ralph too. Ralph was the head “elf” for every holiday…the helper of the Easter bunny, the helper of the tooth fairy, etc. I got a lot of mileage out of Ralph. “If you’re not good, Ralph will know. Ralph always knows.” So after H’s outbursy, she looks up and says, “No Ralph either?”</p>
<p>Wait Santa isn’t real? ;(</p>
<p>I don’t know exactly when my older daughter stopped believing in the tooth fairy, but when she was in maybe the first or second grade, she came home and told us “I know who the tooth fairy is!” We asked her who it was, and she announced with excitement, “It’s Mrs. [Smith]!” </p>
<p>She had friends in her class, twin sisters, the [Smiths]. Presumably they told her “We found out our mom’s the tooth fairy.” Which she believed. Their mom was the tooth fairy.</p>
<p>We played along with that for a while!</p>
<p>My younger daughter at least pretended to believe in the tooth fairy well into elementary school–probably 4th grade or so. It helped that her older sister (2.5 years older) took it upon herself to invent a tooth fairy character she named Nicolette, who wrote notes to go with the dollar the tooth fairy left behind.</p>
<p>Just the tooth fairy, though–we never did Santa or Easter Bunny.</p>
<p>My little sister maintained that she still believed for years, so I was under orders not to give it away. got tough when we were like, 12 and 10, but I staunchly kept up the pretense “for her sake.” More fool I, as she was telling everyone else her clueless older sister still believed Santa was real, when she knew better.</p>
<p>She denies this happened of course. :/</p>
<p>As young as possible. We never allowed our kids to believe in fairy tales. We didn’t want them to see their parents as liars.</p>