First off, I don’t like practical jokes, and this was an example of it, and get this into your brain: there is nothing “practical” about them at all. And raising my children, I cannot remember even once ever lying to them. I told them plainly all along there was no Santa Claus.
Fox and Friends‘ panel this morning (January 5, 2013) discussed the video of a mother doing a practical joke on her son.
Dr. Susan Lipkins said that the parent should not have punked her child, and there is Dr. Robert Epstein who says it’s okay because from his studies with thousands of families, the most important factor is an environment of big love and affection for the children.
She was interviewed on Fox and Friends Saturday about the viral video of that Mom who did this with her child. For context, she wrote a book condemning practices of bullying and hazing among groups of kids, at schools and in other contexts.
First, emphasize this, it is true that loving your kids, spending time with them, having fun with them, is the most important factor in raising your children. Some parents are better at this than others.
I think the mother is targeted too harshly though by some, as this is good gossip fodder for busybodies who like to criticize others and jump in against them. Not that I would count Ms. Lipkin among them. She was asked her opinion, and used the occasion to give it. Of course. As did the other psychiatrist they had on.
But in one brief moment during the interview it was mentioned that another thing that Lipkins says is that parents should never lie to their kids. Yay!
This is something I always have said, and of course that applies to Santa Claus and other such myths. When the name came up, I always told my kids there was no Santa Claus.
I sat behind one of our my oldest two boys on a bus trip once, and there was a girl who was in a seat next to him asked him what Santa Claus had brought him, because it was just after Christmas. He replied that there was no Santa Claus. I was delighted to hear this. Then she echoed the the meme they push every Christmas season, saying he represents a spirit of the season, or something like that. I was compelled to come in at that point: “Yeah, the wrong one”.
Think about the trauma of kids that spend the first few years of their awareness of life being told something by their parents that they later find out –likely from peers about their own age at school– that there is no Santa Claus. When they go back and ask their parents, the parents confess up, although some of them argue about it because some pop psychologist that they have seen on Pop Media have told them it’s good for the kid to believe the myth.
So they go on telling the kids a lie and finally the gig is up anyway.
For we can do nothing against the truth, but for the truth. – 2 Corinthians 13:8
Related articles
- Christmas without Santa Claus (mommyroad.wordpress.com)
- Theology Professor: Santa Myth Paints Inaccurate ‘Description of God’ (stlouis.cbslocal.com)
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