At what age did your child find out that there was no Santa.

He was 9 when I told him.

Mine found out about Santa at school in first grade, but couldn’t figure out how the presents got under the tree until they were older.

I told them that if they begin to doubt magic, then it stops happening. The fun then became to figure out how it all happened. We would go out to dinner on Christmas Eve with no presents under the tree, and come home to the tree full of gifts, with one unwrapped present each from “Santa”. All of our neighbors were out of town, all our relatives were out to dinner with us. Santa usually brought the thing they thought they would never get, like a new computer, or bicycles. Everything else came from mom and dad.

My youngest son was 8 when he found out. My husband needed surgery the week before Christmas so money was tight that year. We told him about Santa and he replied: I knew it! Mikey at school said there was no Santa.

…when he logged onto Fluther this morning.

Just kidding! Just kidding. I’m only 23. I don’t have any kids. I think.

I, myself, learned that there was no Santa when I was 8. I looked him up in a “Child’s big answer book!” I can’t believe that it said there was no Santa in there.

I’m not sure how the oldest found out, but he did, he asked and I confirmed it for him when he was eight. This year he took the liberty of informing his eight year old brother that there is no Santa. When I asked why he said because that is the age he was when he found out. My six year-old still happily believes in the big guy in the red suit.

@Alfreda: who put the presents under the tree then?

I asked for that one tonedef…lol! :)

I don’t remember when I figured it out… it was earlier than most kids, I think. There used to be this awesome little park called Fairy Tale Forest in my hometown and at Christmas it was decked all out in lights. It was amazing… indescribable. Anyway, my grandfather used to play Santa there (kids around town would yell out “Santa!!” when they saw him, even in July), and I had my suspicions. As the story goes, my line was “he looks like Grandpa, and he sounds like Grandpa, and he SMELLS like Grandpa!” One year, while my Grandma was talking to my dad in the car, I in the back seat, she slipped and said “I have to drive Dad to do Santa tonight so we need to get back” and I heard the whole thing. Destroyed Santa forever. LOL

My daughter is 6 and while she hasn’t figured it out yet, she did say to me this year:

“Hey Bah, all these Santas at the mall, at school, ringing the bell – they can’t all be the real Santa, can they.”

And so the Santa Corp. was born.

I had older siblings. Even if I had been inclined to swallow that crap, they wouldn’t have given me the chance. Funny how my sister found out though. My mom used to give us change in our stockings in addition to presents so we could buy ice cream, toys, candy whatever. One night my sister wakes up and sees a pile of pennies on the living room floor, and a trail leading to my mom’s room. So naturally, she followed it. There was my mom surrounded by presents and a bag of coins with a hole in the bottom still working on putting Christmas together. She never noticed my sister until she announced her discovery the next morning if I remember correctly, then it was just a common knowledge family story. :)

It probably didn’t help that my mother regularly wrote Jesus where Santa should have been on the tags.

Santa is the spirit of Christmas. He is not a real person.
I never believed in him. Personally, I think it is a terrible thing to lie to your children and then one day tell it to them——terrible!!

What do you mean, there is no Santa? There was another thread on this recently and I expressed my views there. You bunch of Bah Hum buggers, I still believe in Santa.

my niece discovered at age 8. We had to beg her not to tell her 5 year old sister. We want her to believe as long as she can. I think we finally got through to her.

All three of my kids started hearing things from kids at school somewhere around 3rd grade. We used to say “Wow, that’s too bad that they don’t believe in Santa. What do you think?” Each finally admitted that they didn’t believe in Santa in 6th grade, confessing that they hadn’t for at least a year prior. They were afraid to tell us, because they thought they wouldn’t get the presents! This year, my youngest is in 6th grade…so it’s our first year without Santa presents. I’m a little bit sad : (

I found out at a very early age (7 or so?) because my dad played Santa for a volunteer organization for many years. Oh, they told me he was just a ‘helper’, but my logical little mind couldn’t sustain that belief for long.

As soon as they discovered the internet where people post questions like “At what age did your child find out that there was no Santa?”...

there is no SANTA???

haha, I found out at about 6ish. I kept arguing with my mother cause I didn’t understand why santa had my mothers handwriting… she had to break the news to me to get me to shut up…

I asked my dad once, and he said “Santa doesn’t visit kids who don’t believe in him.”
I’ve passed that on.

jholler – Seeeee, that’s why I still believe, too!!

Seems like eight years old is the average.

I was 6 when i figured it out. I was a smart little fucker. When i was a little kid and i lost a tooth my mom would have me put it in a little cloth bag and then the “tooth fairy” would replace the tooth with some money. Well i got the idea of just tying the bag to my wrist when i slept so when the “tooth fairy” took the tooth out of the bag, it would wake me up. Naturally my mom woke me up that night trying to get the tooth. After that the rest were like dominoes.

@augustlan im 20 and younger sister is 16 but my dad still signs gifts from santa :P

@poof, it’s been quite a juggling act for years. Everything is wrapped and ready to go. We all get in the car and start for the restaurant, but half way down the block, I “remember” that I left the iron on, stove on, faucet on, and get out of the car and walk back to the house, whip out the gifts, eat the cookie, drink the milk, etc. If it took too long, I apologized and said one of the uncles or aunts called from out of town and I picked up the phone. I could get all the stuff out in 5 minutes tops most years. Some years I would put out some of the things from mom and dad, and the gifts for others, so I wasn’t starting from an entirely bare tree. The year Santa brought a desk was really tough. :-)

I think I knew there was no Santa long before I actually believed it… My parents are very bad pretenders, and I was pretty smart for my age, so around kindergarten or so I started looking at it a bit skeptically, but I played along till around 5th or 6th grade I think.

@AlfredaPrufrock: LOL. All I can picture is you hurrying back to the car with a milk mustache and some cookie crumbs on your lip. The kids stare at you, mouth agape. You say, “What, What?!”

i don’t have kids, but i found out myself when i realized santa’s handwriting and my mum’s were quite similar. i didn’t let on that i knew for a few years though haha. i think i was about 6.

@cprevite, when my youngest figured it out, we had a talk, and she said “I suppose the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy aren’t real either.” I told her that the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy recruited helpers, and that when you have your first child, you get your own Easter Bunny suit, and the parent’s edition of Holiday Magic. She asked to see the suit and the book, and I told her that if I showed it to her, I would have to kill her, because it was top secret stuff, and it would be much better if she waited until she had children of her own, and got her own suit and manual. She looked at me, dumbfounded, and then burst out laughing, and told me I was crazy. That’s when I told her that if you stopped believing in magic, it stopped happening. As if her dad and I would buy both her and her sister new bikes for Christmas! Way too much money to spend.

@binary, you get Lurve for playing along and making your parents happy. (I’m not your mother, by any chance?)

mine and was 8 but now she belive in him i don’t know if she is or not and her name was kristen

wwwwhat??

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