This sort of thing seems also useful to teach to the youngster, upon the time he understands/learns that he was tricked, that even folks may lie to him (deliberately or not).
In a society truth is less important than relationships, communication, shared "knowledge" (myths).
It may be one of the reason why the Santa Claus character (among other ones) stays "alive" in the culture.
Ps. Watching this scene feels like almost all the employee stock option situations I OH in the Bay Area. Thankfully Carta is there to show you how little you get as an employee if and only if you go public.
It’s not lying, it’s called make believe [1]. Children play this way all the time. It’s a healthy part of development. Adults play along with Santa Claus, the Easter bunny, and the tooth fairy. When kids get older and figure it out, they generally have fond memories of it. The only cases I’ve heard of where it was upsetting was when somebody else spoiled it for them, just like how people spoiled the end of the 6th Harry Potter book.
Adults do it all the time as well, when we consume fiction. It feels good to escape our current reality and inhabit another, magical reality, if only for a while. It’s a healthy thing to do as long as it doesn’t lead to a breakdown in our relationships and other aspects of our lives.
I'm really more and more convinced that each and every human group has such foundations ("myths"), and that the larger the group, the larger the distortion between the myth and reality.
There is an hypothesis about the origin of the "hacker" state of mind (as a strong urge to understand how things work) stating that many of them think/thought that, as youngsters, they were lied to (cannot find the reference, though).
Available informative resources played a huge part in mine. (One of the reasons I despair about the modern internet filling kids' time with cotton candy trivia)
With a pathologist father, 3rd grade biology questions digressed into two hour linked list lectures on biochemistry.
I distinctly remember the joy inspired by finding out about the-thing-behind-the-thing though!
When I was a kid we went hiking in the mountains with my dad and my uncle every fall catching small trouts (50-150g I guess) in the creeks using wooden poles and worms on hooks.
I was a grown up before it dawned to me that if it wasn't for us they could have gone somewhere else and caught real fish.
They never said anything but today I do the same: sometimes we go hiking on Sundays before or after church, "expeditions into the wilderness", tenting in the garden.
A little, yeah. I wrestled with this as a parent as my kids got older and older. At some point my seven year old asked me is Santa was real and why we would tell her he’s real. Explained the fun and magic of Christmas, etc and I don’t think it was traumatic or anything, but definitely made me feel a little down.
Parents "lie" to their kids about things like Santa because they remember the magical world that was created for them from their own childhoods, before the reality of a world with no Santa, murder, disease, death etc intruded on their reality.
Which is better, telling your child:
"yeah you will lose all your baby teeth and each one will hurt and bleed and make you look silly with big gaps in your mouth"
or
"oooh you lost a tooth, now let's put it under your pillow and the tooth fairy will exchange it for a little gift while you sleep"
I don't understand why you put "lie" in quotes. Even if you believe it is done for a good reason, it is most certainly lieing.
You have a wide variety of choices as to what to tell your child that doesn't include lieing. You can celebrate the loss of a tooth as a positive step of growing up without telling a lie about a creepy fairy that sneeks into houses and collects teeth.
Adults may rationalize to themselves that they lie to children to protect the children, but I think it is often more motivated by the adults' desire to avoid having an uncomfortable and difficult conversation.
Memories are real, experiences are as real as one wants them to be.
We all learn critical thinking and separating fact from fiction eventually, but that doesn’t mean you can’t look back fondly on experiences you enjoyed as a kid.
Or... They could appreciate the amount of effort that their parent made into making the world magical for them, they might reflect on that when they have children and do the same, and they'll be grateful for a wonderful upbringing.
