Trees do communicate with each other by releasing chemicals they they can detect, but you cannot; deer live in the forest (they’re just as interesting as unicorns to a child and you might actually see one); all the gold in the world comes from big stars that got so old and tight they exploded; if you injure your brain and depending on the area, your perception of things or even your personality can be affected; some plants can eat little frogs; a cloud may contain enough water to weigh the same as a house, and a large rain cloud could weigh as much a one hundred houses–and it floats! Your body contains many, many tiny little life forms called bacteria and they outnumber your body’s own cells by ten times, but they are much smaller than your body’s cells. The sky is blue because the air scatters the blue part of the sunlight more than all the other colors. The earth is a big ball, going around a much bigger ball of gas. Al things–even you–emit a force called gravity, the bigger the thing is the more gravity it emits. People are animals just like deer but we have evolved in a different direction. Santa Claus is a myth created by adults for children, and he’s not real, just like monsters are not real. As a parent, I want you to know that I will always do my best to be honest with you.
He never tried to pass off his books as nonfiction, just sayin’…
They can survive in SPACE, too!
Imagination =/= lying. When you read your kid a fairytale, you’re not lying to them. The implication of lying is that the kids think he’s not telling them a story, but facts about the world. And that’s a problem. One of the most disillusioning things for children to find out is that people they trusted lied to them.
Driving by some cows one day I asked mine if they knew where milk comes from, and they said “No.”
I said "Milk comes out of cows!"
I have never seen such a look of confusion on a child’s face before or since.
Then I explained that poop is what they ate the day before.
This seemed like it was easier to understand.
I started off with “milk = cow juice”, which eventually led to questions when we were making orange juice with the squeezy turny machine.
It’s still “cow juice”, but their eyes twinkle.
Soy milk is called “Daddy Milk”. Momma don’t go for that.
Oops! Now I’m crying at work. Thanks BB.
I think of it this way: my kids will have a lifetime to enjoy a fascinating world filled with Quarks and evolution and strange cultures and distant galaxies, but they only have a short window of time to enjoy a world with unicorns.
I beg to differ. That was the overall point of my overlong post near the top of the pile: I’ve never been able to bring myself to tell either of my kids that I will always be there for them. They know I’ll be there to support them for as long as I draw breath and possess sentience, and that I’ll be around for as long as I can devise. But they appear to have a surprisingly sophisticated grasp on the idea that “Damocles” is essentially everybody’s middle name.
Also, FWIW, we’ve never made a particular effort to instill a belief in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy et al into their heads. They’ve always known those are fantasy roles played by Grandpa, Grandma, and the occasional stout chap at the mall. When they were truly young they’d have been more credulous, but nobody was actively trying to fool them.
As a kid, I was afraid of all manner of monsters. I found the greatest level of success in getting over this fear by getting involved in the other side of the transaction: going behind the scenes to find out how monsters are made. Reading histories and mythologies, learning about makeup and mechanical FX, eventually running a successful Halloween haunt for eleven years. And my kids are embracing this approach as well. My daughter was (like her mother) deathly afraid of spiders, but the more she’s learned about spiders, the more comfortable she’s become around them. Our house is over a century old and full of creaks and dark corners, and the kids used to be afraid of the dark, and suspicious noises, and thunder, and all kinds of stuff. But after examining my collection of Halloween props and disguises, and experiencing firsthand the thrill of “becoming one with the darkness” (especially on Halloween), they’ve come to enjoy this side of fantasy. They clamor to help me paint and dress the undead dudes in my “Build Your Own Zombies” kit. And my formerly-spider-dreading daughter dressed up as a Spider Queen for Halloween last fall, the spookiest kindergartener on the block. They’re having fun distilled from fear in a way I didn’t manage until I was in high school. Ask 'em about any of those spooks, spectres, bloodsuckers, and changelings and they’ll offhandedly admit that they’re all make-believe (at least, as far as we know… heh heh heh), but still as cool as can be.
There’s quite a spectrum between lying to your kids about Santa or an 8,000-year-old Earth or otherwise trying to forcefeed them a “magical” childhood filled with nothing but faeries, will-o’-the-wisps, magic, or round-the-clock daydreams, and nailing nothing but The Facts As You Understand Them into their heads. If we’re honest with ourselves, I don’t think any of us here will discount the value of daydreaming and fantasizing about things that popular consensus might declare “impossible.” My mother’s grandfather might have been one of those who declared with utter conviction, “if humans were meant to fly they would have been born with wings,” and the vast majority of his neighbors might have applauded his wisdom for declaiming so. But a couple of bicycle-mechanic brothers in Ohio were among those who thought it might be good fun to, well, fly in the face of popular “wisdom.” And sure enough, my mother’s grandfather lived long enough to see the skies filled with airplanes.
As for the guys who have walked on the moon, I wonder how many of them grew up believing that that big white orb in the night sky is a cold, lifeless, colorless desertscape similar to Death Valley but without the comforting charms of a blue sky, some warm air to breathe, and maybe a chance to see a Gila monster. How many of them fought for the chance to be among the very few humans to walk on that surface without ever once trying to see The Man In The Moon as a kid, or debating its green cheesiness, or thrilling to early science fiction tales that attempted to imagine what things might really be like up there… or what they might be like in a more fantastical universe than our own? Who would bother to make the trek without first wondering “what if…?”
I think imagination needs to be nurtured and occasionally watered and fertilized. A diet of nothing but cold, hard facts will atrophy the imagination and stifle innovation, leading to stagnation sooner rather than later. I don’t recommend raising a generation of credulous nincompoops, but surely there’s a happy medium in there somewhere.
Isn’t that where everything else in the world comes from, too?
Children are far, far better at determining “real” and “fairy tale” than you seem to be giving them credit for. Most of these? Are fairy tales.
A star’s nuclear fusion only goes up to iron and that’s the end of the road. The heavier elements are only created with a supernova.
Which is why I hate surprise parties. So much so hidden, for so long.
So… then lead also happens to be an exploding-star turd?
I guess it’s all in how one paints and embroiders when building a mythology (whether utterly fact-based or completely fanciful), but a little imagination goes a long way toward sparking interest in the world around us, IMHO.
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