I’ve been a little worried this year, about how to handle THAT conversation with my 9 year old…the one about whether (or not) Santa exists.
I have been through this one before, because my older son is nearly 23. He’s quite laid back, though, so whenever the question did arise, he obviously took it in his stride and was happy to accept whatever explanation I gave at the time.
My younger son, though, has Aspergers, and I spend a lot of time explaining the difference between things that are factual and things that are not. Of course, when I started down the Santa story route, I didn’t know he had Aspergers and I didn’t know he would take everything so literally. So how was I going to explain that this concept I had sold as a fact for the last 9 years, is really fiction?
Thankfully, one of the NLP trainers came to my aid during a conversation last week, when he declared that of course Santa exists, because we talk about him, there are storied about him and millions of pictures…so in some way, Santa does exist.
And of course, because the things that we focus on tend to materialise, I did end up having that very conversation with my 9 year old 2 days later and I was able to start sowing the seeds of the ‘Santa concept’.
Do you think if we all focus enough on Santa, he will materialise too… or is that just wishful thinking?
Have a really super Christmas and I hope 2011 brings you everything you wish for…and more.