Losing the first tooth is a momentous occasion. For kids. For parents. For parents who don’t have any cash on them. It’s one of those sweet, innocent, loving parenting moments when kids are truly little child sponges. And parents get to be heroes masked as a mythical fairy who leaves a surprise under their pillow.
There’s joy. There’s love. There’s magic. And there’s deceit.
And this Dad just chronicled the whole fantastical experience – with a boatload of extra deceit. He super imposed a Tinkerbelle-esque tooth fairy on film footage for his son, James to see the next morning.
This dad also ends the video with the lines: “They grow up. But not too fast if we can help it,” and then a picture of his gorgeous, sweet one-less-toothed boy. And he asked commenters to be nice. So I will. Because I completely get the love and constant yearning to preserve a child’s innocence. But I cannot condone the extreme lie.
I hate lying to my kids. And the whole Santa, Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy concepts are the hardest lies to tell, especially for me. I struggle with telling my kids these lies every year. My sweet innocent boy has become a sweet, knowledge-yearning 8-year old who likes to poke holes in these magical concepts. And just like James’s dad, I can tell you, it’s sad when it goes by too fast.
So I tell my little myth-buster “Believe what you want to believe. Just don’t ruin it for the little ones.” But I keep the stories alive without stretching them too far — for the joy I still see on all three of their faces, which seems even brighter when they think there’s a chance these gifts magically appeared.
But I just can’t condone warping their innocent minds into believing this lie even more. At least when it’s a weird phenomenon, they’re like: Is it Mom and Dad? Or is it real? And there’s a little sweetness in the mystery. And when your kids do find out – and they will – they will be DEVASTATED. And HORRIFIED that they defended believing in the tooth fairy to the 5th graders. And then they’re MAD. And they just don’t understand our level of deceit – because they don’t have kids yet, and they don’t know how fearful we are that their sweet innocence will one day fade away.
I love make believe. And I believe in the magic of children. But pulling out digital tricks takes the magic to a level we call trickery. And I don’t think it’s going to end well.
