post traumatic santa disorder, that is.
no, virginia. there isn't one.
wouldn't you think that after how many years of lying to your kids about the whole santa/north pole/reindeer/chimney thing, that once they find out it's a big lie, they'd freak out? but they don't.
in all my years of being a clinical social worker, i have never once - zip, nada - worked with a kid who was traumatized by finding out that santa isn't real. a kid calling another kid reindeer names can scar him for life, but finding out that the big man in red is really your dad who ducked out on december 24th to run to the corner drugstore to get you a bunch of fun junk to put in your stocking doesn't propel you into traumatized depression.
why not?
maybe it's because the experts who keep telling us that kids who watch too much t.v. (or at least, the wrong kind of t.v.) will turn out to be serial killers don't know what the hell they're talkin' about.
maybe it's because you can read a kid a fairy tale and despite what the library experts and the national organization for women say, the kid ends up recognizing that it's. a. fairy. tale. - not the God's honest truth.
maybe the reason kids' whole rest of their lives don't get flushed down the toilet once they find out there's no santa claus is because kids play pretend all. the. time. it's in their dna. just the other day, charlie and olivia turned my torso into a ski jump. yes. they. did. (ouch!)
maybe it's because they have an i.mag.in.a.tion.
imagine that.
whatever the reason, no kid on earth has ever run screaming to a therapist because he found out there's no santa claus.
no, virginia, there is not a PTSD.
there's no PTCPD (post traumatic chia pet disorder), either. (although for the life of me, i can't figure out why not.)
