Psychologists Pinpoint Average Age Children Become Santa Sceptics

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: From empty glasses of sherry on the mantelpiece to sooty footprints leading to the bedroom door, evidence of Santa's existence is clearly irrefutable. Yet most children will begin to question it at some point -- and many parents anticipate this moment with dread. Now psychologists have identified the average age when Santa skepticism creeps in, and which children are at greatest risk of harboring negative feelings when it does.

While most adults have fallen for the myth that Santa doesn't exist, many children still believe -- even if the idea of a single individual visiting the homes of billions of children in a single night is at odds with their wider reasoning skills. Dr Candice Mills, a psychologist at the University of Texas in Dallas, US, and a Santa sceptic, said: 'Children typically begin to distinguish fantasy from reality during the preschool years, but their belief in the existence of a singular magical Santa Claus often continues into middle childhood.' To better understand this shift from belief to disbelief and children's experiences of it, Mills and her colleagues interviewed 48 six- to 15-year-olds who had stopped believing in Santa and 44 of their parents, plus a further 383 adults.

The research, which has not yet been peer reviewed, found that for most children, disbelief crept in gradually about the age of eight -- although some three- or four-year-olds had convinced themselves that Santa wasn't real, while other children believed in him until they were 15 or 16. In many cases, it was testimony from other disbelievers that finally crushed their faith. Mills said: 'They may have had some skepticism based on logical reasoning -- like how can Santa Claus really get around the world in one night? -- but what pushes them over the edge is a classmate at school saying he's not real.'

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