Santa, Blackman, and the Tooth Fairy

My five-year old niece believes that when she does something bad, Blackman will dot her heart with tinny black spots, then her evil, black heart will eventually rot with the evilness of her deeds and wither. She cries when I pretend to turn into Sadako from The Ring. Of course, being an astute little girl, she knows I'm not actually Sadako, but it's fun to scare the crap out of her, nevertheless. She believes in Santa Claus. That Baby Jesus and Papa Jesus are two separate entities, and that they love her. Once while we were playing, I pretended that I was being sucked by an evil force under the bed. As I was teetering over the edge of the mattress, she burst into tears. "Tita Cathy baka kunin ka ni Blackman!"

Just who this shadowy Blackman character is, she doesn't know, but it hasn't failed so far. "Eat your peas!" " No more Chickenjoy!" "Don't bite your playmates!"

Adults believe that children will believe anything we say. This is the lie we adults delude ourselves with. We talk down to children. We take advantage of their gullibility. Adults lie so consistently to children that it's amazing that the world isn't populated with people with a very skewed perception of the world. Having had parents that lied to me all my life, I'm amazed that I turned out all right. Then again, I could be wrong.

But I knew, I knew. I always knew something was not right.

I remember how frustrated I felt when I was a kid for being a kid. I felt that nobody ever listened to me, my opinions did not carry any weight, and my political opinions were always met with an indulgent pat on the head, "oh, isn't she being so precocious?" and what I felt was a half-derisive smile. Nobody ever believed me when I said that I hated being in an all-girls school, that the little bitches that infested it were satan's daughters as far as I was concerned, and I wanted to transfer to a co-ed school.

"No"
"But Mama!"
"No! and that's final!"

I just hated the powerlessness of being young. I hated the fact that nobody believed in anything I said, or pretended that I didn't matter. So I retaliated by being smug.

Not all the Bumbays and the Igorots and the other racially blighted people they tried to warn me about and scare me with could keep me off the streets even when the Angelus bells were ringing. I remember my grandmother, with a switch, a hanger, a belt in her hand, and the threatening look in her eyes, half-comical and scary, trying to get us kids to go home. I felt that the world owed me a favor because I ate the cauliflowers and actually liked the broccoli in my chopsuey, while my brother and sister detested vegetables. That because I liked books, I was better than everyone else. Even then, the only idiosyncracies that made sense were my own.

I understand rules. I understand the need for limits in children. But I feel that scaring discipline out of children will never work. I vowed never to lie to children. Then came the day that it backfired.

As I grew older, I realized that I needed to sugar-coat the world a little. I think that I scarred my niece psychologically when my grandfather died. As I explained to her that Lolo Daddy had gone to heaven because he was old, she asked "Si mama ba magiging old?" (Will mama become old too?) When I answered yes, she suddenly cried "AYOKO MAGING OLD SI MAMA!!!" For weeks she would beg my sister to never grow old. Of course, aging is inevitable, but how do I explain that to my niece? My sister did a better job at explaining death to her, and gave a surprisingly sophisticated metaphysical explanation that my niece actually understood.

It got me thinking. What if adults never lied to children? If I didn't lie to children, I would be denying them the magic of childhood, the magic of Santa and the Tooth Fairy. My truth would deny them imagination, music, love, faith, hope. I decided what the heck, maybe kids needed to be lied to sometime, then let them discern whether they were being fed bull.

Adults never give children enough credit. Kids understand more than we think. Two months ago I was having a very emotional argument with my mother in her room when the door opened. My niece peeped into the room. As if on cue, my mother and I suddenly force a smile on our faces. I was pretty sure that my smile looked more like a grimace. Two wide-eyed, teary women with scary, toothy grins frozen on our faces.

"Ano ginagawa ninyo?" (what are you doing?)
*SMILE*"Nag-uusap lang kami" (we were talking) my mother replies.

A pause.

Then my niece says, "Huwag mo awayin si Tita Cathy" (Stop fighting with Tita Cathy) and walks out of the room.

Our surprise was enough to end the argument. Children are so much wiser.