At what age did you discover there was no such thing as Santa?

What? No such thing as Santa?

Yeah yeah, before any of you come over here with that lame old joke, well, don't.

And by any of you I'm talking about Single Parent Dad and Dad Who Writes and probably Tim.

Anyway, today my 4 year old's pre school teacher announced the class are visiting a local farm/craft centre to see Santa.

Every child to a man is bright eyed and excited and planning their extensive wish list for the big man.

Not my daughter.

When it's announced, my daughter looks bored, rolls her eyes and declares: "I'm not going" (emphasis on the 'I'm') like she's been told she's got to go to the dentist or being forced to walk around Tesco again.

So tonight I say to her: "Why don't you want to go Mia? Don't you want to see Santa? There will be animals there too (she has an animal obsession. Grandma is buying her a 'lifelike' dog that I'm already stressing about, but that's a whole other rant).

She says: "I'll talk to the animals, but not him". She almost hisses the 'him'.

"But how will Santa know what you want for Christmas?", I coax wondering why on earth I'm going to part with nearly £12 so she can ignore the guy in the big red suit and just pet the guinea pigs.

Then her older wiser brother pulls me to one side. Clearly at the age of (nearly) 7, he is wise to the whole visiting Santa thing.

So he stage whispers to me: "Mummy, it's all right because it won't be the real Santa. It's a man dressed up in a suit. He looks really good so he can fool everyone, but I know that it's not really him because the real Santa will only be in the company of children when they are asleep or he won't bring them presents if he can see them. So don't worry, she won't miss out. But shh, don't tell her. We don't want to spoilt it for her."

Right there. I could munch him right up.

So at what age do they stop believing? At what age did YOU stop believing?

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