Santa Claus is a glory hog: Can I please tell my kids the truth?

As a real person, Santa Claus seems like he'd have to be a nice guy. Building toys all year round just to satisfy the desires of children all over the world in one marathon delivery service UPS would kill to be able to emulate. This is his goal in life: to give good children their just recompense and to give bad children, well, their just recompense: coal. Although with energy prices the way they are, naughty children might not even deserve that much.

But here's my beef with Santa: he's not real. I'm sorry if this broke your spirit to hear it from me. Just don't read this out loud to your children if you want them to believe the fallacy until the eyes of innocence surrender to the weight of evidence to the contrary. Like closets full of toys that wind up under the tree with Santa's name on them. Hmmm...

Now, I never really thought about this until having my own children, but now that I do, Santa ticks me off. After Christmas, my son, 4, told me he wanted to write Santa a thank you letter for bringing him all his little heart desired. While I'm grateful he's grateful, the gratitude is completely misdirected. Away from parents. We put the time, blood, sweat, and money to making that boy's Christmas memorable. Santa? He just sat on his imaginary rump and took the credit. I can assure you Santa didn't make anything my children got for Christmas, unless he got a $1.23/month job at a Chinese factory. I can also assure you he didn't deliver any of the presents, unless he was wearing a brown uniform and shaved his beard. And I can especially assure you he didn't build the kids' kitchen set. I did. And egad was it a big project. The thanks I get? "I'm so glad Santa got me all the things I wanted!" Well, call me old-fashioned, but I don't like being mistaken for a fat old man who wears a red suit and sneaks down people's chimneys at night and eats all their cookies.

Why can't I just tell my kids: "You know, Santa is fiction. Like Harry Potter, only harder to believe. Every toy you're now enjoying? That's me and Mommy. Why don't you write me a thank you letter?" I don't think I even got a verbal "thank you" for anything I gave the kids openly from Daddy and Mommy. Although they have repeatedly expressed how happy they are with what they got.

I guess the hard part of this is that society teaches them to believe. And we parents love the innocence it takes to believe such tales. So we reinforce it. We even brought our children to our church Christmas party where Santa came. Our son informed Santa he wanted a "toy combine tractor" which he had seen in a store. He thought it would be easier for Santa to just go buy it than make it himself. (It is. Trust me. I made a play kitchen, remember?) Our 3-year-old daughter sulked on an unknown man's lap until he finally put her down with a candy cane. Anyway, days later, when someone asked my son if he knew what he was getting for Christmas, he nonchalantly said, "A toy combine tractor."

"What if you get something else?"

"I'll get it. I talked to Santa about it."

And us sucker parents, who had already gotten him something else, couldn't crush the simple faith of our child in a fictional glory hog. So he got a "toy combine tractor" and the other present, which he loves as well. Does anyone else see something wrong with that scenario?

I vote for a world without Santa. For parents' sake. A world where I can shower my children with gifts and they in return shower me with love and affection. Besides, isn't Christmas supposed to be about He who bears its namesake? I think a better way to celebrate would be to tell the kids that Mommy and Daddy picked all the presents and paid for them, built them, or ordered them because we love them. But, it is Christ who gives us all things, right down to the holiday itself. Without Him, there'd be no Christmas. There'd be no presents. There'd be no us. If we emphasize that instead of Santa Claus, wouldn't the holidays be more complete?

That said, I thoroughly enjoyed watching the kids open and play with their new toys. Now excuse me while I brainstorm how to kill off an old, fat, one-man-show so I can get a thank you letter from my appreciative son.

Daddy gift idea: Forget iPad or Kindle Fire, get him Kindle touch, Nook Simple Touch

Most married dudes know they can get their wife mad at them by playing too much with gadgets. Heck, this is the reason I don't have a smart phone, iPad or Kindle Fire. I know my life would get sucked into their little screen. Every idle moment I had would be filled playing games that require me to put candy in a frog-like monster's mouth with Rube Goldberg-style setups or to help a sewer crocodile take a shower that isn't toxic. While these games are fun, and there are a lot of positive uses for Web-browsing, game-playing gadgets like iPhones, I find the negatives outweigh the positives for me.

When I got married, I initially forsook most digital forms of entertainment and began reading voraciously. I kept a list of the books I had read for a while. In about two years that I kept the list, I had read over 200 books. But I recently slowed down on reading and started substituting gadget time again, much to my wife's chagrin.

But for Christmas, I got a Kindle Touch. This combines two of my favorite things: gadgets and reading. And it does it in a way that helps me like both better. This is a perfect daddy gift. While it reinforces the love of gadgets, it has one task: to make it easy to read. I read way more now that I have it. And with free classics readily available, I find my willingness to read things on the bucket list has expanded significantly. Heck, I downloaded War & Peace and am actually excited to read it. At least I won't be toting around a thick, thousand-page book for a month or more while I struggle through it.

The best part of this gift is my wife can't get nearly as mad at me for using it compared to other electronics I own. It's just picking up a book that happens to have a power switch. Now, my wife and I often read side-by-side on Kindles after our kids have gone to bed. No movies, no video games, no Internet surfing. Just quiet with the occasional click of a button or tap of a finger on the touch screen. Forget the iPad, just get a singularly focused e-reader and do something more worthwhile with Daddy's time.

It's not without its shortcomings, but I love having it. Especially now that the library carries Kindle books.

Get Daddy a Kindle

Avoiding "Sanctuaries of misbehavior" for children

A grocery store is one place that can be a sanctuary for misbehavior.
The key is to not allow any behavior you wouldn't at home.

It is easier to enforce family rules when you're in your element. When we are at home, we can deal with individual situations consistently every time. It is easy to set boundaries and let children deal with the consequences.

However, grocery stores, church and even our home when guests visit can become "sanctuaries of misbehavior" unless we, as parents, are consistent with our parenting guidelines even there. In other words, children can figure out you may not be able to discipline them the same way during church as you would at home. Indeed, they figure out they can get away with things they couldn't get away with at home. They test their boundaries in all situations.

For instance, I recently shattered my kneecap, article forthcoming. Since this happened, I have had to adapt my parenting style a little since I cannot always move to enforce discipline. My wife and I began to notice the kids weren't as quick to obey me since they knew I wouldn't chase them down and help make it happen if they didn't obey quickly. Some would probably term their behavior "running wild."

Maybe sometimes the correction for misbehavior will have to come after the fact. For instance, a friend of ours taught us to use "reverent practice." When the children misbehave in church, whether it be by attempting to wander the aisles, crawl under the pews, or backflipping off the pulpit, we for a while had reverent practice when we got home. This also happened after irreverent prayers or family home evenings. In reverent practice, we place the children in chairs and have them fold their arms, put their feet in front of their chair, not fidget, and remain quiet. Until they do, they remain on the chair. The contest of wills isn't always short, but it has been effective in teaching our kids to remain reverent during the appropriate times. Now, we rarely have to discipline during or after church.

We also have a zero-tolerance standpoint for noise. If they make an unholy racket in Sacrament meeting, we escort them to the foyer, where - this is important - they stay on our lap or we hold them, aloft from anything that could be considered fun. Otherwise they would view these forays to the foyer as a reward for being loud during a dry talk. The lap approach probably won't be appropriate with teenagers, so it's best to start early so you don't have to when that time comes.

How many times have you seen a child screaming their head off in a grocery store, fully knowing the embarrassment they are causing, while you can't take the established recourses from home like timeout or sending them to a room or whatever to scream their lungs out? What can you do about this? Exit the store immediately. Go to the car. Sit the child in their carseat. Return to the store only when they have calmed down. I've also had to use the car approach for midnight screaming sessions or naughty children once we've reached the lap/foyer stage at church.

If children can sense the boundaries are always in place, no matter the locale, they will modify their behavior eventually to fall in line with expectations, unless they are stubborn or discipline has remained unenforced for too long.

What do you do to avoid sanctuaries of misbehavior for your children?