Fairy Tales About Fairies...

There is something extraordinary about the imagination of my five year old daughter.

What is even more extraordinary, is how carried away I get when talking to her about her current favourite subject: fairies.

Some mums like to tell their kids that fairies aren’t real, but I think I prefer to wait until later in life to crush her spirit (‘well sweetie, you ARE the youngest person in your year at school so while everyone goes to the pub to celebrate, you’ll just have to come home and have a nice milkshake with ME…’).

 

The Bombshell lost her first tooth on the weekend, but all she had to show for it was an empty space as she lost it while swimming with the Awesome Grandparents. She was quite concerned that the Tooth Fairy wouldn’t come.

And then my mouth ran away with me…

‘Actually,’ I told her in my most conspiratorial voice. ‘I heard the Tooth Fairy LOVES to swim, so if you lose your tooth in a pool, she gives you extra money because it means she gets to go for a swim instead of working.’

Seemed reasonable to me. Most people prefer slacking off to working, why should fairies be any different?

So she wrote the Tooth Fairy a letter directing her to swimming pool in question and sure enough the next morning, there was a letter in return thanking the Bombshell for the opportunity to go swimming and a new $5 note.

‘Look Mum,’ the Bombshell screamed at about 5.30 the next morning. ‘The Tooth Fairy left me 5 cents!’ (She can read and write but has no concept about money. Something for me to work on over the school holidays).

I congratulated myself at saving her from complete devastation but then had a thought: what if the same thing happens to the Curly Mop or Baldy Baby in five years time. How am I going to remember the intricacies of my stories?

See, kids may not remember the name of the child they have been sitting next to at school all year, or even the name of their very own uncle (true!) but they WILL remember what you told them about the tooth fairy on a whim half a decade previously.

So I am hereby writing down all the ‘truths’ I have been telling about fairies, so it is on the record for subsequent daughters:

-          If you make a circle out of petals for the fairy (‘a fairy ring’ duh) the fairies will leave you a letter [I have one of the Bombshell’s friends to thank for this one, and it meant I was up at midnight writing not one, but two letters from the fairies, after she roped in the Mop into making a fairy ring as well].

-          And because I can’t help turning these things into learning opportunities, the letters were then written to each child to try and get them to work on their major faults. The Bombshell’s said ‘Make a wish, be kind to all, and it will come true.’ The Mop’s said ‘Make a wish, always try your hardest, and it will come true.’ As far as I can tell, neither girl’s wish have come true yet.

-          In order to stop the girls hitting a tree in our backyard to get the flowers to fall down, I told them that the seeds pods are actually where the baby fairies grow.

      

       It worked. They just hit each other now.

 

What ‘truths’ have you told your children, and have you ever been caught out making up stories?