I'm always amused when I hear adults getting outraged about parents "lying" to their kids about Santa. These adults must not know kids very well. Kids' heads are naturally full of fantasy. Do these outraged adults think parents should sit down after every book-reading and specifically tell the kid not to believe what they just heard? I noticed when my oldest was little that Santa was as real to him as Zeus and Scrooge and Big Bird. I remember him asking questions like, What's bigger, elves or gnomes? I did not serve as the reality police.

That said, the presents being signed by "Santa" and the leaving cookies out for Santa -- that does encourage kids to believe in Santa even after they just naturally stop thinking of gnomes and mythical characters as real. At some age, you do have to actively "lie" to keep them in their fantasy, and I avoid that.

If I were LW, when her stepdaughter expresses skepticism about, say, Santa getting down a chimney, I'd say something like, "Hmmm, that's a really good point." Encourage the skepticism. She will accept the truth (I'm sure she knows it on some level) when she is ready.

I agree with No Name Given that if you can get a kid to cooperate by making something a game, you should. But what she cannot know is that at some point, the shine will wear off for most kids, because most of us -- kids and adults -- do have better and/or more fun things to do than cleaning up toys and the like. Geez, No Name Given doesn't want to; why would a 2-year-old, once they have "played the game" a few times? So, you have to motivate them to do what they need to do somehow; sometimes, it's by making it a game, sometimes by telling them why it matters, sometimes by just making them do it. What works for one kid in one situation won't work for that same kid in another situation or for another kid in that same situation. (This is why parenting and teaching can be both great jobs and very tiring!)

I also have to respond to No Name Given's idea that the reason kids like her friend's 7-year-old have poor social skills is because they spend all day on video games and their parents never teach them anything. He may have poor social skills just because . . . he's 7. It's called childhood, and it's the time when we adults have to teach our kids all kinds of skills, regardless of what they do in their free time. And you don't teach it by saying it a few times one weekend. It takes YEARS, and some kids are just better able to learn certain things than others.

Parenting was challenging in "the good old days" and it is challenging today, even when you do everything "right." Kids are not empty vessels for our parenting; they come with their own tendencies and talents and problems. If only we could pour our lessons into our kids like medicine and they'd swallow them and be cured of all of humankind's ills. But it doesn't work like that -- believe me, I've tried!

I still love going out to the movies, but we choose the movies we see in theatres very carefully. The large majority, we see at home. The biggest deterrent is the huge expense for my family of five. But a close second deterrent is that the experience of watching and hearing a movie in a typical theatre can be far less than ideal.

The only reason to go OUT to movies is because the overall experience can be so much better than in our living room. But all too often, the picture is messed up and the sound is too high or too low, or there are disruptive people in the theatre. That makes the whole thing pointless. Theatres can prevent these things, or at least fix them quickly -- I've been in theatres like the Ritz's in Phila. that manage that.

So, what would it take to get us out to movies more reguarly? -(1) Smaller and cheaper drinks and snacks (2) Better quality control over the sound, the picture, the behavior of the audience

A plus, but not at all necessary, would also be "grownup" fare like beer/wine, good coffee, and gourmet snacks. Now THOSE I'd expect to be expensive, not the giant "small" coke.