Toy cars are on many children’s wish list at this time of year, but in stratospheric, live -life-to-the-max Dubai, tomorrow’s speed freaks won’t settle for anything less than Ferraris. Real ones — we kid you not.
The adrenaline dream was a popular request at last week’s Aquarius magazine Christmas Market, as we were told afterwards by two stand-ins for Santa Claus (of course, at this time of the year the man himself is checking his list and even he needs help!). While we can’t name the men under the beards at the Dubai event as they’re professionally associated with GN Magazines’ Santa club, they told us that UAE children are a hard bunch to please.
Only a few of the approximately 500 kids at the event asked for sweets and lollipops, plumping instead for gargantuan choices such as race cars, a personal visit from Darth Vader, and even elephants. We can understand Star Wars trending ahead of a cinematic release this week but pachyderms? Turns out two kids asked to find real elephants under their trees, presenting Santa and parents with logistical impossibilities.
Entertainment tie-ins represented some of the more practical options: Shopkins dolls, mermaids’ tails, Disney princess dolls and the Rocket Santa video game among them. Children everywhere are also asking for Star Wars toys, with the latest instalment in the franchise opening this week. Yes, some did want toy cars — but that was only the smaller kids.
Perhaps the hardest wish to fulfil here in the desert, though, was one many adults wish for every year: snow.
Pachyderm problems
But what do you do on Christmas morning when your son’s about to have a fit because there’s no elephant under the tree? We asked clinical psychologist Dr Andrea Tosatto, who does a lot of work with children at the Synergy Integrated Medical Centre.
“Depending on the age of the child and the development of his critical mind, parents should adjust their words accordingly. The critical mind is the capacity that a child has to put something in discussion and formulate his own opinion. At three years old, this capacity is very much underdeveloped; at eight it is very much present,” he says.
In the elephant scenario, Dr Tosatto suggests that between the ages of three and five, a believable explanation is that elephant was too heavy for Santa’s sleigh. Someone a year or two older can be told Santa decided an elephant wouldn’t be happy in a flat or a villa in Dubai and, as an animal lover, he preferred to deliver a PlayStation. By eight or nine, Dr Tosatto says children should be told Santa doesn’t exist and that the parents aren’t going to buy an elephant that needs to live in a two-bedroom flat in Dubai Marina.
“Children will not be disappointed for long, because they will understand that this is a little lie that every parent tells their child to increase the magic of Christmas,” Dr Tosatto says. “Often parents discover also that their children already knew the truth but weren’t brave enough to tell them because they were afraid to hurt them.”
Cintia Fuentes Ramos, psychologist at the Dubai Herbal & Treatment Centre, says parents need to understand that Christmas won't lose its magic if they do not fulfill all their children's desires. "It's really best to show them that the important thing is to create memories that they will keep," she says. "As during the rest of the year it is necessary to have rules and limits, so at Christmas parents should tell their children that there is a limit to the number of gifts they will receive, perhaps no more than five or six. If they say they want more, we can explain that this is a time to share and their receiving too many gifts could leave other children without presents. It's important to also communicate pride in their ability to share with other children."
With so many Christmas stories requiring a suspension of disbelief, managing the magic can be a challenge, but a little understanding of how the mind works can go a long way.
(Aquarius is published by GN Media, which also publishes Gulf News)
