Why it matters · 37 sources
A note under the pillow. A photo on the front step on the first day of school. A wish list written in wobbly capitals. None of these is essential, and no parent should feel they have to do any of them. But families all over the world keep doing them, and it is fair to ask whether they actually do children any good.
This page gathers what researchers have found about children’s belief in folk figures, family rituals, reading aloud, remembering together, gratitude and giving. We have tried to report each finding at its real size: where a result comes from one small study, we say so, and where the evidence is mixed, we say that too. Every numbered marker points to a source listed at the bottom of the page.
It is easy to assume that young children believe anything they are told. The research suggests otherwise. Developmental psychologist Jacqueline Woolley and her colleague Maliki Ghossainy reviewed the evidence and argued that young children are often sceptical, doubting new and unfamiliar things rather than accepting them, and that they assign reality status more sparingly than one might expect 1.
In one study, most preschoolers who heard realistic, fantastical or religious stories judged the storybook characters to be not real, although three-year-olds were more likely than four- and five-year-olds to say a character was real 2. Children appear to be sorting out, story by story, what exists and what does not.
Where belief does take hold, context matters. In a well-known experiment, Woolley’s team introduced preschoolers to an invented figure called the Candy Witch. Among the older preschoolers, those whose families arranged a “visit” from her believed in her more strongly than those who were not visited, and belief was still high a year later 3. In other words, children weigh evidence from the world around them, including what the adults they trust say and do.
Woolley has described this kind of thinking as “imagining the impossible”, and she links working out what is real and what is pretend to the broader question children are constantly investigating: what exists 4.
Many parents worry about the day the magic ends. The most detailed recent study, published in Developmental Psychology in 2024 by Candice Mills of the University of Texas at Dallas and colleagues, asked 48 children aged 6 to 15 and 44 of their parents about the experience, and a second group of 383 adults to look back on their own 5.
The average age at which belief ended was around eight, with a lot of variation. Most people said that hearing it from someone else played a part. About a third of the children and half of the adults remembered some negative feelings, but those feelings were usually short-lived 5. According to the university’s summary, fewer than a third felt negative for longer than a couple of weeks, participants did not report a drastic loss of trust in their parents, and stronger promotion of the Santa story by parents went along with more sadness or disappointment on finding out 6.
A larger but less formal study points the same way. Psychologist Christopher Boyle’s Exeter Santa Survey gathered about 1,200 responses, mostly from adults recalling childhood. A third said they had been upset when they found out, 15 per cent felt betrayed and 10 per cent were angry; around 56 per cent said their trust in adults had not been affected, while 30 per cent said it had 7. Because people were remembering events from years before, these figures are best read as a rough picture rather than a precise measurement.
It is worth knowing that not every psychologist is comfortable with the tradition. In a 2016 article in The Lancet Psychiatry, Boyle and Kathy McKay questioned whether the Santa story might undermine children’s trust in their parents 8. That was an argument rather than a new study, and the later survey data above suggest most people come through the discovery without lasting harm. Still, it is a useful reminder that how gently a family handles the questions probably matters more than the tradition itself.
Parents are not doing this by accident. In a 2025 study of US parents of three- to eight-year-olds, the most common reasons given for encouraging belief in figures such as Santa were that it is a normal part of childhood, that it brings excitement, and that it is a family tradition 9. The authors note that their samples were mostly White, Christian and well educated, so other families may weigh things differently 9.
Those who went through it themselves seem, on the whole, to want it for their own children. In the Mills study, about 87 to 95 per cent of adults said they wanted to celebrate Santa with their own kids 6.
Researcher Cindy Dell Clark took a different approach, going straight to children and their parents to understand the cultural and psychological roles that Santa, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy play in children’s lives 10. Her work is a reminder that children are not just receiving these stories; they take part in them and shape them.
Mills offers a simple piece of advice for the day the questions start: when children keep asking, ask yourself what your goal is in responding 6. Some families answer with a question of their own, some tell the truth straight away, and many do something in between.
You will often read that pretend play is essential to children’s development. The honest picture is more careful. In 2013, Angeline Lillard and colleagues published a major review in Psychological Bulletin that tested exactly that claim 11.
They found that for language, storytelling and emotion regulation, the research so far was consistent with pretend play helping but not strong enough to draw firm conclusions. For creativity, intelligence and theory of mind (understanding that other people have their own thoughts and beliefs), results were inconsistent, and some good studies suggested that the things that tend to go along with play, such as supportive adults and rich environments, may be doing the real work 11.
There are encouraging findings. An earlier study of 152 children found that four-year-olds who did more fantasy and pretend play tended to do better on theory-of-mind tasks, independent of verbal intelligence 12. But that is a correlation, and the Lillard review is exactly the reason not to overstate it.
The fair summary for parents is this: imaginative play is a normal, joyful part of childhood, and it is one of several routes by which children practise language, stories and ideas about other minds. It does not need to be justified as a brain-training exercise to be worth doing.
The research on family rituals is some of the most consistent in this area. In a review of 50 years of studies, Barbara Fiese and colleagues distinguished routines (the observable, repeated practices of family life) from rituals (the symbolic, meaningful events that say “this is who we are”). Across the studies they reviewed, routines and rituals were related to parenting competence, children’s adjustment and marital satisfaction 13. The authors also pointed out weaknesses, including inconsistent ways of measuring routines, so these are associations rather than proof of cause 13.
A later review by Mary Spagnola and Fiese described routines as giving young children a predictable structure and rituals as creating an emotional climate that supports early development, with variations linked to children’s socioemotional, language and academic skills 14.
Some of the clearest experimental evidence comes from bedtime. In a randomised study of 405 mothers and their infants and toddlers, introducing a consistent nightly routine reduced problematic sleep behaviours within weeks and improved mothers’ mood 15. A later review argued that common parts of a bedtime routine, such as reading and singing, may support language, literacy, emotional regulation and parent-child attachment as well as sleep, while noting that more research is needed 16.
Rituals may also help children practise self-control. In a three-month study of 210 schoolchildren in Slovakia and Vanuatu, circle-time games improved executive function and the ability to delay gratification, and the effects were larger when the games were framed as rituals rather than as simple tasks 17.
Childhood is full of thresholds: a first day of school, a first wobbly tooth, a move, a new baby in the house. Psychologists who study ritual describe it as something that helps people regulate their emotions, pursue goals and strengthen social bonds, partly through the physical actions themselves and partly through the meaning people give them 18. That framework is not specific to children, but it helps explain why a small, repeated ceremony can feel steadying at a moment of change.
For school starts, the American Academy of Pediatrics suggests practical steps that work in the same spirit: visit the school beforehand, ask a nervous child what they are worried about and help them problem-solve, point out the fun parts of starting school, and settle into a consistent bedtime routine before term begins 19.
A photo on the doorstep, a note in a lunchbox, or a letter that arrives after a tooth falls out can all serve as small markers that say “something important happened, and we noticed”. We have not found studies that test any single one of these particular customs, so we would not claim that a specific ritual improves outcomes. What the broader research supports is the value of predictable, meaningful family practices 1314.
Reading with children has the backing of a formal medical recommendation. In 2024 the American Academy of Pediatrics updated its policy on literacy promotion for the first time since 2014, encouraging shared reading from birth through kindergarten and noting that reading together strengthens the bond between parent and child and supports the developing brain 20. The AAP also favours print books over screens for young children, because shared reading is at its best when it is interactive 20.
Brain-imaging research adds some detail. In a small study of 19 children aged three to five, those with more reading at home showed greater activation, while listening to stories, in brain areas that support mental imagery and understanding narrative, even after accounting for household income 21. With a sample that small, this is best treated as an interesting early signal.
Harvard’s Center on the Developing Child describes the back-and-forth exchanges between a child and a caring adult as “serve and return”, and explains that these responsive interactions help build and strengthen connections in the developing brain 22. Reading a letter aloud, pausing, and letting a child answer back is exactly that kind of exchange.
One of the richest lines of research here is on how parents and children talk about the past. Researchers call it reminiscing, and they describe some parents as more “elaborative”: they ask open questions, add detail, and build on what the child says. A review by Robyn Fivush, Catherine Haden and Elaine Reese linked this style to children’s developing memory, language and literacy, attachment, and understanding of self, others and minds 23.
This is not only correlation. In a longitudinal study, Reese and Rhiannon Newcombe trained mothers in elaborative reminiscing when their children were between one and a half and two and a half. Trained mothers did become more elaborative, and their children later gave richer accounts of past events 24.
Reminiscing also seems to connect to how children see themselves. In two New Zealand studies, children whose parents talked more about the causes and consequences of their negative emotions, and evaluated positive events with them, showed moderately more consistent self-concepts 25. Another study of 95 mother-child pairs found that the quality of mothers’ reminiscing, rather than the amount, predicted how specifically their preschoolers could recall personal memories 26.
Photos can help start those conversations. In an older experiment with 57 children aged three to six, children who were given relevant photographs remembered more correct details of an event ten days later than children who were not 27. A scrapbook or a Grow Book is, at its best, a prompt for exactly this kind of shared remembering: the value is in the talking, not just the keeping.
At Emory University, Marshall Duke and Robyn Fivush developed a short questionnaire called the “Do You Know?” scale, asking children things like how their parents met or where they grew up. In their research, knowing more family history was associated with better self-esteem, a stronger sense of control, better family functioning and fewer behaviour problems 28.
Fivush has been clear that the point is not the facts themselves. As she put it, it is the process of families sharing stories about their lives that matters 29. The questionnaire simply picks up on families who talk.
Children and teenagers who knew more of their family stories showed higher well-being on several measures in the Emory work, including self-esteem and social competence 29. These are correlations, and families who tell lots of stories probably differ in other ways too, but the pattern is consistent and the practice costs nothing.
Many of the oldest children’s traditions are about giving. It turns out that even very young children may find giving rewarding. In a small study published in 2012, toddlers under two looked happier when giving treats to a puppet than when receiving treats themselves, and happier still when they gave away treats from their own supply 30. The authors called for replication with larger samples 30.
Gratitude can be encouraged, too. In a week-long study of 101 parent-child pairs, parents who did more to encourage gratitude reported more gratitude from their children, both overall and from day to day 31. And in an experiment with 89 children and teenagers, writing a thank-you letter and delivering it in person led to more gratitude and positive mood among those who had started with lower positive mood, lasting to a two-month follow-up 32.
Adults, meanwhile, tend to underestimate how much a thank-you means to the person receiving it. In a set of experiments, people who wrote gratitude letters underestimated how surprised and pleased their recipients would be and overestimated how awkward they would feel 33. That study was with adults, but it is a gentle nudge to help children say thank you more often than feels necessary.
There is a lot of enthusiasm online for handwritten letters, and much of it goes further than the evidence. What we can say is narrower. In a small brain-imaging study, five-year-olds who practised printing letters by hand, rather than typing or tracing them, later showed activity in brain regions linked to reading when they looked at letters; the researchers suggested handwriting may help early reading development 34.
So a child writing their own wish list or thank-you note is getting some real practice. Beyond that, we have not found solid research showing that a handwritten keepsake, as opposed to any other kind, has particular effects on children, so we will not claim one. The more reliable benefits come from what a letter prompts: reading together, talking, and remembering 2023.
Families mark the year in different ways, and each tradition belongs first to the community that keeps it. Saint Nicholas, an early bishop of Myra remembered for his generosity and his love for children, is honoured on 6 December; according to legend, his secret gifts of gold landed in stockings and shoes left by the fire, which is where the custom of setting out shoes comes from 35. In Italy, La Befana, a kindly witch on a broomstick, brings sweets and small toys to children at Epiphany 36. Nowruz, the new year celebrated at the spring equinox across Iran, Central Asia, the Caucasus and beyond, is described by the United Nations as a festival of renewal that strengthens bonds within families and communities 37.
Across all of these, the research themes on this page recur: shared ritual, stories passed between generations, and giving. On Dreams, letters only ever come from folk figures, helpers and symbols, never from a deity or prophet, so that each family can hold its own beliefs in its own way.
None of this requires a perfect Pinterest moment. The evidence points, again and again, to ordinary things done together and talked about afterwards. If a letter, a sign on the doorstep or a page in a scrapbook helps your family do more of that, it is doing its job.
Most evidence says probably not. In a 2024 study, about a third of children felt some negative emotions on finding out, usually briefly, and participants did not report a drastic loss of trust in their parents 56. In a larger recall survey, 56 per cent said their trust was unaffected, while 30 per cent said it was 7.
The honest answer is that we do not know. A major 2013 review found the evidence insufficient to say pretend play causes gains in language, creativity or intelligence, though it is one of several healthy routes to development 11.
The American Academy of Pediatrics encourages shared reading from birth, and recommends print books and interactive reading over screens for young children 20.
Every study and article cited above, in order of first mention. Where a journal limits access, the link goes to its official record.