Tough Sledding for Santa Claus : Thousand Oaks: St. Nick, alias Steve Porter, is learning how to handle adults whose children want no part of the man in the red suit.

You could fill a book with the things they never teach you at Santa Claus school, Steve Porter says. Such as how to handle rejection.

Or more precisely, how to handle parents whose children want no part of a Santa Claus photo opportunity.

“It’s the biggest problem I have with parents,” said Porter, who plays Santa Claus at The Oaks Mall in Thousand Oaks. “I despise these people who force a child who’s terrified of Santa to sit up on his lap and then say, ‘Smile.’ ”

Of the dozens of preschool-age children who toddled up to Santa’s throne Thursday morning, at least half screamed in protest, despite Porter’s kindly reassurances and the threats, bribes and assorted enticements of camera-toting parents.

“I don’t think they know who Santa is,” said Suzan Benson of Simi Valley, as son Michael and nephew Tyler Steele, both 1 year old, wailed in unison while struggling to escape Santa’s arms. “They wonder, ‘Who is this strange man?’ ”

“Tyler was fine until Michael started crying,” said Tyler’s mother, Lisa Steele.

For Grace Brown, a clerk at the Culpeppers Popcorn counter a few yards away, it was a familiar scene of laughter and lamentation.

“We tell our kids not to talk to strangers, then we drag them to see Santa,” Brown said. “I’ve heard parents threaten kids and bribe them. ‘We’ll go get a toy if you’re good.’

“It’s frustrating for parents.” Brown said. “They get the kids all dolled up and then they don’t want to sit on Santa’s lap.

“But some of them really look forward to it.”

For most parents, recording their child’s encounter with Santa is at least as important as the visit itself. Robin Nicastro, Santa’s photographer at The Oaks, has a collection of stuffed animals, bells and funny faces designed to stop tears long enough for a quick photo.

“Some kids you can snap out of it,” Nicastro said. “But some parents pressure their kids.”

And sometimes there’s no telling what will happen.

“He was OK until he got up there,” said Jami Swayze, whose 1-year-old son Jesse--actor Patrick Swayze’s nephew--sobbed on cue the minute he was placed in Santa’s arms.

“These kids wait in line and watch the other kids cry and think that’s what they’re supposed to do,” Swayze added.

Echoing the comments of several parents, Swayze said she dared not arrive home from the mall without photographs, no matter how Jesse felt about it.

“His grandparents said that if I didn’t get them, they were going to bring him down,” said Swayze, who bought the top-of-the-line, six-photo package for $19.95.

The reluctance of some children to sit in Santa’s lap is one of many surprises that Porter has entered in a journal--”The Santa Claus Chronicles”--since he attended a two-day Santa school and started at the mall the day after Thanksgiving.

A novice St. Nick, the 35-year-old Porter says he never knew how hard it could be to ho-ho-ho all day in a hot costume and scratchy beard.

“The first thing Santa has to do is jet to the bathroom,” he said as he doffed his red suit at the start of a 30-minute lunch break. Then he squeezed in a couple of cigarettes in a back room of the mall before fortifying himself for the afternoon crowd--an older, more skeptical bunch--with a chicken sandwich.

“Some kids challenge me,” he said. “They say, ‘You’re not really Santa Claus.’ I tell them that Santa needs lots of helpers.”

The No. 1 rule for Santa Claus is not to make promises, Porter said. “I never promise anything, even if the parent says it’s OK.”

So what do kids want this year?

“For boys, anything to do with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,” Porter said. “For girls, it’s Barbie. I’ve had 10,000 requests for Barbie this, Barbie that.”

Then there was the 47-year-old woman who climbed on Santa’s lap and announced that she wanted Santa for Christmas. “She wanted to know when I got off work,” said Porter, a divorced Newbury Park resident with two children of his own.

Despite his encounters with pushy parents and tearful children, Porter said the $7-an-hour job has gotten him into the Christmas spirit as never before.

“In the past, I’ve been burned out at Christmas,” he said. “This year, I expect it to be the best Christmas ever.”