You make me happy
I am so glad I have my online journal friends to talk about parenting with. I have a lot of friends in person, but many of them do not share my ideas about parenting/life/the universe. That’s ok. We can still be friends. As much as I love all of you, it’s hard for us to babysit/prepare emergency meals/carpool with each other when we are scattered around the globe. I couldn’t live without your intelltual stimulation, though.
Example: birthday parties.
Give me a mother truckin’ break on the damned birthday parties.
I may be a liberal, mamby-pamby, love everyone, tolerate everyone, be nice and inclusive and kind type of person, but I friggin’ HATE whole class birthday parties.
I’m not saying a child should have a party and be able to invite all the kids but one. That would be cruel. I’m saying, why the flying effity-eff does the majority of the class need to come to the party?
This is a real concern for some of my friends. Some schools have as many as 25 kids in a class, and a birthday party for that many kids (plus non-classmate friends and siblings) gets hella expensive, hella fast. The majority of these parties are held at bouncy places, pottery studios, children’s gyms, etc. Most people simply don’t have the room in their townhouses to host 30+ kidsd. And who would want to? Imagine the mess you’d have to clean up.
So I hear my friends groaning and crying and griping over this and I can’t figure it out. JUST DON’T DO IT. I don’t. I refuse. And I don’t feel one iota of guilt about it. They seem to think there is a rule that you MUST invite all these kids to a party, but there isn’t. There’s a rule that you can’t pass out invitations at school unless you invite the whole class. I think that’s reasonable. There are other ways to get an invitation to a child.
Yes, I moan and groan about the birthday party expectations, but that’s mainly because I am mother to a complete party animal who wants to invite random strangers to his party. My rule is that you can only invite people that you A) like and B) know their name. So far our parties have been quite manageable. We’ve topped out at 12 kids, which was just about perfect. I have no plans to start inviting kids he doesn’t even like. Basically he can invite a few from MOMS Club, a few from personal friends, a few from the neighborhood and a couple from his class. Some of those overlap.
He has been invited to NINE parties over the next four weeks. I’m accepting 4 of the invitations. I RSVPed no to the other five and one lady started giving me lip! I was really nice about it “Hi, this is Erik’s mom. Thanks so much for the invitation, Erik would love to attend but we have other plans that day.” Her response was unreal “Erik won’t come? Why not? What are your plans? Change your plans!” Ummmmm. No thanks, lady. Our kids may be in the same class, but as far as I understand they don’t even like each other.
Honestly, Erik would go to every single party but I don’t have the time to drive him all over the country or the money to buy that many gifts in the span of a month.
I’m so glad I have my online friends to keep me grounded about things like this. So many of you have the same feelings and don’t get all into the keeping up with the Jones’ like my real life friends tend to do.
I love living where we live. There is a ton of family friendly things to do, tons of really nice parks, lots of classes, zoos, pumpkin patches, etc. But it is also a very snooty area with a lot of upper middle class people or people wanting to be upper middle class. I just do not give two shits about keeping up with the Jones’ and it is nice to have friends who also understand that living a life should be about making your immediate family happy and doing what is best for the immediate family, not living a life to look good for outsiders.
Jennifer said,
May 18, 2012 @ 8:40 am
Peter’s school is sort of the opposite, and he is not a social butterfly. They do allow invites at school which doesnt bother me. Peter and I have a lot of conversations about ‘just because you didnt get invited to X doesn’t mean they don’t like you, or just because they don’t come to your party doesn’t mean they don’t like you’ – I really try to put it in perspective that it is NOT about him, or that someone hates him etc, but it could be there are other plans, or they could only invite 6 people, or they dont have a party at all, whatever the case may be. We had Peter’s 7th birthday party at McDonalds (which is the ONLY time i’m doing that, ugh it was .. ok … but … ugh. We were in California the week before so it was more necessity than like) and I did allow Peter to invite whoever he wanted … but once again not a social butterfly so it was a fairly small list overall. I would find it CRAZY to be invited to every flip-flaming party out there, yikes! that sucks. And I’d never ever give anyone any grief about not coming to my kids party, seriously I’d be like yes one less yay.
You want to know my biggest birthday party gripe? This is totally an aside to your conversation. There is a kid in our neighborhood that Peter has been invited to his birthday parties now for 3 years (he is just a pinch older than your Erik, born at the end of September). So I’ve invited this kid now for 3 years running to Peter’s parties. Despite the fact that Peter comes every year, and brings a gift, they NEVER come to Peter’s party. Once again, the chat I have with Peter is it doesn’t mean he doesnt like you blah blah blah .. but inside it really kind of pisses me off that they dont even make an effort … but by god we are invited to his party every year. The kid isn’t one of my favorite kids, but still dang you could make an effort or pretend a bit that you care. But thats just my own mama gripe. 🙂
Good luck with all the birthday parties! Where we get a lot of parties is in the family – Peter has cousins around his age we end up going to parties. And a couple good friends too.
Antropologa said,
May 18, 2012 @ 1:10 pm
Hear, hear!
Margie said,
May 22, 2012 @ 11:58 am
You make me happy, too!
But honestly, I’m having this issue with Fae. She’s never really had a “friend” party, because her birthday is in the summer. But one night at her riding lesson, her instructor mentioned to us that she was now having birthday parties at the stable. Fae heard us, and now she’s all about that. I called the school, and asked if there was a way around the invite the whole class thing. She said the PTO put together a roster of parent’s names and addresses, and if she can get her hands on one, she will send it home with Fae (remember we didn’t start out the year here). Now I can mail the invites to the homes of the students. Weird thing is, the instructor won’t work with me to pin down a date. It seems Fae’s birthday is around a busy time for horse shows and stuff. All Fae talks about is her “horse-y” party, and I don’t know if it’s going to happen!