Why Children’s Birthday Parties Are the Most Dreaded Events of the Year
for Many Mothers
Every year, your child has a birthday. When they are small, this is a wonderful occasion, where you can spoil them and have friends and family – people you actually like – over for a party that is ostensibly about the child, but is really just a normal get together with normal food and drinks and normal conversations, because your child has become over stimulated and crashed early in the day. Then, however, you find yourself with a school age child, and birthday parties change. You either have to spend an afternoon in either a literal or metaphorical zoo, eating food which will all for some reason be bright yellow, and serving as the referee in a wide range of different fights, or worse, you have to open up your home to an entire class of monsters on a sugar high.
Other People’s Kids Are Not Like Your Kids
Are you one of those people who loves their own kids, but isn’t really a fan of kids in general? There is no reason to feel guilty – after all, other people’s kids are not like your kids, and this is never more evident than at a party you’ve thrown for your child. Surely your own little prince or princess isn’t this noisy, messy and dramatic when they go to other people’s houses, or out in public?
Other People's #Kids Are Not Like Your Kids #parentingClick To TweetKid Politics
When kids are young and haven’t really formed cliques yet, you’ll get the whole spectrum of craziness as their whole class gets invited to their party, from the shy kid who is scared of everything and will only eat bread through to the boisterous one who you can’t work out whether he will grow up to be a comedy actor or a violent criminal. You can either stay and try and retain order over this mini-society whose social structures you have no understanding of other than that nobody will talk to Katie for some reason, or you can hide somewhere with wine and let the whole thing devolve into basically Lord of the Flies.
Competition
You dread the annual birthday party, and you imagine most other moms feel the same. However, as you drop your child off at the birthday party of another kid in their class, you notice that their mom has put a level of effort into it that most people reserve for their own wedding. There’s a theme, and the whole house is decorated. Their child looks like royalty as they magnanimously survey the magical occasion that has been thrown in their honor – and the good kind of royalty like Prince William, not the bad kind like Joffrey from Game of Thrones. They have bothered to rent carnival games, and there is a banquet of healthy yet kid-friendly food, and gift bags for attendees that look like something you might get if you were invited to the Oscars. Your child is excited, then jealous, and then excited again because after all, it’ll be their birthday soon, and obviously their party will be
just as wonderful…
The noise, the drama, and the cloying sense of inadequacy are just some of the reasons why children’s birthday parties are among the worst events of the year – unless of course, you are the magical, fun Earth mother who actually loves throwing these things and making them special. In which case, odds are, the parents of your child’s classmates really wish you’d stop making them look bad!
As a #parent, have you dreaded going to kids #birthday parties? #parentingClick To TweetDisclosure: This article is written by or on behalf of our Sponsor and not by The My Girly Parts Team
