In reading this Slate article the author’s sense of morally pure self satisfaction just suffuses the article. Why deny a 6 year old child a normal birthday in place of a “book swap”, and then cook up some manipulative scheme to limit what this friends can give?
Is she being reasonable or not?
Unreasonable. She is acting self righteous, and is using her kid to “make a statement” against his / her wishes. She also is expecting the kid to understand something that is not only inappropriate for the child’s age and maturity level, but is also just wrong. Or, maybe she is just a selfish cheapskate trying to justify it.
Well, I don’t know. I mean, she’s quite right that in some areas birthday parties have gotten completely out of control, and 25 presents is ridiculous. Because it’s not like they’d be small presents; they’d be at least medium-sized ($10+). That’s a heck of a lot of presents, and she’s right that it gets too overwhelming. None of that is what I would consider a ‘normal’ birthday party. ‘Normal’ is having 6-8 friends over for little games and cake, maybe pizza too, and a family BBQ on Sunday afternoon.
She does come off as pretty self-satisfied about it all, and I can’t say I’m happy about her forcing everyone to conform to her guidelines about the party and presents. She could probably have been more relaxed than she was.
But when you’re a parent these days, you find yourself in these dilemmas a lot; the society around us has gone completely insane in some ways and most parents spend a lot of time trying to keep their own society out of their homes. It demands a certain amount of line-drawing in the sand just to keep your family sane. When the rest of your town thinks that huge parties with 30 presents and a hired entertainer is ‘normal,’ what do you do? I wouldn’t want to go along with it either.
More in a bit…
I’m trying to imagine being the parent that gets this little note from her child:
“Your son is invited to my son’s birthday party. We have modified the Book Swap Party just slightly this year, though-five lucky children get to buy presents for my child, and your child is one of them!”
I’m also trying to imagine how her poor kid must feel when he goes to his friend’s birthday parties and has to bring a present. Do the other kids tease him about his situation?
Summation of some of the article:
“We’re typically very moderately, maybe even generous, parents. We let our kids watch TV only on the weekends and Junk Food (!) is only for a special treat. But when it comes to a birthday, we’re completely not our normal altruistic selves toward our spawn and we take a hard line that books will turn them into angels instead of materialistic hellions. We’re so better parents than you.”
Yeah, it was very smugly delivered and full of self-denial. Lady, you’re a (this is not the Pit and I can’t call her something that rhymes with bundt) with how superior you think you’re raising your kid.
However, if it wasn’t for the
that betrays she’s really not nearly as even handed as she wants to believe, I’d kinda agree with her. That is, if she had been saying only “birthdays shouldn’t be a glut at the fount of materialism, especially when your kid’s birthday is two weeks after Chrismuhannukwanzakkuh, and especially when you’re obligated by the kid’s peer group norm to invite the entire class of 25 kids” I’d agree.
I like books. Hell, I LURVE with little hearts and smiley faces in the margins books. But I’d feel like a book swap is a pretty lame and manipulative birthday if I was a kid. Her compromise that she reached with the child (though I loathe the thought of a full grown adult compromising with a five year old) was ultimately a pretty decent one. But she’s still definitely a big ol’ bundt.
I don’t think she’s being unreasonable. I think she’s dealing with a really difficult situation and trying to find the best solution.
Our culture trains us almost from birth to be consumers. It’s not even the having that brings us joy, it’s the getting, the obtaining. And nothing sets this attitude in stpone like the idea that a “happy” occasion is one in which you get and get and get in an orgy of getting. I mean, 25 gifts? Goody bags? I think the emerging “goody bags” custom almost bugs me more–it’s not a fun party if everyone doesn’t get something?
I think that this is a pretty natural human response–we like to get things. I like to get things. But it’s also a natural human response to hit someone when they make you angry, and to laugh when you see someone you dislike get hurt. Civilization is suppossed to train these natural human responses out of us, not help us wallow in them. This isn’t just being moralistic: it’s the difference between bieng a person who can be happy no matter what, and so has a lot more choices in life, and being a person that can only be happy so long as they are in a position to aquire, which limits your options signifigantly and makes you much more vunrable to life.
Would I mandate a book swap? Probably not, because I wouldn’t want books to seem like a punishment. But I can see, as a measure against the idea that birthdays are an orgy of consumption, suggest “no gifts” at all from friends. Six is old enough to begin to learn to appriciate that there is a downside to owning stuff as well as a good side.
I’m with Eli the kid on this one. The mother is being more than self-righteous; she’s being domineering and shrewish, and she’s blaming Eli for his perfectly normal wish to have an ordinary birthday party.
If she doesn’t want to give him birthday parties, she should just lay her foot down and take responsibility, but no, she has to paint Eli as “the brat.” (And what kind of wench calls her own child a “brat” in an online article? :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: )
It would be different if they were Jehovah’s Witnesses and this were due to religious reasons, but this birthday stigma is all in her head. I find myself wondering whether Paul her husband should start withholding sex to find out just how much she loves that Spartan lifestyle.
Twenty five gifts plus “goodie bags” for all the guests is an “ordinary” birthday party? Not in my family. Maybe a couple of good friends would come over for dinner and cake afterwards. Birthday boy/girl got to pick both the dinner and the cake. There may or may not have been presents involved at all.
However, if it is such an overwhelming social trend to invite everyone in the class over nad to allow them to buy lavish gifts, after thinking about it a bit I think I would let the kid have the normal gifts, but in prepartion for it, I’d insist that he get rid of 25 comperalbe toys that he’d outgrown/never used, and the way I would explain it is that “having too much stuff isn’t good for a person. It’s more to worry about and distracts you from the things that really matter, like family and friends”. Which is exactly what my mother (who is no nutso granola munching commie, but a staunch Catholic professional) told me whenever I wanted to know why our Christmases were not as lavish as the people around us. I understood, gradually, and it certainly sisn’t warp me.
I think it would be cool to do a “toy swap”. Have all the kids bring a toy from their collection. The birthday boy gets to have a “new” toy but no one has dished out extra money, everyone gets something, and the kids get the experience of sharing.
I don’t blame a kindegartener for being upset by another book swap. I love books, but it sounds boring and schoolish.
The compromise seems too socially complicated as well. I remember going to some of my classmate’s birthday parties and not bringing any gifts because they weren’t really close friends. It would have been ballsy for the host to call my parents with a gift request.
Besides the toy swap idea, the parents could have simply requested that presents be small, less than $10. A kindegartener’s not going to know the difference between a $20 action figure from one that costs $10.
What she said.
This lady is definitely a “bundt”. If she feels she can go so far ouside the “peer group norm” as to replace a birthday party with gifts with a book swap, why can’t she go outside the “peer group norm” and simply invite a reasonably small number of guests?
How come she can buck one social trend and not another?
The sanity rule for parents is age +1. IOW, if you’re 6-you get 7 kids at your party. Very doable, and enjoyable. There is no problem with parties, IF parents will get ahold of themselves and not make it about THEM.
The problem is with the size of the party–why doesn’t she break rank and just not invite 25 kids to this party? 1st or 2nd grade is about the time when parties start morphing into “'activities that my friends and I want to do” instead of “now, let’s all watch the funny man make animals out of balloons.”
I give her a zero on creativity and the smug tone is obnoxious.
Does anyone else see Eli at age 35, calling his Mom and telling her that he and his wife will never do book swaps for Eli Jr’s birthday? Or Eli growing up and hating books and torching libraries? (well, maybe not that) 
There is nothing wrong with birthday parties–it is up to the parents to NOT go along with conspicous consumption by keeping up the the socially insecure Jones’s.
To make a party a statement (and use your kid) like this is wrong–she would have been better served (as would Eli) to have cut the guest list, found an outing that was age appropriate and then had cake and ice cream for all.
I dont’ like the two tiered guest thing–and as a kid at this party, I would have been very confused as to why I didn’t have to bring a gift or why I did. It cannot help but look like those 5 are special in some way.
Wow. I ended up with a completely different take on this than most of you.
I do think the mom who wrote the article was a bit self-righteous and tiresome, but I don’t have any problem with her deciding on a book swap theme for her kid’s birthday parties. Sounds like a great idea to me.
Where I really differ with her was in her approach to Eli’s snotty little tantrum. If my kid had said something like that (“I don’t want a book swap! I want presents!”) my response would have been: “Look. In our family we have book swap birthday parties. If you don’t want a book swap party, that’s fine: we’ll just skip your birthday party this year. There’s no rule that says you have to have a birthday party every year. If you don’t want the kind of birthday party I give, then we’ll just have a birthday dinner with only our family and a cake afterwards. It’s up to you.” But what do I know – my kid’s only had a handful of birthday parties their whole growing up. We sure didn’t have one every single year, and they sure as shit weren’t 25 guest extravaganzas.
But the wrongest thing of all was ‘inviting’ some guests to bring a gift – rude, rude, RUDE. Gifts are never as entitlement or a requirement and they should never be requested. And requesting gifts from some guests and not others? Even ruder. Miss Manners would smack the bejeezus out of her.
How will the kids who don’t have to buy gifts feel when they see those who did?
I know when we did birthday parties when I was little, mostly you’d invite all the girls from your class, or all the boys, or whatever. But even when it was a big group of us, we still didn’t go in for big and flashy. We played silly games, our goodybags were little trinkets from the dollar store, and we got to eat cake. Maybe we’d have a few dollar store prizes (I still have the little jewelry basket I got at one, believe it or not), but that’s it.
But not everyone in our classes even HAD birthday parties. I never did, except for a big family party with all my aunts and uncles and cousins. Or I’d have maybe a couple friends over and that was it.
Book “swap” sounds nice, but then in her suggestions:
Read the last one. Shoo them out the door so they can’t at least trade with each other. (Which, I would assume, is the point of a “book swap.”)
All she’s gonna do is make her kid into a materialist because he’ll rebel against being forced to be charitable, and he’ll probably end up hating books as well.
I think I’m reading a different article than you.
I read an article about an idealist mother confronting the fact that her kid is now a part of greater society, and she can’t transfer her ideals to him. When your kid is 3 or 4, she doesn’t know what a “birthday party” looks like and you can teach them to be happy simply by being around their loved ones and having a special meal. But as they get older they get exposed to more influences, and no matter what little utopia you may have set up in your own home, the kid is going to be like his friends and like the people on TV. It’s a hard time for a parent, and it only gets harder as you kid takes up different values, decides their own life path, etc. I think this article is about that first little painful realization that the utopian days of “just you and me kid” are coming to an end.
Personally, I don’t she is being unreasonable for being down on presents. She probably lives in a small home in an urban area. I know if someone brought 25 presents in to my house (and as a writer, a lot of the invitees are probably the children of important social contacts) I’d be tripping over them every day.
There is no reason for a kid to have more toys than they can play with. There is no need for them to ever “expect” any presents. I have an adult friend who becomes whiney and sulky because nobody buys him much in the way of presents for his, like, 25th birthday. He never learned that birthdays are more about enjoying the company of your friends and family than getting what you want (and he could very well afford anything he wants, he just feels cheated without ‘presents’) There’s no way I’d want to send my kid down that road.
What a biznatch! It’s already bad enough the kid has a January birthday, which encourages everyone to forget it in the first place, not to mention the weather sucks so he’ll never get the fun zoo/swim/outing party a kid born in more clement weather does–no, poor little Eli gets to have annoying self-righteous-mom with her stupid “book swaps.” Oh, and yeah, let’s not forget the super elect who get to buy a present AND a book… :rolleyes: Invite a smaller number of kids, get pizza and a movie or video game for them to play and let the poor kid have his plastic toy/sugar overload day. What–it’s gonna kill her if he has a few more toys she didn’t pick out of the “Approved For Kids Of Annoying Self Righteous Moms” catalog, guaranteed no fun allowed?
I vote we all chip in and send her a lovely set of bundt pans… she’ll never get the point, but then again that’s pretty clearly her complete world view anyway… :wally
Well this year we are doing something kinda similar for Charlie’s birthday. He has a choice of either picking a friend to go do something cool (ex. amusment park) with him all day and spend the night. OR, he can have a big party with lots of friends and instead of presents ask for books and school supplies to be donated to the Mustard Seed School (school for homeless kids at a local shelter).
Last time he had a big party, afterward even he was like, “What am I going to do with all this stuff?” Much of it he didn’t really even want because kids don’t always know what other kids like. We talked about a solution and this is what we came up with. Last year he picked to do something with one friend. This year he’s talking about the big party/donation thing. Whatever he chooses is fine with me.
i’m with manda jo, give away an equal amount of toys for the ones incoming. from what i’ve seen on “clean sweep” and other org. shows, they keep everything and have a toy store instead of a house.
if you end up with 20 plus toys dole them out 2 or 3 a month. that way the toys will last all year. you get a new thing to play with every month and it is easier to purge the old toys.
i’m betting the kids who’s birthdays are in “off school” times don’t have as big a party.
i could see that out of the 20+ kids, she could ask the 5 closest to him to go with a toy. he can’t be best buds with everyone in his class.
christian kids have a failsafe that others do not. you can always kill any argument with, “jesus got 3 presents, you get 3”. bit difficult to get around that.
the “no party, one year” party nazi responce is also a good one.
My I ask-is bundt supposed to be a euphemism for the C-word?
even sven, I understand her concern, but the way she’s going about it is totally unreasonable and she’s only going to make her son even more materialistic out of rebellion.
And choosing five kids to “assign” to bring presents? How crass is that?
Yes, maybe Eli is acting like a brat. Well, then, no birthday party at all. But I don’t blame him for asking for something different than a book swap. It’s not the amount of toys you have that makes you into a spoiled brat. It’s the attitudes and values you teach your kids that counts.
The school only requires she invite every kid in class if she sends the invitations through the child’s teacher. The general rule is to invite everyone, or all the boys, or all the girls. Having sent invites through the teacher myself on occasion, I know that sending 25 invites will net about 6-8 attendees, particularly when the BD falls around a major holiday. She’s seriously deluded if she thinks the boy is so popular that evey kid in his class will attend (especially with a hitory of book swap parties).
She can certainly mail invitations - addresses, stamps and all- to the 5 or so kids who are her child’s closer friends. I guess this didn’t occur to her.
I read that article a couple of days ago and found it annoying. So many parents worry to the point of obsessing about the minute details of their kids lives. The world won’t stop rotating if little Johnny eats too many cookies or not enough carrot sticks this particular week. In the big picture, how many is too many plastic action figures (3, 30?) if the kid plays with and enjoys them. And how, exactly, will they keep him out of the good college she’s planning on having him attend?!
I call these moms ‘helicopter moms’ because they hover over their kids managing and/or manipulating every decision the kids make. I try to remember that I’m attempting not just to raise kids, but to ultimately raise a functional happy adult. Part of that requires them be allowed to make decisions… and mistakes.
So the kid wants a culturally ‘normal’ BD party. Oh the humanity! :rolleyes: I guess he’s just nermal, afterall.
A) The author scores 10 on the smug-o-meter. Very annoying
B) I totally feel the “too many presents” pain
My kids have a wonderful, loving, adored grandmother who happens to have shopping as a hobby. They get too many toys just from her, never mind the more restrained but still loving and generous other grandparents, aunts, uncles, and close family friends.
My older kid’s birthday’s in MARCH and it still seems too close to the Christmas explosion of [plastic crap] presents.
Soooo, my kids have “no gifts” parties. We invite a lot of people because we know a lot of people. We tend to invite the whole class because of our (we the parents’) memories of parties we weren’t invited to.
But the invitations always say “no gifts”, not “no gifts because we smugly and superiorly reject the spiritually barren materialist consumer wasteland that is our “culture””
But “please no gifts, their grandparents go crazy with the toys and we are not very organized or tidy people and we can’t handle it”
Usually the wording is fairly similar to that last bit. Last year my older son turned 6. Before that I didn’t even discuss the “no gifts” thing with him, because I knew he wouldn’t notice. At the Christmas extravaganza that is my MIL’s he would always get distracted and never finish opening presents.
Last year he’d cottoned on that other kids got presents at their parties so I had a discussion about it, how he WOULD be getting gifts, from us and grandparents and other family members, but there just wouldn’t be time at the party for gifts and he got it. Not sure what I would’ve done if he didn’t get it.
But the author’s “Five special chosen children may have the privilege of giving my son a present” solution is plain bizarre.