Nitpick: squashed bugs yield cochineal, not carmine.
Yeah, the worst thing about real Spartan birthday parties is that you always have to invite all 300 of them.
[Xerxes the Clown]: My balloon animals will be so numerous that they will darken the sky!
[Leonidas, age 6]: Then we shall play in the shade!
Back on-topic, I’m not sure why there is so much hatred towards Ms. Bazelon. She is admittedly a little precious, but that’s often the case with people who are trying to stem a tide. I for one appreciate her anti-consumerist stance. Those who suggest that she’s being hypocritical – and limiting Eli’s swag while rejoicing in her own – might want to come up with some evidence for that rather than just let their jaws flap.
Real Spartan birthday parties involve abandoning the kids on cold mountainsides overnight: if they survive, they get to play “Pin The Spear In The Helot” and “Stick A Fox Up Your Shirt”.
I agree; present-buying is out of control, or rather, it is substantially controlled by those agencies who have vested interests.
We’re a bit strapped for cash at the moment, so we decided that Christmas would be a simple affair last year; we agreed hard, mutual limits on spending for extended-family gifts, we told the kids that there would not be mountains of presents this time and explained that some of their presents might not be brand new, or might be home-made. We rationed out the gift-opening to spread it across three or four different times through the day.
-And you know what? - it was the most contented, calmest, happiest Christmasses we’ve had. Less really is more, sometimes.
Really, not true. As I mentioned up-thread, my mom planned birthdays like this for me when I was that age. I would say we were dirt-poor, but at that time all we could afford was second-hand dirt. 
No, my peers were not having hired entertainers and such, but a typical birthday party entailed getting a few new “real” toys, some nice clothes, and some dollar-store trinkets. To poor kids, these fairly modest material things were bright spots in a pretty bleak existence. A chance to believe that life really could be like what you saw on TV.
My point? This drama can be lived out at any income level. I think it’s about values, and how to teach kids about values at a pace they are ready to accept.
I don’t think her solution was right for the reasons already set out, deciding ome ids have to bring books while a “special” few “get” to bring presents, nope, that doesn’t seem right.
What is wrong with having a pre-birthday toy clearout and sending them to charity?
How about asking for “no gifts” and taking the kids to a fun activity instead (if she wanted to be really stingy asking the other parents to pay for their own kids’ admission)?
What’s wrong with asking that all gifts be under $10?
Perhaps asking for books, with the understanding that each book is donated to charity once it is read?
Maybe let him keep 5 presents that he really likes, and send the rest to charity?
Maybe only let him open one present every week?
Or, just do the sane and sensible thing and let the kid have a party just for his close friends and then everyone is happy. Ok, so some kids are less popular, but that just means that the poor things get invited to parties out of obligation and pity and nobody will play with them anyway.
One of my daughter’s friends had a birthday this weekend. The mom stuck a note inside the card stating that her daughter is saving for when she turns 8 and is allowed to get a dog. If we wanted to contribute to that fund, great. If not, anything would be fine. The mom is a fellow ebayer and I paypaled her a few bucks. Easy as pie birthday present!
I wish there were a way to do a party invite with a " instead of getting a present for the birthday child’ the parents ask for $5 total from each child to to the purchase of What He/She really wanted but is too Big/Expensive for a singular gift." (Yanno, like a new game or controller or doll house…) This way the parents of the guests don’t have to run out and buy something ( which always fills a parent with dread.) and the Birthday Boy parent don’t have to be filled with dread at the crap palooza that is about to flood the house, again.
In my world, this would be awesome. Unfortunately, I am the only resident who lives there.
Maybe I could
shit, my parents were missionaries. I didn’t volunteer to be the preacher’s kid, nor did I volunteer to be a righteous example in the community, nor did I…well you get the picture. It’s amazing how little sex and drugs and rock n roll I did to over compensate.
If you’re gonna get on your parental high horse (I’ve got 3 bambinas), let your kids decide if they wanna give a present to habitate for humanity, or go wild with 3 friends in an orgy of cake, ice cream and videos. It’s your kids birthday, let 'em have it. You don’t like the crass commercialism, well there are techniques (it’s called giving some choices) you can use.
[monty python]silly bundt [/monty python]
Answering only for myself (as I’m one of the quoted), I have to take great offense at your remark at the same time defending my own.
This woman is being mean, petty, calculating, and dumb. In the teasing word of this thread, “a bundt”. She put her own agenda ahead of the well-being of her son, and furthermore, gave in to a screaming brat to do so, never a good parenting strategy!
That doesn’t mean I don’t agree with her less-consumerism stance. I do, probably more than she does. But I think there was a not mean, not petty, less calculating and smarter way to go about obtaining her goal without violating at least three basic rules of ettiquette: namely, invite less people to the party. Or have him throw out 25 old toys, or donate 30 toys to a shelter or hospital. There were at least three options which would have been both compromises and teaching experiences, and would not have earned her the new moniker.
This woman is a ninny. She has every right to expect her child to live a less “stuff” filled life, but in my opinion she has two options: either graciously accept whatever gifts are brought to the party and dispose of them later, or ask that NO GIFTS be given to her child. Any attempt at dictating who should bring what, or that anyone bring anything at all, is so beyond tacky that she should have been bitch-slapped by someone the first time she brought up the book swap.
I would have bought the kid a real live pony.
So if she doesn’t throw a birthday party for 25, she’ll be “talked about”?
Seems like she’d be “talked about” more for not having fun parties. “Eli’s parties are boring. There’s no clowns and balloons. All Eli’s mom serves are vegetables. She won’t let anybody bring presents. We have to bring books!”
You know what Oscar Wilde said. ‘The only thing worse than being talked about… is being talked about by six-year-olds.’
I’m still trying to figure out what is so wrong with presents, toys and other fun stuff. Why this guilt about having ‘stuff’? Let’s all feel guilty for havng stuff. Let’s expend our energy on keeping stuff out of our house. Her whole premise just begs the question!
I’m sorry, but TV isn’t bad. Candy isn’t bad. Video games aren’t bad. The internet isn’t bad. Toys aren’t bad. Has anyone bothered to establish any of these points before they go off banning them?
She seems to allow all of those things in small doses (which is probably a good idea). It’s her irritating way of asking for gifts at all that pisses me off.
The whole thing just smacks of the mom acting out her issues on her kid, which is something that really gets my hackles up. You have to raise your child with certain values, and every parent has to make their own decisions about what’s appropriate for their child and what’s not. But this is a matter of turning a kid’s birthday party into a social statement, which is just not appropriate. That’s not what birthday parties are for. It is smug and self-righteous to make a great show of some social ideal at your child’s birthday party and particularly by denying something to your child.
Further, as has been suggested, she clearly lives in a particularly materialistic milieu. This is not the norm in any community I’ve lived in, and I suspect my experience is not exceptional. One of the consequences of living in an affluent suburb and owning a house worth $750,000 in a nice neighborhood is that the neighbors are going to be driving Beemers and paying ridiculous amounts to bring clowns to entertain their child’s 25 closest friends. Not only could she easily hold a smaller birthday party (you’re worried about being “talked about” if you don’t? Christ, how fucking bourgeois can you be?)
If she chooses to live in a materialistic wasteland - and contrary to even sven’s suggestion, it’s clear that she has - and she chooses to make a social statement with her kid’s birthday, and she chooses not to do the party the easy, sane way because it would mean her being talked about - well, that’s not something I think parents should do. A big part of being a parent is putting the child’s needs first. That means sacrificing the chance to make certain social statements. You don’t get to get tossed in jail for protesting if you have kids. You don’t get to decide to live in a VW bus and make your living selling handicrafts at Grateful Dead concerts if you have kids. And I don’t think you get to turn your child’s occasions into social commentary to other parents, either. You especially don’t get to decide that giving your child a shitty birthday party is better than inviting fewer children and getting “talked about”. What the fuck is her problem? She’s willing to create this grotesquely tacky display of asceticism and deny her kid the chance to have a normal birthday party just because she can’t stomach inviting eight kids and then getting “talked about”!
Christ is she ever putting herself before her kids. I got no complaints about her feelings about materialism, and I can easily understand the desire not to have her house filled with more unneeded toys. But using your child to make a display of asceticism for your bourgeois, Lexis-driving neighbors is a shitty thing to do. Her obsession with “materialism” and the lengths she goes to avoid it bring to mind the Buddha’s teachings about asceticism as ultimately materialistic.
I just don’t like parents acting out their particular pet issues on their children. That’s never a good thing, and her kid is gonna suffer for it.
Neither.
She is not being reasonable, because reasonable people don’t have 25 people at a five year old’s birthday party and then complain about the amount of plastic. One follows the other.
She is not being self-righteous because she has a point - oh, how I wish there were more gifts we could give that didn’t involve mounds of plastic. Little kids don’t “get” gift certificates - they aren’t fun to open. We like to give consumables around our house - markers and crayons and construction paper and glue and the foam stuff and scissors (which are like consumables in that they get lost). And we have gotten a few really cool things. But - for the most part - we’ve gotten a lot of crap.
There is nothing inherently wrong with a book swap instead of presents. The problem with it was the snooty way she did it. Wouldn’t it have been more fun if the kids had actually had a book swap where they piled the books up and shared whichever old bookd they wanted to? They ould compare books and point out their favorites. Some kids actually do see books as great presents.
Okay, I’ve thought about this a bit more, and I do apologize to participants in this thread. I was mis-interpreting anger at the mom’s actions (which I don’t agree with, either) with anger at her ideals (which I share).
Um, that is, I share her ideals, not anger at them. Sheesh. I proofread and everything.