How bad of a mother am I if I don't do this?

It seems to be the tradition these days for kids to bring cupcakes or goody bags to school on their birthdays. My son’s birthday (his 8th) is tomorrow, and I’m getting ready to buck the trend, because I frankly can’t afford it. I think that’s a legitimate position which I could easily defend; my question is, what effect do you think this will have on my son if he’s the only kid who doesn’t bring something for everyone else on his birthday? Would you say this is an important thing?

By the way, if I can do this without breaking the bank, I intend to, but it won’t measure up to the goody bags passed out by that other kid last week. :frowning:

Someone should have a talk with the teacher.

In the meantime – go to the dollar store, get something dumb and plentiful, and call it good enough. Hopefully the 8-year-olds aren’t reading price tags quite yet.

What twickster said…heck, most kids like the cheapest candy best, anyway…

Oops, hit “submit” too soon. I just wanted to say that we faced a similar situation a few months ago…we were dead broke until payday due to the mortgage and it was our turn to bring the snack to my son’s class, so we got a big bag of Smarties at the drugstore for a couple of bucks we managed to scrape together, then put them in separate little baggies along with some Chex Mix we already had.

We actually got compliments on those little snack bags! :slight_smile:

Good Luck!

While I think it’s a nice idea for kids to bring cookies or treats on their birthday, I really don’t like the idea of goodie bags.

You can get a cookies or a batch of cups for <$5 for the whole class. Kids really don’t care as long as it’s sweet and yummy.

But to try to put a goodie bag together for 25+ kids is running into >$20 and that’s just wrong. When did people start doing this? Kids don’t need to be distracted by toys or little gifts during the school day. It’s just one more thing for parents to “one up” over.

Fortunately, Charlie’s school limits birthday celebrations to treats like cupcakes, and not bags of stuff.

If I were you, I’d make some cookies and send them with your son. It’s cheap and I think the kids will like it more than whatever trinkets they got last week (which are probably broken at the bottom of the toybox anyway. :wink: Whatever you decide, you are not a bad mom.

What??? Since when was it the birthday kid’s responsibility to feed the class? Isn’t it supposed to be the other way around?

When I was young the birthday kid got embarrassed & humiliated by the teacher making everyone else sing happy birthday, and that was pretty much it.

I guess I’m lucky. I’m a summer baby, so my birthday was never an issue during the school year.

I don’t think it’s that big a deal, but based on my own kids, I think it will be important to your son that he take in something. Again, based on my kids (and their classmates), cupcakes should do the trick. Your basic cupcake is cheap to make, and you can get pretty creative decorating them with inexpensive candy. My wife finds all kinds of great ideas for this on the internet. If you shop carefully you should be able to do a batch for about 5 bucks.

And on preview, what Rhiannon8404 said.

Certainly not my place to decide if you are a good mother or not, but if I were you, at that same dollar store twickster mentioned, there’s bound to be some cheap brownie mix or cupcake batter and frosting. Assuming 30 kids in a class, you might have to get 2 boxes, but you can still get it done for under $5 easy. Based on my experience as a kid, I think brownies would go over better anyway, since we always got the same yellow cupcakes with white icing and sprinkles everytime someone had a birthday. Who knows, maybe that $5 batch of brownies would make your kid even more of a legend among his buddies than he is now. :wink:

I feel for you, Dung Beetle. I rebelled against the birthday treats in class “tradition” (it really isn’t one, you know) and neither I, my kids, their classmates, nor the world at large has suffered for it. If your child is eight, this should be about the last year you have to put up with it. So you can give in, you can compromise with a token gesture, or you can have a talk with your son and try to anticipate the consequences of not paying ransom to an anti-educational, anti-nutritional practice that exists solely because parents feel an irrational embarrassment about not participating. If you choose the latter, here’s my advice. Tell your son you’re not sending treats. You don’t have to tell him it’s because you can’t afford it, you can tell him it’s because you don’t think school is the right place to celebrate birthdays, which is perfectly true. You can discuss with him how his classmates might react and how to handle it. If he needs it, reassure him that his friends like him every day he doesn’t bring goodies and they will like him today too. Tell him that if his friends are disappointed, they will understand that it’s not his fault and that they will remember that they like him because he’s a great guy and not because he gives them treats. My son, unprompted by me, told his friends “At my house we celebrate birthdays with broccoli. Did you want some?” (I love that kid!) At any rate, his classmates’ reaction will not be nearly as bad as you seem to think. If anything, they might be a little miffed that that have to have a whole school day instead of wasting half of it eating cupcakes, but the actual fallout will be minimal. You might also call his teacher and find out exactly what she does on these occasions. She should know not to expect the usual, and either ignore his birthday or make a brief announcement at the opening bell and promptly move on. Your son’s teacher is your ally: s/he is probably the only person who hates these things more than you do.

If you truly can’t afford it, then don’t do it. I think it’s a nice thing to do if you can, but I guarantee your kid won’t be traumatized if you don’t bring sweets to school on his birthday.

And if you do something simple which is not as expensive or fancy as what another parent did for their kid, don’t worry – kids only care about two things: sweetness and quantity. Cost and/or quality are almost completely irrelevant.

After reading Soup’s reply, I was wondering, does anyone even know it’s his birthday? Or do they find out after they see the goodies? If you don’t send in snacks, what’s forcing the teacher to say “Hey, it’s Johnny’s birthday, but there’s no snacks. Everyone say Happy Birthday anyway to Johnny”?

Or you could try the Hostess / Drakes / Entemanns stores that have their baked goods with big discounts because they’re nearing the end of their shelf life.

Or cut a deal with the Dunkin Donuts guy. I guarantee he’ll offer a big discount if you by a few dozen honey-glazed the night before your son goes to school.

In my opinion, the kids come first. If you’re in such financial straights that you can’t swing it, please let me know via email and I’ll paypal you $20.

My wife is a teacher at a pre-school. The last 3 that she’s worked has has instituted a strict “no treats on birthdays” policy for just this reason. It’s great if you can afford to share and want to, but not all families can afford it. So as to make it so no one feels pressure they tell the parents that if they want to give out treats, it’s somethign they should do off school grounds.

Just get some treats - it’s not that much expense or bother.
Like everyone’s saying, you could do it for five dollars.
You say you can’t afford it, but I think it’s more like you don’t want to go to the effort.
It’s his birthday, and everyone wants to feel special on that day. You certainly don’t want him thinking his Mom didn’t want to go to the trouble to make or buy something.
My birthday is in the summer, so it never came up in my house. Except my Mom always made it clear that I was never going to have a birthday party, because she didn’t want to go to the trouble of having to clean up after the kids. I understood her reasoning, but I always felt bummed.
So to your son, this might be an important thing. Making someone feel special never has to cost much, anyway.

Dumb policy. The world won’t end if you don’t do it. And you won’t be the only one. I often forget things like this and I know other parents do too.

Our son started kindergarten this year. Because school funding has been cut to the bone, each parent is supposed to provide “treats” one day a month. We just send cookies or a big box of fruit snacks with him the first of each month and his teacher keeps them in a cupboard. A lot of five year olds can’t go all afternoon without a small snack of some sort - snacktime helps keep the blood sugar in the right place. But, yes, we provide them, or the teacher would need to out of her pocket, or it wouldn’t happen. They must be store bought treats - apparently some parents can’t make brownies without giving an entire class food poisioning. Packaged treats are also safer with regards to allergies - the teacher can read the package and not give them to the girl-who-might-die-if-she-eats-peanuts. The combination of requirements - 18 kids in the classroom - store bought goodies - means a few bucks a month toward cookies. However, I don’t think there is a month where they have 18 school days, so if one parent never sends treats, they’d still survive - especially since some parents are like me, and provide enough for leftovers - so once a month you get a little of everything.

I don’t understand why each child doesn’t just bring their own snacks each day. That way kids could have what they like and no worries about allergies and stuff. That’s what my son’s school had kids do last year for kindergarten.

No, not sending in treats doesn’t make you a bad mom.

I found rice krispie bars to be easier and more economical when my son was in elementary. A splash of colored sprinkles made them special, and I always bought the colored saran wrap on sale so wrapping them individually made the offering look more festive.

Ingredients are inexpensive and no pans to get lost at school or squished frosting issues, and the teachers always appreciated the simplicity.

It’s almost halloween. There is a plethora of choices out there. Little candy bags (each holds maybe 10 tootsie rolls) and candy galore. Smarties and tootsie rolls were the popular choices when I was a kid and they are CHEAP.

I’m not saying it should or shouldnt be a “tradition”, but I can see where it is…my elementary school did it around the turn of the 70s/80s. Finally one year, I was allowed to bring snacks for the class, but on some arbitrarily determined school day, since my b-day does not fall during school time.

Well, I guess I’m a cranky mom, but I think it’s a rotten tradition, and I bet your teacher does too. If you have 20 kids, that’s nearly twice a month that the kids are disrupting class time and getting completely unneeded sugar–as if there wasn’t enough around already. And yes, it’s nearly Halloween, which means they’re already inundated with sweets. (Don’t get me wrong, I love Halloween, but…)

I don’t think you need to come up with sugary treats. If you feel like you have to do something, and I don’t think you do need to, I vote for making cheapo Chex mix or something. But the kids will survive if you don’t send anything. Or hey, make them all paper blow-up balloons, a la origami, or something–the dollar store sounds fine. Plastic spider rings at a dollar for 20?