I did not follow my own advice about birthday parties

Apr 26, 2025

Spring birthday season is over—we have three family birthdays in the space of as many weeks. A scant few months after writing a post about how we didn’t need to do any conventional birthday parties during our fall birthday season (when we have four birthdays in forty days—I know, close grouping, we’re pros), I threw one of my children two conventional birthday parties in the space of a single week.

Was this a “compensation birthday”? Oh, well, yes, yes it was. Exactly that.

If you’re not immediately familiar with that term (read: if you’re not a mom), let me help. One of your kids is having a hard time. Why? Doesn’t really matter. Could be school, could be friends, could be you—you’ve realized that you are the thing that’s hard about their life, based on something they said yesterday in a disconcertingly casual manner. “BIRTHDAY PARTY” finds its way to the “urgent” section of your mom brain.

Free A joyful indoor Mother's Day celebration featuring a family with a 'Best Mom Ever' shirt. Stock Photo — that’s about the size of it, yeah (source).

Her birthday is coming right up… And you succumb to the delusions. You can do it—invite every classmate, and their siblings, for good measure. You can make a cake in some ridiculous shape. You can bring or crowdsource enough snacks for everyone. And, next thing you know, you’re running the printer out of magenta ink on twenty full-page invitations that you could have sent as an evite.

Anyway.

Birthday parties make me anxious, which is one of the reasons I find it so important to tell other people that they don’t have to have a certain kind of party for their kids’ birthdays, even if I’m going to neglect that advice myself. I don’t know why birthday parties make me anxious. I’m an extravert’s extravert. There’s a picture in a scrapbook of me as a three-year-old clasping both hands in delight over my purple “Barney” birthday cake. And YET—*every time* I pick out a gift for a birthday party, including gifts for my friends, my grown-up, would-not-say-something-to-embarrass-me friends, I freak out about someone else bringing the same gift to the party.

What if someone else brings the same gift? WHAT IF?

What if? Nothing. Then the birthday person returns one or keeps both.

Literally nothing happens.

Sorry, I keep getting off track here. I threw not one, but two conventional birthday parties for one of my children last month. The first one was at the library. I invited her classmates to the local library on a Friday afternoon about a week and a half before said Friday, kind of hoping that traffic would be reduced by the short lead-time. Oh, no. I underestimated the other parents in the class, both in terms of their attendance and their generosity (“gifts optional!” [we left with an insane haul of Target-craft-aisle swag]). The library is a fine place to throw a birthday party *if* you rally the children beforehand and tell them “Please don’t run through the reference section shouting; let’s all walk together to the kids’ area and do the scavenger hunt together.” I did not make that announcement beforehand, and you can guess what happened next.

At the next party—friends and cousins for tea at our house—there I was, staring at an expectant group of children, realizing that I did not have enough teacups, even though I had just run to the local Goodwill for more teacups that very morning. I poured tea into our regular kid cups for the boys, because boys don’t know what a teacup is.

(They do.)

Both of these parties were fine, alright? I think that my daughter felt celebrated; I even think that my other daughter (who shared the title of “birthday girl” at the tea party) felt celebrated, too. Maybe I’m highlighting the parts where I felt like a nut just for effect.

Here I am in the aftermath, though, with plastic rhinestones from the first party still clinging to every surface in my basement. And this is what I have lived to tell you: fellow mother, you cannot compensate for the suffering your children will inevitably experience. Certainly not with a birthday party or even with two birthday parties. But there is something that children invariably want, and that’s time with you. This is not a compensation strategy.

I think this is hard to wrap our heads around, that the thing that our kid would love is not this or that thing or this or that event but to get to be with us. Not in this marketed-for-kids way. They want to go on the drive to pick up the chair from Facebook marketplace or walk a couple loops around the block or just sit together on the couch. Nothing fancy.

Yes, your kids actually like you.

I know, you’ve freaked out about crumbs in the pantry or the shoes she left in the hallway or the way she can never, ever manage to close the sliding glass door when she comes in from the backyard. You’ve scrolled on your phone while she was trying to tell you something that mattered to her. You told her that you’re not going to do (insert costly activity here) for her birthday.

She still wants mom.

(I know that dads exist. “She still wants mom and/or dad” is just clunky, okay? I also think that dads are less susceptible to the “compensation birthday” counterfeit.)

It’s hard for us to believe that it could be so simple. It’s hard for us to believe that they still think we’re great. Even after everything. Even now. Believe me.

I want to believe me.

Please.

And, for the love of everything, only throw the birthday party if you want to.

On the Calendar – Divine Mercy Sunday

🩸I do not want to punish aching mankind, but I desire to heal it, pressing it to My Merciful Heart.💧

🦅Sunday’s Gospel is John 20:19-31. This is the story of the doubting disciple, St. Thomas, a story replete with images of Christ’s mercy. What stood out to me was that Christ repeats “Peace be with you” three times in this short passage—words they needed then, words we still need now.

Catholics the world over are praying for the repose of the soul of Pope Francis, who died on Easter Monday. These prayers more of a continuation than anything else; Catholics pray for the Pope at every mass, daily or otherwise. The Rosary ends with three short prayers for the Holy Father and his intentions: an Our Father, a Hail Mary, and a Glory Be. When I started saying the Rosary a few years ago it struck me that even though these prayers for the Pope take any given individual less than a minute to say, millions of prayers in a hundred different languages are lifted up on his behalf every day.

We’re also praying for the man who will take up the mantle after the conclave. Lord knows, whoever he is, he probably doesn’t want it. May he hear Christ’s words in his heart this Sunday: “Peace be with you.”

It’s Easter Season! The party continues! We are trying to underscore that for our children by eating dessert after every dinner, a practice we fasted from during Lent. Jonny: “This is too much dessert.” The difficulties of the Christian life, am I right?

Also this week—the obligatory memorial of St. Catherine of Siena on April 29^th, and the feast of St. Joseph the Worker on May 1^st. Both of these spiritual giants were laypeople—that is, not ordained or publicly professed like a priest or a nun would be (St. Catherine was a Dominican tertiary, who took her own promises to Christ very seriously, but never an official “Sister”). So, power to the laypeople, which is most of us, is what I’m saying.

I was delighted to see in the poll results from two weeks ago that respondents overwhelmingly agree with my assessment of the situation, that Easter Egg hunts are for Easter season only. But… they’re not for kids only. The hosts of the Easter Feast we attended last Sunday afternoon also had a “Grown Up Egg Hunt.” The brilliance of something like this is that if you get a group of adults together, roughly half of them are going to think it sounds fun to hide eggs in ridiculously difficult places, and the other half is going to think it sounds fun to try to find them. 10/10 would recommend.

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