I had been planning the event for months. There was a theme, a guest list, a curated three-course menu. There was a colour scheme, a carefully arranged playlist and detailed sketches of the three-tier cake. It wasn’t my wedding – yet it felt just as stressful. It was my daughter’s “fairy sweet” fifth birthday party, with 42 people invited to our backyard.
My bold, imaginative, fearless firstborn was turning five – a momentous milestone marking the end of toddlerhood and the beginning of her big-kid years. It felt worthy of a big celebration, complete with a $600 inflatable bouncy castle, a face painter and a scavenger hunt for tiny fairy furniture. Of course, we had to invite her whole class – standard practice at her school. From there, the guest list kept growing, along with my anxiety over getting every detail perfect.
Somewhere between creating tiny fondant toadstools at 11 p.m. the night before the party and getting physically entrapped in a rose-gold balloon bouquet, I said aloud what you are probably already thinking: This is insane.
But extravagant birthday parties for kids now seem to be the norm. My daughter has been to six parties in the past four weeks, and all of them have either been at an elaborate children’s party venue, an indoor trampoline park or a decked-out, Pinterest-worthy backyard. The presents pile high, the food is better than some weddings I’ve attended, and the activities are way beyond the pin-the-tail games of my childhood.
For Toronto mom Sarah O’Shaughnessy, celebrations for kids are also for the adults – and there’s nothing wrong with going all out. “Parents deserve a fun time, too,” she told me. For her son’s first birthday last summer, she and her husband hosted more than 70 guests in their backyard, filled with heaps of produce in farm stands, for a “Charlie’s first rodeo” party.
“As soon as he saw everything, he immediately burst out singing, ‘Old MacDonald had a farm.’ It was so, so cute.”
O’Shaughnessy said the final bill – including a professional party planner, catering and décor – was close to $3,000. It isn’t social media or keeping up with the Joneses pressure that drives her approach to parties, but rather a desire to create special experiences and memories with friends and family, she said. “It’s just who we are as people.”
There’s no question those kinds of memories are precious – but is any of it necessary?
Diane Boden, author and host of the Minimalist Moms podcast, says we don’t need so much stuff to make a kid’s day extra special. Although she has three kids – ages 10, seven and five – Boden says she’s thrown fewer than five birthday parties for them.
“And by birthday party, I mean we invite a few cousins, maybe one or two close friends, and they have a nerf gun battle in the park,” said the Columbus, Ohio mom. “Maybe I’ll bring some cupcakes – and that’s it.”
For Boden, part of parenting is knowing when to opt out of the consumer culture that often surrounds children’s birthday parties. “It’s our job as parents to regulate and to be discerning for them, so they don’t get trapped in the overwhelm of it all.”
She suggests parents start by having a conversation with their kids and asking, “’What does that look like for you to feel loved without the abundance? Can we have your favourite meal? Can we watch your favourite movie?’”
If parents still feel compelled to throw a large party, Boden advocates doing away with presents – and loot bags, which she described as her “worst nightmare.” Aside from cutting down on waste, she pointed to research that supports the developmental benefits of a less is more approach to unnecessary stuff: A 2017 study published in the journal Infant Behavior and Development found that toddlers play more creatively and for longer periods when they have access to fewer toys.
Still, I don’t regret throwing my daughter a magical birthday party that went above and beyond a typical playdate or weekend hangout. She beamed all day, and the memories are real.
But I do regret the stress, the expense and the creeping thought that next year’s party must top this one. And as much as I was prepared for the 21 children in attendance, I hadn’t planned for 21 presents – a mistake I’m still paying for, as my daughter asks several times a day to open more, more, more.
A few weeks after the fact, when I asked her what the best part of her big day was, my big kid taught me all I need to know about her future parties by answering: “When you came out with the cake and sat with me and we pretended to eat the fairies!”
Message received: I can still be a cake try-hard every year, but the rest can be smaller and simpler. And, trite as it might sound, the moments where I stopped buzzing around trying to make things perfect and was truly present were the ones that actually made her day.
