Tonight was a tie for the hardest night of my life. Both nights, about 6 months apart, no one showed up for my son's birthday parties. Well, I shouldn't say no one. We have one family that came to our rescue both times so that both boys had someone here to sing to them and eat cake. But, I digress. After some thinking, and complaining, I think I know what happened.
I think most of us are familiar with the so-called Mommy Wars. Mom's fighting over all kinds of things, some that don't even matter. Breast versus bottle, co-sleep versus not, when to start solids, it starts so young! I have been the target of it. I have been called lazy for not being able to breast feed either of my boys to a year. I have been told that my youngest son, who has sensory issues, is just a picky eater and I just wanted to diagnose him with something so that I could feel better about my rotten parenting skills. I have been told that boys will be boys, when I clearly knew something was going on with my youngest son.
But I realized tonight that the Mommy Wars have spilled over to my kids. Allow me to explain. We live in a rural area, and because of financial issues, we have hosted the boys' parties at our house. Which means that people who come have to drive, not a long way, but a bit. I print off invitations that I get for free on the internet. For both boys, I sent 20 invitations to their daycare. For my oldest son, we had 2 RSVP's who never showed up. For my youngest son, we didn't have any RSVP's at all. So over the last week, we started calling people we work with, begging people to come. We had people who said they were going to come and didn't show.
Any parent who gets our invite can see that it is not fancy, it is not custom, it is not personalized. Any parent who gets our invite can see that we are having the party at home and might assume that we cannot afford to have it somewhere else. Which means that we aren't paying for a venue, or color-coordinated gift bags, or a specialty bake shop cake made with Madagascar vanilla and chocolate from the Amazon rain forest or something. Which could mean moms don't want to come. We are not competitive in the birthday party part of the Mommy Wars.
I'm sure you know of a mom like that. The one that goes way overboard with the theme. Everything matches, everything is custom, everything is expensive. The mom that wants to have the best party on the block or at the kids school. She is trying to prove her worth as a mom through her kids' party. She may have things that are totally unrealistic, hoping that nobody can top what she is doing. She makes homemade things for the party that she found on Pinterest. Or maybe she is the one posting on her blog, which ends up on Pinterest, and then I get it for free.
Look, I get it. Parents want their kids to have fun on their birthday, everyone wants to. But here's the deal. I want my kids to have fun and for them, they don't need fancy stuff. They want kids to play with, someone to sing to them, and people to eat cake with. They don't even really care about presents. And I'm not going to go crazy because they don't want crazy.
Overall, what I'm saying is that I think people didn't come to our party because they didn't think it was going to be fun. I think people didn't come because it was out of their way, it was not convenient for them. And my kids paid the price for that. As an adult, I think we have all had at least one crappy birthday. It's not a good feeling, is it? How do you think I felt when I had explain to my 5 year old that the one family that came was his whole party, but he thought that they had just come over for dinner? He cried and asked me when we were going to have his party and he just couldn't understand it. It broke my heart and tonight, when I realized everyone had backed out (except that one family, again) my heart broke again.
These Mommy Wars are ridiculous. How is it a good idea to tear each other apart? But when it trickles down to our children I think we all agree that we need it to stop. This is bad on so many levels. What are we teaching our children by doing this? We are teaching them that material things matter more than others feelings. And then we wonder why this generation has no manners, no empathy, no heart. WE AREN'T TEACHING IT TO THEM BY FIGHTING WITH EACH OTHER.
Normally I end a post by saying it's OK. But this is not OK. The Mommy Wars are not OK. I refuse to take part and I am not going to tear another NTPM down because she is making choices for her children that she feels are best. Every mother knows her child(ren) best and who am I to judge her for doing what she thinks she should? She has way more knowledge and information to make that decision than I have to judge her for doing so. Anybody else with me?
