When our fifth child’s birthday came, we found ourselves completely exhausting not only from daily work of paternity and motherhood, but from the pressure that seems to accompany birthday parties these days. Pinterest-Perfect topics. Good bags with dedicated stickers. Bound House Rentals has booked three months outside. She has begun to feel less like a child’s life and more like a small wedding, while completing logistical services, financial stress, and a lot of joy.
So we did something I felt radical, and even small taboos: we did not invite any children. No classmates. Not cousins. It is not carefully managed by RSVP. Instead, we fill cold, baked a cake, caught the paper plane, and we headed to the beach. It was just three of us.
There were no crowds, no timetable, no pressure for social networking or small conversation on our way through other parents’ rituals. Only the waves, sand and wind, and the five -year -old area is chasing the seagulls and licking the chocolate that wanders in its fingers.
It was the best celebration of the birthday of any of us ever.
Our small celebration allowed us to call
The shift was hidden but deep. Instead of coordinating a timetable for activities and making sure that everyone is feed, wet, and entertaining, we must be with our entire daughter. We swam. We laughed. We got the sand in our sandwiches and did not care. We sang a “happy birthday” without the background of the background of the backgrounds of dozens of young children. Our daughter was not missing – she was soaked in unpopular attention, communication, and freedom to be only.
It was too late, what was most surprised by our little gathering, but to what extent I revealed the quiet stress that many of us nature. There is a kind of performance and motherhood that crawls around birthdays. We feel it in Instagram posts, exact comparisons, and the desire not to allow our child to be “one” with low celebration. We tell ourselves for them, but often, it comes to us. About proving something our love, our effort, our place in the packet and motherhood pack.
Instead of a big party, my daughter got our unpopular attention on the occasion of her birthday.
With the permission of Calmar Theodore.
Memories have been made
Now I realized that the saying no to the scene is his kind of love. What if the scaling was not depriving our children, but about the fully appearing?
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I don’t know everyone can take a beach day. I know that there are children who want the party, the crowd and the shiny tattoo, and this is also beautiful. But I think there is room for conversation for stories like our section. For slow and sandy birthdays. To make calm decisions that contradict the pills and completely end up.
After weeks, our daughter still raises that day. “Remember the beach’s birthday?” You will say, and its whole face shines. Gifts did not mention or prefer the party. She remembers the swan. Chocolate cake. we.
I am not here to stir a violent reaction to the parties or say that there is one correct way to celebrate. But I want to do this: If Christmas pressure has reached you, then you are not alone. And withdrawing even once once may give you the space to choose completely with what matters. Good bags are not required.
