Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, July 7, 1993 TAG: 9309010291
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BETH MACY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
When Betsy Hale's son, Sam, turned 8 in April, the birthday ritual went like this: Invitations were sent out to 10 boys, with the only information being what time they'd be picked up.
When the time came, each party-goer looked out his window to find a rented stretch limousine waiting outside. The party, it turned out, featured an hourlong cruise of Roanoke, culminating in a trip to Mill Mountain - where the 10 rambunctious boys got out of the limo and, finding the bathrooms locked, simultaneously peed on a stone wall.
"You should've seen them in the limo," Hale says. "They put their hands behind their heads and kicked their feet up. The driver had just chauffered around Guns 'N' Roses the two days before, and the boys thought everybody thought they were famous."
Hale is well aware that the to-do was, perhaps, a bit much. Even though, by today's standards, the price was right: $45. "My mother thinks it's ridiculous," the lengths some parents go to to put on birthday parties," Hale says.
"But as a parent, it's just real hard not to spoil your kids. In my heart, I'm not trying to one-up the other parents. I'm just trying to do something my child will enjoy."
\ Each year around birthday time, Hale and other parents find themselves wrestling with the question: How much is too much?
Is it excessive to have a party at Chi-Chi's for your 2-year-old?
To rent a pony for your 6-year-old?
To buy into the loud bonanza of games, food and presents at Showbiz Pizza - with 50 of your 4-year-old's closest friends?
As veteran party mom Jinny Wooddall-Gainey says: "If you have fire trucks there when they're 3, what are you gonna do when they're 4?"
Child psychologist Rob Lanahan calls it the "rip and tear" syndrome.
"Some of these parties, it's like the entire grade gets invited. . . . People go nuts. And on top of that, everybody's trying to out-do each other on gifts and party favors. And the poor kid reaches the saturation point - he's opening 40 gifts, and 30 of them may be from people he doesn't even play with. . . . What's missing is that sense of intimacy with close friends.''
Elaborate parties not only put pressure on kids, but on parents as well. Forget about trying to out-do another kid's party; just matching up is tough enough.
Lanahan, who counsels children and families at Lewis-Gale Clinic, says the birthday craze may be fueled by two-income family lifestyles - parents who feel guilty about not spending enough time with their kids, then try to make up for it on holidays.
Some are so busy with work that they don't think of the birthday until it's a day or two away. "And they end up responding to the kids' demands - typically that bigger is better."
"Some families have more money than perhaps their parents did and genuinely want to give their kids something better without realizing that bigger is not necessarily better," Lanahan says.
With two sons of his own, Lanahan struggles just like everyone else when birthday time rolls around. His boys see the kinds of parties and gifts other kids get and naturally yearn for the same kind of fuss.
"Once every three years or so, we'll give in and have a big party. But we always discourage gifts. Or, if they want to bring something, we'll make it a food item and donate it to the Ronald McDonald House."
For his sons' small parties, sleepovers with three or four close friends and a rented movie and popcorn foster close friendships, not mass chaos. "What's important is to celebrate the friendships and the birthdays - getting the kids to appreciate each other," he says. Games that rely on creativity and problem-solving are especially good.
For Carol Yagow's son's fourth birthday, she chose a pirate theme because her son loved Peter Pan. The kids made little pirate hats out of construction paper and swords out of cardboard wrapping-paper tubes.
Using a library book on parties, Yagow's husband designed a pirate ship with sails from a picnic table, some old white sheets and a two-by-four with drill holes.
"I made some alligators out of paper that had paper clips on the end, and we had magnets they used to fish for alligators," Yagow recalls. "We told the story of Peter Pan for the kids who didn't know it."
For her 8-year-old's Ghostbuster birthday party, she erected a poster of a ghost in the backyard and then sprayed it with shaving cream. The kids were all given water ballons and instructed to "slime" the ghost by splashing all the shaving cream off.
"With older kids, it's neat to have a variety of things so they can run all over doing stuff," she advises. "I've noticed the little kids like to stay together more and do group activities."
While Woodall-Gainey has taken her kids to parties at McDonald's and Showbiz, she prefers throwing theme parties at home. When her daughter, Claire, turned 6, the theme was dinosaurs.
Rather than just hand out favors, guests got to make dinosaur T-shirts with fabric paint and stencils. Kids also played pin-the-tail-on-the-dinosaur and searched for dinosaur eggs in the yard - large Easter eggs filled with dinosaur items from the Science Museum.
"What I do is try to keep it simple," she says. "If you do too much when they're really little, then they expect too much."
To keep the emphasis on the birthday - rather than the gifts - Lanahan and other parents offer these suggestions:
Sometimes smaller is better. "The list keeps getting longer because kids are into so many activities. But you have to realize you can't invite everyone," Hale explains. "I have people who actually won't speak to me because they heard about the limo ride'' and their kids weren't invited.
Be creative. For her pre-adolescent daughter, one mother had a tea party. She bought vintage dresses from Goodwill so the girls could dress up as well as floppy hats for them to decorate.
Don't get overly concerned with details; the kids won't notice anyway. "You can do a sheet cake with sprinkles, and the kids will think it's beautiful," Hale says.
Check out library books for ideas. (Yagow recommends one called "The Children's Party Handbook," by Alison Boteler, published by Barron's.)
Have your kids write thank-you notes to the guests. "This gets them into the habit of not only appreciating other kids, but also of verbalizing it," Lanahan says.
Create birthday rituals that have meaning and are family-centered. Tell your child stories about his/her birth. Pass down family stories. "When you reminisce you end up celebrating the fact that you're alive and have meaning in a family versus getting caught up with someone else's family and this mythical dream we have," Lanahan says.
Realize that often it's the small things that become lasting memories.
Parents, Lanahan says, sometimes try to make up for the bad times they had as kids, or try to recreate their own unrealized dreams.
"But when you look back at things, at the memories people have with one another, they're not big things, they're little. It's the time we took the bubble soap and made bubbles, or the time we sold Kool-Aid on the corner, or the time we bought baseball cards at the store. These are the things kids truly relate to."
by CNB