Can we agree that children’s birthday parties should remain children’s birthday parties?
It is okay to have a separate adult rendezvous party, but can we just put the child first for once?
I recently saw a video online which, just like me, did not sit well with many.
In case you are wondering, a small boy was celebrating his second birthday and his parents bought him a beautiful cake.
What disturbed me most was that the mum and dad called over their friends, who came with liquor and other things.
When I went on TikTok, on my fyp page, a creator was stitching the same video I saw on a different platform.
I was surprised that the mother of the boy had put the same photos and videos on her TikTok page.
In the photos, you can see the child holding bottles of liquor as he poses for a photo, and I am pretty sure the boy doesn’t even know what he is holding onto.
It was quite clear enough that the cake-cutting ceremony happened at night and as you continue going through, you notice that the party stopped being about the boy.
From the look of things, it is like the group of adults forgot that they were at the boy’s birthday party.
This made we wonder what happened to the culture where kids are bought for snacks or even cooked for and also have their friends come over to celebrate with them.
What happened to the culture of making kids' birthday parties more about the kids?
Even at a point when everyone is complaining about the high cost of living, it doesn’t hurt to make a child’s day special.
I believe that children are the simplest human beings as they do not require extravagant things.
Even if they live in a world of imagination and would obviously want things to match what their counterparts have, at the end of the day, I believe that they will be appreciative of what they will receive.
The fact that the parents of the two-year-old boy cut the cake with him, took some really interesting pictures with the boy, and went on to have their little rendezvous as if it were nothing was really shocking.
“Someone please tell me where I can find this boy so that I can throw him a small birthday party with his friends,” one user commented on the video.
To the TikToker who called out the parents, you did well.
We have now started normalising things that need to change.
There are just some societal cultures and traditions we cannot do away with, no matter how hard we try.
A perfect example is children’s birthday parties.
A party does not have to be too overwhelming but should be considerate of how a child feels and how they will perceive things when growing up.
Through parties, children need to establish bonds with peers their age. They need to feel loved, create positive memories, strengthen family bonds and even establish social relationships as well as strengthen their self-esteem and identity.
They are still growing, and such gatherings create great impacts on a child’s life.
Perhaps when they get older, they will not see the need to hold a party, but as they grow, let us not deny them a chance to feel taken into account in the family, surrounded by love, gifts and pleasant moments.
