How do you do birthdays?

A

airotciv7

New member
We are in the depths of "Birthday Season" here at our house - one earlier in January, two this past week, one next week, two the week after that, two further into February (8 of 11 birthdays in 7 weeks; its's madness). Our go-to for celebrating is: some decorations in the house, Birthday Kid/Person picks dinner and dessert, a few presents, and general making much of the Birthday Kid/Person for the day. The younger kids usually take a treat into school for their class to share. We tend not to have "birthday parties" but our kids often invite a friend or two over for their birthday dinner. We do make a bigger fuss of "milestone" birthdays - 1 year, 10 years, so on.

How do you celebrate birthdays in your family? Do you find it's different than in smaller families you know or when your family was smaller?

Edited to add: our kids are 17, 15, 11, 11, 8, 5, 3, & 1 plus us and great-granny.
 
@airotciv7 We do something similar. Birthday kid gets to pick breakfast and dinner. We also do a party.

I had one turn 12 in January and she went to a trampoline park with some friends. My youngest turns 9 this month and is doing bowling with 2 friends. I have two turning 16 in April. One wants to do paintballing with buddies and the other wants to go to Dave and Busters with a couple of friends. My kid who turns 15 in May said he will probably want to do an escape room again.

We also have a 20 year old daughter and a 13 year old son but their birthdays aren't until later in the year and the oldest lives in a different state for college anyway.
 
@katrina2017 Those sound like such fun activities. We don’t really have much of that (theyve paintball stuff but it’s not formal-like), currently the peak kids thing is “throw some mud at each other” which is apparently just tops.
 
@airotciv7 In birthday season here too. One more to go!

We fill the birthday child's room with balloons, have them pick dinner, and I always make an elaborate homemade cake (like you'd find on a bakery Pintrest). If I can manage it time wise, I sometimes send matching elaborate cupcakes to school. We also do presents, because birthday & Christmas are the only time they get toys. Each school aged child gets to do one huge party event before they turn 10 years old. Doing it every year for every child isn't feasible, both financially or for my sanity. But I do want them to all have that experience! As a child my birthday was always glazed over, and it still makes me sad to this day.
 
@airotciv7 Our celebrations/traditions are almost exactly the same as yours. We have (so far, the kids are young) done birthday "parties" but they are incredibly lowkey compared to the standard of today. Some Dollar Tree balloons and maybe streamers, a few happy birthday signs that are used and reused for every birthday, and they are always at home. No themed parties or Pinterest perfect days here. Sometimes it's just the friends over for cake and ice cream, sometimes we'll include pizza from Costco in the event. I don't do the elaborate themed games, decorations, crafts or goodie bags. A party with just cake and ice cream probably costs under $30, if we do pizza for everyone maybe $80.
 
@katrina2017 So true. The length and money some spend on them dumbfounds me. One of my children went to a birthday party where they hired a clown, petting zoo, and dunk tank so it was like a carnival. The grab bag included a Barbie doll, craft kit, hair supplies, and a bunch of other little things. I guess maybe its just that easy when you only have one?!
 
@morehumble My son went to one last year that looked low key upon dropoff, and as I was leaving a semi truck that was a mobile arcade that they had rented was pulling up. I just had to tell our kids flat out that we are NOT doing anything like that and they'd better get over it now. It sucks sometimes because you know they'd love it, and I acknowledge that part with them, but it's ridiculous. I hope there's a cultural shift at some point whenever people realize how insane it really is.
 
@airotciv7 We have a birthday season here as well!

For us birthday kid picks whatever junky full of sugar breakfast cereal they want (all household members partake) and they get to choose what they want me to make them for supper. Then we do a celebration on a nearby weekend where they can invite 1-2 best friends and we take the friend plus family to a local attraction (zoo, science centre, aquarium, water park etc) then the best friend(s) can stay over if they like. We also buy them a present and perhaps decorate the kitchen with a banner so they find their gift and junky cereal waiting in the morning!

I have been known to double up birthday trip if the kids want the same attraction. (Eg we celebrate both kids and they can each bring a best friend)

My kids are 14,12,10,8 and infant. We will have a small family party for the baby.
 
@noahmetoyer Funny how the birthday season happens, isn't it? It was like that in my native family too.

I'm big on the banners, but I use the same ones each year for each kid (it started because I was broke with my oldest kid, but it's just a joke at this point).
 
@airotciv7 Same. They pick their food/dinner and we do some decorations, a few family games (races, the spoon with the egg on it, etc.) We usually put out a picture of them through the years and take a new one that day. Thats mostly so I can lament the passage of time.

Sometimes we will take long drives and explore for the day instead. We head downtown to see the ships or big buildings. They can pick one thing at each store we go to. Usually a comic bookstore, thrift store, hat store, etc. Gives variety and a fun day for the older kids.

I also give them shoes and 1 to 2 pairs of pants each birthday. It helps me keep track of who got what, when. I used to have a hard time keeping track of when certain staples were bought and it turned into a whole "youre being wasteful and ruining clothes/shoes bc you know Ill just buy a new pair..." So one to two pairs a year and thats it.
 
@stewartnz The clothes idea is interesting - I have a feeling my kids would be out of those sizes the week after getting them, just to spite me. Mostly they wear hand me downs/used clothes, but we do get them new special clothes for their birthdays if asked as a gift (my son wanted a particular coat this year that wasn't a necessity, so that became part of his gift).
 
@airotciv7 Our kids are all still little at the moment (1, 2, 3, 5 and 6 years), but three of them have their birthdays 2 days apart (26, 29 and 31 January) so we’re in the thick of it right now (although at least today is the last Jan birthday now haha).

So my eldest two just turned 5 and 6 and my youngest turned 1. It’s also back to school for us at the end of Jan so I pretty much use the back to school shopping for the eldest two as a gift in itself; we went shopping with grandma on the weekend and had a birthday brunch, they got hair cuts and new shoes and bags etc and I let them pick a gift. On their actual birthdays the birthday boy/girl gets to choose what’s for dinner and we have a little cake. We don’t bother doing parties yet or sending anything into school because it’s right at the arse end of school holidays. This will probably change in future but for now it’s low key.

Now I get an 8mth break until the next two kids birthdays happen in Sept/Oct (they’re at least 10 days apart).
 
@airotciv7 3 of the 4 kids have birthdays in April. For a while we just combined it with Easter. Once they got older they wanted something bigger. We offered 3 small parties or one big party. So for several years we did big parties - like laser tag or inflatables. Now that my oldest is 14 that’s would be just so dorky to have his sister at his birthday. So we are going to 3 small get togethers.
 
@airotciv7 We also do a family dinner with grandparents and the birthday child picks the dinner and the cake which is made to order by Daddy. In the past, we let grandparents be the only gift givers because it was enough. We just celebrated our first birthday after losing a grandparent to cancer so now we contribute 1 gift as well.

While we do enjoy attending birthday parties of friends, so far my kids, who are 12 and under, are completely happy with their family parties and have never asked for anything more.
 
@katrina2017 Ours seem happy with the situation too. I occasionally see party planning questions here or there from other parents and am glad it's not something we have particular stress about.

We've been to some fun ones, though nothing too crazy since we're pretty rural.
 
@airotciv7 Only have 2 so far, but we’ve kept it simple from day one just to manage expectations.

We do a family dinner with grandparents and a few presents.

As the kids get older, we’ll invite 1 or 2 close friends as well.
 
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