South Side Story

I work at a gymnastics and dance gym for kids. Along with teaching dance and gymnastics classes for all ages, we also hold birthday parties on Saturdays. I help with birthday parties- setting up the table and decorations, playing games with the kids, passing out cake and refilling juice, opening presents, etc. Whatever needs to be done behind the scenes, it is my job to do it.

We usually ask that the parents come 10-15 minutes beforehand so that we can set up the table with the tablecloth, plates, forks, fill the cups with juice, tie balloons on the party favors, etc. Usually parents come more like five minutes early, and the ones that come when the party is supposed to start come with decorations galore. Separate plates, napkins, cups, and party horns for the boys and girls, the plates with pirates are for the boys and the plates with princesses are for the girls. Centerpieces are handed off to me; “Oh you can do this,” a parent tells me as she hands me directions to “glue flap A onto slit BC under part K and cut on line ZY to fold over flap X,” which is somehow supposed to represent a pirate ship or a princess palace.

After playing in the gym, the kids will run to the table, find a seat and start blowing on their party horns as hard as they can, trying to hit their neighbor in the face. The type of napkin along with the cup and plate set at each place goes unnoticed. I have never heard a child remark on the centerpiece, much less how happy he was that the centerpiece was on the table. We pass out cake, and for a while it is quiet, all attention focused on eating cake.
Afterwards, we move on to presents. Every kid seems to give the birthday child a bagful of presents or else a tower of wrapped presents. There is no such thing as giving a child a puzzle. Nooo, stickers, books, markers, a T-shirt and maybe a small stuffed animal or a bag of candy attached as a type of present garnish have to be included.

Birthday parties are an hour and a half, with an hour play time in the gym and half an hour set aside for cake and presents. But it is becoming increasingly difficult to do cake and presents in half an hour. A child with ten friends can end up opening 30 presents. Believe me, I am usually the one sitting there with the child, helping them unwrap presents, reading cards and placing the present in a black bag three times as big as the bag used for the trash.
After opening presents we tell the kids to put their shoes on to get their own “special treat” or party favor. We tie balloons on all of the party favors and then set them out on our counter so that the birthday child can hand them out to his friends. But more times than not, the parent ends up handing out the party favors and telling the other parents thank you for coming. Sometimes the parent tries to coax the child to stand there and hand out party favors and thank his guests for coming, but usually the child is more entertained by looking through his own party favor bag.

I am actually grateful to these parents, for they have shown me what not to do when I have kids. I have learned that four-year-olds do not care about a centerpiece, whether their cup is blue or purple, or how nice the gift card is. I have also decided that when my kids are invited to a birthday, they will give one present, not ten presents wrapped together as one. There is no need for one kid to have 30 new toys.

I am not against a child getting presents for his or her birthday but I think there is a point when the child will not play with all the toys. He might play with all of them for the first couple of weeks, but after that many will be forgotten.

When I think back to when I was a kid, which wasn’t all that long ago, I don’t remember most of my presents, and I certainly didn’t get anywhere near as many as kids get today. But I remember the ones that meant something or were from people that are closest to me–the bear I’ve had since I was a baby, the American Dolls that my grandma sent to me, and an autograph bear that all my friends got to sign.

The parents, it seems to me, have become overzealous and want to give their kids the best possible birthday ever, which is admirable but has just gone too far. I have been around kids long enough to know that all they want to do is play with their friends and have a good time. As long as that happens, the party is a success.